A United States federal judge on Saturday blocked part of the controversial ban on travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries imposed by the U.S. President. Judge Ann M. Donnelly of the Federal District Court in Brooklyn ruled that refugees or other people affected by the measure and who have arrived at U.S. airports cannot be deported to their countries. In an emergency hearing, the judge...

The president of the United States on Saturday signed an executive order giving the Defense Department 30 days to present a strategy for defeating the Islamic State terrorist group. Donald Trump also signed another order to reorganize the White House National Security Council, a forum the US president uses to address issues of national security and foreign policy with advisers and cabinet members...

President Donald Trump on Friday signed an executive order subjecting immigrants from several mainly Muslim countries to what he calls "extreme vetting" as a way of preventing terrorists from entering the United States. "I am establishing new vetting measures to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the United States of America," Trump said as he signed the measure at the Pentagon after witnes...

US President Donald Trump said Friday that he had a "very good" telephone conversation with Mexican counterpart Enrique Peña Nieto amid a diplomatic spat over Washington's plans for a border wall. During a joint press conference with visiting UK Prime Minister Theresa May, Trump confirmed that he and the Mexican president spoke for nearly an hour. "It was a very, very friendly call," Trump s...

The president of the United States intends to impose a 20 percent tax on imports from Mexico to cover the cost of a wall spanning the nations' border, the White House spokesman told reporters on board Air Force One, Donald Trump has already made up his mind about the tax, Sean Spicer said. The tax, however, cannot be immediately levied because of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)...

Editor’s note: The views expressed by guest columnists are not necessarily those of The Costa Rica Star, its advertisers, or its staff.  By Britt Nelson The walls of the West Wing are bulging outward with the complex personality of one man -- President Donald John Trump. The Oval Office has not seen anything like Trump since the days of presidents Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnso...

By Wendy Anders The reintroduction of a bill that would allow ocean trawling has environmental groups in Costa Rica up in arms at the government’s support for such practices. “Trawling is the most destructive fishing technique, and there are no studies anywhere in the world that demonstrate its sustainability,” said a coaltion of 15 environmental groups, who noted that the draft of law 19,83...

Greenpeace on Wednesday unfurled a massive "Resist" banner near the White House on Wednesday, a day after the president of the United States signed executive orders for two controversial oil pipelines. Seven activists scaled a construction crane just a few blocks from the president's official residence and deployed the banner, which is around 21 meters (70 feet) long and 10.5 meters (30 feet) wid...

President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed several executive orders affecting immigration, including one that assigns federal funds for the construction of a wall on the border separating the United States and Mexico. "We've been talking about this from the beginning," Trump said during the signing ceremony, which took place at the Department of Homeland Security. The border wall was one of the ...

By Wendy Anders Over two-thirds of the 176 countries and territories in this year’s Corruption Perceptions Index fall below the midpoint of a scale spanning 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean), said Transparency International (TI) upon the release of the non-profit’s 2016 report. No country reached above 90. The global average score is a paltry 43, indicating endemic corruption in a co...

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad -- Child marriage will likely soon be illegal in Trinidad and Tobago. The Miscellaneous Provisions Marriage Bill, which Trinidad and Tobago's attorney general presented in the country's senate nearly ten days ago, has passed -- even with four opposition senators (including a woman) and one independent choosing to abstain. All that remains, as the bill proceeds to the House ...

New York, Jan. 23 — A group of attorneys on Monday in New York filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump accusing him of violating the Constitution by receiving money from foreign governments for their diplomats' stays at his hotels or for leasing office space in buildings he owns. The lawsuit was filed by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington in the Souther...

By Wendy Anders The United Arab Emirates (UAE) will donate $10 million (more than ₡5.5 billion colones) for the repair and restoration of aqueducts in communities destroyed by the passage of Hurricane Otto, said the Costa Rican government. This was one of the main tangible outcomes of a recent official Costa Rican delegation, the country’s first, to the Middle East. In addition to this vi...

Editor’s note: The views expressed by guest columnists are not necessarily those of The Costa Rica Star, its advertisers, or its staff.  By Britt Nelson Kaboom! The world has turned ‘hot-potato’ political. President Trump took office Friday in Washington and the next day women all over the world took to the streets to protest him and support ‘Women’s Rights.’ It’s easier to understand Trump’s ...

Newly elected U.S. President Donald Trump will focus this week on trade, immigration and national security, issues about which he may sign executive orders in the coming days, chief of staff Reince Priebus said Sunday. In an interview with Fox News, Priebus said that there will be "movement" in those three areas during his first week in office. Trump on Friday, just hours after being inaugur...

Hundreds of demonstrators faced off with police Friday during protests against the newly inaugurated president of the United States in Washington, where rock-throwing vandals caused significant material damage and dozens of people were arrested. Clashes with law enforcement left several people slightly wounded and around 90 people arrested, while protesters caused significant damage to commercial...

Costa Rican president, Luis Guillermo Solís, during his visit this month to Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah announced his country will establish an embassy and commercial office in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). In an interview with EFE during his first tour of an Arab state, he said that the opening of both initiatives has already been approved with the goal of "broadening and consolidating bila...

Editor’s note: The views expressed by guest columnists are not necessarily those of The Costa Rica Star, its advertisers, or its staff.  By Britt Nelson Yep, we're all on this Trump Train whether we like it or not -- bumpy ride and all. Say goodbye to normal, because the new normal is now the controversial, the charismatic, the one-and-only President Donald J. Trump. We can expect the ...

Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany’s outgoing Foreign Minister, dedicated his last official visit to Colombia this month to launch the Colombo-German Institute for Peace, or Capaz, its acronym in Spanish. Colombia’s daily El Espectador interviewed Steinmeier about this institute dedicated to teaching, research and consulting on the important peace process underway in Colombia. Following is an edi...

By Wendy Anders Late Wednesday, the U.S. Embassy in San José, Costa Rica sent out a brief notice that Ambassador Haney will continue in his post. The news flies in the face of a recent announcement by president-elect Donald Trump that every Obama appointee would be immediately replaced as soon as he took office. No further details were forthcoming immediately from the Embassy as to why th...

By Wendy Anders Buying and building property in the Poás region near the international airport in Alajuela in Costa Rica’s Central Valley, just got a little bone thrown in with a recent court decision. The Costa Rican Supreme Court (known in Spanish as the Sala IV) condemned the Municipality of Poás de Alajuela for approving multiple urban projects that put the county’s aquifers at risk, rep...

By Wendy Anders Costa Rica has filed a new case before the International Court of Justice after the discovery of a Nicaraguan military camp allegedly set up in Costa Rican territory, said the Costa Rican Foreign Ministry on Monday. This is the latest in a series of a longstanding dispute between the countries on the location of the border and territorial violations. The international cour...

Editor’s note: The views expressed by guest columnists are not necessarily those of The Costa Rica Star, its advertisers, or its staff.  By Britt Nelson “United we stand, divided we fall.” How many times have we heard that one? Politically the United States of America is split with Democrats fighting Republicans at fever pitch. Not much has changed in the U.S. Congress other than th...

By Wendy Anders Representatives from nine South American countries met this month to discuss the conservation of marine biodiversity in the open ocean, said the Costa Rican non-profit marine conservation group MarViva Foundation. Almost half the planet is covered by the high, or open seas, the waters found beyond countries’ territorial limits. Despite their abundance, these vast areas hav...

Berlin, Jan. 15 — U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said in an interview with the German daily Bild that NATO is "obsolete" and accused Chancellor Angela Merkel of committing a "catastrophic mistake" with her refugee policy to allow some 890,000 refugees, many of them from Syria, into the country in 2015. "I think she made one very catastrophic mistake and that was taking all of these illegals, y...

Part of President Barack Obama's motivation in ending a practice that gave undocumented Cuban migrants who reached US soil the right to remain appears to have been a desire to discourage Donald Trump from reversing the process of normalization with Cuba. Trump, who takes office Jan. 20, "will notice that the steps we've taken (with Cuba) make sense, they are serving our interests," Obama advise...

BEIJING, Jan. 13 -- China's state tabloid accused U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's pick for secretary of state of "rabble rousing" and warned of "war," after Rex Tillerson condemned Beijing's construction of artificial islands in the South China Sea during his Senate confirmation hearing. The Global Times editorial published Friday called Tillerson's suggestion to block China's access to the...

By Wendy Anders An estimated 90 thousand people in Costa Rica’s northern province of Guanacaste don’t know what to do with their trash, said the regional La Voz de Guanacaste newspaper this week. While existing legislation requires municipalities to collect trash from all residents, none of Guanacaste’s 11 counties provide full coverage for garbage collection services, said the paper. Car...

Editor’s note: The views expressed by guest columnists are not necessarily those of The Costa Rica Star, its advertisers, or its staff.  By Britt Nelson In a week President-elect Donald Trump will take the oath of office in Washington, DC to become the 45th President of the United States. Before him is the challenge he asked for to ‘Make America Great Again,’ and the voters gave him the ...

New York, Jan. 11 — U.S.-based Trigger Finance has created a new mobile application to alert users when President-elect Donald Trump tweets about a company in which they have invested. The Trump Trigger app, which is free but currently available only for iPhones, was launched in early January to give investors a heads up about changes in the price of their shares, given that the stock markets p...

Former ExxonMobil Corp. Chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson, nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to be secretary of state, said Wednesday that he believed that the risk of climate change exists but that the effect of greenhouse gas emissions on global warming was hard to predict. Tillerson was asked several questions about climate change during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreig...

By Wendy Anders By January 20, Donald Trump said all U.S. ambassadors appointed under outgoing Democratic President Obama must leave their posts, something no other president has ever done, reported several U.S. media last week. Normally though changes are always made to some appointments, these are done gradually so that transitions are smooth, projects can be completed, and out of respect ...

Tokyo, Jan. 6 — Japan decided Friday to recall its ambassador in Seoul over a controversial statue dedicated to comfort women that was installed in front of its consulate in South Korea. The statue was erected last week in front of the Japanese diplomatic mission in the coastal city of Busan by a civic organization after the local government's approval and provoked a protest from Tokyo. "We ...

Editor’s note: The views expressed by guest columnists are not necessarily those of The Costa Rica Star, its advertisers, or its staff.  By Britt Nelson There’s a new gunslinger in town named Tomi Lahren. She delivers machine-gun style conservative political commentary and she’s getting a lot of attention these days. Better put your sunglasses on. Kelly and FOX News announced this w...

Scientists have shown conclusively that treatment not only improves the health of people infected with HIV, it also stops transmission of the virus that causes AIDS. That public health issue is just one of the challenges Republicans face as they attempt to overhaul the Affordable Care Act, a law that brought health insurance coverage to some 20 million people - including tens of thousands of Am...

Mexicans overwhelmingly say they oppose the wall U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has promised to build along their northern border. But in Mexico's Ciudad Juarez, where extensive fencing was erected by the United States to secure the border between 2007 and 2010, residents have a more nuanced view of what a wall can mean. They say the Juarez fence has both caused and relieved problems in the ...

Editor’s note: The views expressed by guest columnists are not necessarily those of The Costa Rica Star, its advertisers, or its staff.  By Britt Nelson President Obama this week issued executive sanctions against Russia for allegedly “hacking the election.” President-elect Trump is demanding to see proof about why Obama did what he did. But Obama is not saying why he took these action...

US President-elect Donald Trump wished a Happy New Year for all American citizens, including his "many enemies" and those who fought and lost the battle against him and now "don't know what to do." Trump, who takes office as president of the United States on Jan. 20, used his Twitter account to post his message. "Happy New Year to all, including to my many enemies and those who have fought m...

Hackers linked to the Kremlin accessed the system of US electrical utility Burlington Electric, the company admitted Friday. Burlington Electric said in a statement that the attack did not put its grid at risk as was previously reported by The Washington Post, which cited officials close to the White House on grounds of anonymity. "Last night, US utilities were alerted by the Department of H...

Editor’s note: The views expressed by guest columnists are not necessarily those of The Costa Rica Star, its advertisers, or its staff.  By Britt Nelson The Mexican-American border wall remains a high priority for President-elect Donald Trump. He continues to talk about it, but without specifics, and he still maintains that Mexico will pay for it in one way or another. What would it...