Source: MSP WASHINGTON, D.C. – House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) today pressed Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Jeh Johnson for information about the threat of ISIS members entering the United States through the porous southwest border. Recent news reports have highlighted concerns about Sy...

Havana, Nov 23 (EFE).- Cuban authorities are providing "effective cooperation" to provide a "quick, adequate solution" to the plight of more than 2,000 Cuban emigrants who have been stranded for over a week in Costa Rica on the Nicaraguan border, Cuba's official media said Monday. The migrants ended up in Costa Rica after setting out from Cuba "with the intention of emigrating to the U.S., enco...

Freedom House Press Release. Washington, November 20, 2015 - In response a growing number of Cuban migrants passing from through Ecuador and Central America, which has strained diplomatic relations between Costa Rica and Nicaragua and led to Nicaraguan authorities using force against more than 1,500 Cuban migrants, Freedom House issued the followed statement: “Nicaragua’s government should stop i...

By Carol Blair Vaughn The United States Congress is about to enact a new law, H.R. 22 along with Senate Bill 1813, which will allow officials to deny new or revoke existing passports held by U.S. citizens who are more than $50,000 in arrears in their Federal Income Tax (IRS). The new law is expected to pass Congress in early December, and take effect on Jan. 1, 2016. This new law should rais...

"Pedro-Pablo-Kuczynski" by Robertovillani - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons Lima, Nov 16 (EFE).- Peruvian presidential candidate Pedro Pablo Kuczynski announced that he has given up his U.S. citizenship as the right thing to do before the 2016 elections. Kuczynski, a former economy minister, said Sunday night on the television news program "Cuarto Poder" that he has taken ...

Source: Flickr Commentary by Sea Shepherd Founder, Captain Paul Watson Fourteen years ago in 2001, I took my ship Ocean Warrior to Cocos Island, Costa Rica. When we arrived we found an Ecuadorian long-liner, the San Jose, busily slaughtering sharks not far off the beach of Cocos Island National Park. Note by The Costa Rica Star: We have not edited this article, which was fully written by M...

Prime Minister Trudeau and President Peña Nieto By Helen Cook Manila, Nov 18 (EFE).- Philippine social-networking sites have been awash with praise for Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who have caused a stir here among a segment of the female population since arriving for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. Only minutes after they...

Marti Noticias Twitter United States Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a veteran Florida Republican who is Chairwoman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, is not happy about the treatment received by hundreds of Cuban immigrants at the hands of Nicaraguan Army soldiers yesterday at the northern border of Costa Rica. Ros-Lehtinen went on Marti Noticias, an independent news outlet tha...

Wikimedia Commons Antalya, Turkey, Nov 15 (EFE).- U.S. President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, on Sunday in Turkey held a "constructive meeting" to discuss the war in Syria, White House officials said. The meeting, held on the margins of the G20 summit in the Turkish seaside resort of Antalya, lasted about 35 minutes and both leaders agreed on the need for a poli...

A resolution by the Legislative Assembly on the long-standing, contentious and tiresome issue of foreign military aircraft, specifically from the United States, entering Costa Rica airspace and landing in our country was recently issued. The President of the Legislative Assembly, Rafael Ortiz Fabrega, representative of Alajuela for the opposition Christian Social Unity Party (Spanish initials: ...

Source: Wikimedia Commons WASHINGTON, DC - U.S. Representative Eliot L. Engel, the Ranking Member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, today released the following statement praising Organization of American States (OAS) Secretary General Luis Almagro for his recent letter to the head of Venezuela's National Electoral Council Tibisay Lucena urging her to level the playing field to make t...

Wikimedia Commons Beijing, Nov 13 (EFE).- Tibetan monks and nuns are receiving counterespionage instruction from the Chinese government, a program aimed at combating the Tibetan independence movement and counteracting the influence of the exiled Dalai Lama, the official daily Global Times reported Friday. Twenty-two monks and nuns from three area temples attended a three-hour-long class in ...

Source: Wikimedia Commons Washington, Nov 11 (EFE).- U.S. law enforcement officials arrested the godson and a nephew of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, charging them with conspiring to transport 800 kilos of cocaine to U.S. territory, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday citing sources close to the case. Efrain Antonio Campo Flores, the godson of the Venezuelan leader, and Franci...

La Viuda Negra, a Colombian telenovela. Flickr Commos Certain telenovelas, those popular and melodramatic television serials that are the Latin American equivalent of soap operas, should be banned from the airwaves in Costa Rica, according to a legislative proposal considered by a legislator from the Frente Amplio (Broad Front) political party earlier this year. According to a news report p...

U.S. military DASH-8 aircraft. Wikimedia Commons Caracas, Nov 8 (EFE).- The Venezuelan Defense Ministry on Sunday claimed that a U.S. DASH-8 military aircraft violated its maritime airspace and the armed forces of Caracas said they detected "unusual" air activity by other U.S. "intelligence equipment" based in Curacao. The U.S. Coast Guard DASH-8, "equipped with an electro-optic system that...

Wikimedia Commons New York, Nov 8 (EFE).- Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump used an appearance on "Saturday Night Live" to poke fun at himself. The 69-year-old real estate mogul, who has been near the top of the polls in the GOP field vying for a shot to be the party's standard bearer in the 2016 presidential election, hosted SNL, a popular 90-minute comedy show on NBC. Trum...

Pixabay Commons Singapore, Nov 7 (EFE).- Chinese President Xi Jinping and Taiwanese counterpart Ma Ying-jeou wrote a page in the history of the two territories on Saturday, holding the first ever meeting between leaders of these longstanding rivals. The meeting - held at a neutral site, a luxury hotel in Singapore - ended with promises to further develop relations in the future as long as T...

Wikimedia Commons Washington, Nov 5 (EFE).- Former President George H.W. Bush harshly criticizes Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld - both of whom were key officials during the 2001-2009 presidency of his son, George W. Bush - in a new biography, Fox News reported. The conservative news network released excerpts from Jon Meacham's book "Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert...

Managua, Nov 5 (EFE).- The state-run Nicaraguan Grand Interoceanic Canal Commission on Thursday approved Chinese concession holder HKND Group's environmental and social impact studies for that waterway project, clearing the way for construction to begin. "We're authorizing HKND now to begin the design, structural and construction processes," the commission's president, Manuel Coronel Kautz, sai...

"Virgin Mojito" by JPS68 - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Commons A group of legislators in Costa Rica held a party and drank liquor while Congress was assembled and in session. Such was the news report filed by Jacqueline Solano of daily tabloid Diario Extra a week ago, and the legislators defended their entitlement to such behavior by citing the lack of rules of conduct. The bo...

Flickr Commons Belmopan, Nov 2 (EFE).- Belizean chief elections officer Josephine Tamai said Monday that the people threatening her and her family should stop, with her comments coming two days before the national elections. "I actually felt threatened and my family has been threatened," Tamai told reporters. Tamai has complained of "political mischief" and said police have been providin...

Pixabay Commons Seoul, Nov 1 (EFE).- Leaders from South Korea, China and Japan wrapped up their first summit in three years in Seoul on Sunday, vowing to end long-running territorial and other disputes, and urging North Korea to avoid staging nuclear and missile tests. South Korean President Park Geun-hye, Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe agreed in th...

Wikimedia Commons Montevideo, Oct 29 (EFE).- Uruguayan President Tabare Vazquez, a physician, provided medical care to another passenger on board the plane taking him to France for an official visit, assisting a teenager suffering from a severe allergic reaction, the weekly Busqueda reported. A 17-year-old French passenger became ill Monday during the Air France flight from Buenos Aires to ...

Source: Miss Mexico Facebook Mexico City, Oct 29 (EFE).- Wendolly Esparza, winner of the beauty contest title Nuestra Belleza Mexico in 2014, says she has "prepared arduously" to win the 2015 Miss Universe Pageant, a contest in which she is eager to compete now that Mexico is back in it following real estate magnate Donald Trump's departure from the show. "I have prepared arduously for this...

Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman. Source: Wikimedia Commons Mexico City, Oct 26 (EFE).- The United States is assisting with the manhunt for Sinaloa drug cartel leader Joaquin "El Chapo" (Shorty) Guzman, but U.S. law enforcement agents are not taking part in operations in Mexico, Government Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said Monday. "Not one single person" from a U.S. security agency is particip...

Source: University for Peace New York City -- On 19 October 2015, the Rector of the University for Peace (UPEACE), Dr. Francisco Rojas-Aravena, presented the Secretary-General’s Tri-Annual Report before the Fourth Committee of the UN General Assembly. The Report, which spanned the 2012-2015 period, detailed UPEACE’s achievements and challenges, and exhorted Member States to support the Univers...

Garcia Marquez. Source: Flickr Commons By Albert Traver Austin, Texas, Oct 24 (EFE). - The personal archive of late Nobel literature laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who for decades was barred from entering the United States due to his friendship with Fidel Castro, makes clear his close bond with the Cuban revolutionary leader, University of Texas academics told EFE. "There are lots of (...

Wikimedia Commons Port-au-Prince, Oct 23 (EFE).- Crowds of Haitian voters accompanied ex-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide as he set off with the presidential candidate of his Lavalas Family party, Marysse Narcisse, in a caravan to close her campaign. The caravan left from the ex-president's residence amid a crowd numbering over 1,000 partisans. Supporters of Aristide and Narcisse waited ...

Wikimedia Commons The judges for the Open Government Partnership Award, a multilateral initiative that aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance, have selected three semi-finalists for public voting. They are: Georgia: The Institute for Development of Freedom of Inf...

DelSexto blog Havana, Oct 20 (EFE). - Cuban graffiti artist Danilo "El Sexto" Maldonado, who has been on a hunger strike for four days, was freed Tuesday after being jailed for 10 months without trial in a prison outside of Havana, as he himself told EFE from his family home. "I'm very happy to be here at home. What I want to do now is see my daughter and thank everybody who made such an ou...

Source: Wikimedia Commons If you were to wager on the likelihood of the Nicaragua Canal project being completed, what sort of betting odds would you expect? The controversial project, which aims to compete against the Panama Canal, has attracted considerable media attention in 2015. Most of the news reports surrounding the Nicaragua Canal, which will ostensibly be located more than a hundre...

Wikimedia Commons Mexico City, Oct 17 (EFE).- A documentary film's trailer showing the incineration of dozens of Ayotzinapa students at a municipal waste dump has sparked controversy in Mexico, where protesters suspect the movie will uncritically present the government's version of what happened to those teacher trainees. The film, titled "La noche de Iguala," premiered Friday at 30 theater...

Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton. EFE file Washington, Oct 16 (EFE).- The Democratic front-runner in next year's U.S. presidential election, Hillary Clinton, backed the Obama administration's decision to normalize ties with Cuba, but she expressed concern over the human rights situation on the Communist-ruled island. In an interview with EFE Thursday in San Antonio, Clinton said the r...

Stanley, Islas Malvinas. Wikimedia Commons United Nations Press Release - Halfway into the Third International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism, the United Nations must rise to its responsibilities and put an end to colonial occupations once and for all, delegates stressed today as the Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) continued its general debate on the issue. ...

Wikimedia Commons Washington, Oct 12 (EFE).- Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler asked, through his lawyers, Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump to stop using the group's song "Dream On" at his campaign events, according to a letter published Monday by the media. According to the letter, obtained via the Hollywood Reporter Website, the attorneys remind Trump that he already had rece...

Wikimedia Commons Washington, Oct 9 (EFE).- U.S. President Barack Obama suggested that Russian airstrikes in Syria are a sign of the growing weakness of Russian leader Vladimir Putin in an interview on CBS News, of which an excerpt was released Friday. Obama questioned whether Putin is defying U.S. leadership in the Middle East with his air attacks on Syria, which he described as an attempt...

Flickr Commons New York, Oct 6 (EFE).- A former president of the U.N. General Assembly is among six people arrested in a multimillion-dollar corruption case, U.S. authorities announced Tuesday. John Ashe, who represented Antigua and Barbuda at the United Nations and presided over the General Assembly in 2013-2014, is accused of accepting more than $500,000 in bribes from a Chinese billionai...

Source: PRETOMA PRETOMA News Release, October 5, 2015 – San José, Costa Rica - Stemming from the recent blockades of public highways by the fisheries sector last September 2, the government agreed to a series of reckless, illegal, and unconstitutional agreements with certain members of the sector. The agreements and commitments were communicated to environmental groups after a formal request t...

Within the framework of the United Nations General Assembly, Costa Rica joined Belgium, Benin, France, Mexico, Mongolia, the Republic of Moldova, and Switzerland in presenting a resolution against death penalty. Belgium was selected to present the resolution; the following press release on this matter was issued by the Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Cooperation agency of the Kingdom of Bel...

President Solis, center, with CARICOM leaders. Media Release by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade of Barbados - Prime Minister Freundel Stuart identified Costa Rica as a like-minded country with which CARICOM should deepen relations in areas such as trade, education and cultural exchanges. The Prime Minister was speaking recently on behalf of CARICOM at a meeting with the Pr...