By Jennifer Ablan and Matthew Goldstein Wed Oct 24, 2012 5:43pm EDT (Reuters) - Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz chided U.S. President Barack Obama and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for not seriously addressing the troubled U.S. housing market during the recent series of presidential debates. The Columbia University economics ...

By Alina Selyukh WASHINGTON | Wed Oct 24, 2012 3:06pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican candidate Mitt Romney was 1 percentage point ahead of President Barack Obama in Wednesday's Reuters/Ipsos daily tracking poll in a presidential race that is effectively a dead heat less than two weeks before the November 6 election. In a reversal of Tuesda...

By Matt Spetalnick WASHINGTON | Wed Oct 24, 2012 12:57pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama voiced confidence that if re-elected he would secure within six months a deficit-reduction deal with Republicans equivalent to the "grand bargain" he failed to achieve last year. Obama made the bold prediction in an interview Tuesday with th...

NEW YORK | Wed Oct 24, 2012 12:46pm EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - Donald Trump offered to pay $5 million to the charity of President Barack Obama's choice if Obama releases his college and passport records, the real estate mogul and television personality said on Wednesday. "Frankly, it's a check that I very much want to write," Trump said in a YouTube video ...

The Financial Affairs Committee of the Legislative Assembly passed out a 6.4 trillion colon budget for 2013 in a special session last Saturday by a seven to one margin. But the fact that 43% of the cost must be paid by debt promises a stiff floor fight. The main opposition in committee came from Citizen Action Party (PAC) deputy Jeannette Ruiz. That Ruiz was speaking for PAC was underscored by ...

By Edith Honan Wed Oct 24, 2012 6:07am EDT (Reuters) - Connecticut Democratic U.S. Congressman Chris Murphy has pulled ahead of Republican businesswoman Linda McMahon in their U.S. Senate race, taking a 49 percent to 43 percent lead in a Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday. Murphy is now leading among women and older voters, but the closely w...

By Keith Weir LONDON | Wed Oct 24, 2012 5:22am EDT LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama will be elected for a second term next month if Britain's bookmakers are to be believed. The polls have Obama effectively tied with rival Mitt Romney in the two-horse race for the White House but the odds show gamblers putting their money on the incu...

By Deborah Charles WASHINGTON | Wed Oct 24, 2012 1:55am EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In Florida, Virginia and Indiana, voters have received phone calls that wrongly told them there was no need to cast a ballot in person on Election Day because they could vote by phone. In Ohio and Wisconsin, billboards in mostly low-income and minority neighborhood...

By Susan Guyett INDIANAPOLIS | Wed Oct 24, 2012 12:23am EDT INDIANAPOLIS (Reuters) - Richard Mourdock, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Indiana, said in a debate on Tuesday that "even when life begins with that horrible situation of rape, that is something that God intended to happen." The remark drew criticism from his Democratic ...

By Jeff Mason DELRAY BEACH, Florida | Tue Oct 23, 2012 12:59pm EDT DELRAY BEACH, Florida (Reuters) - President Barack Obama told voters on Tuesday that Republican rival Mitt Romney shifts his policy positions and cannot be trusted to deal honestly with the public as the presidential campaign entered its frantic final weeks. After three televised ...

By Andy Sullivan WASHINGTON | Tue Oct 23, 2012 2:36pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama pulled slightly ahead of Republican Mitt Romney in a Reuters/Ipsos daily tracking poll on Tuesday, but the race remained essentially tied with two weeks to go until the November 6 election. Obama led Romney among likely voters by a statisticall...

Recently The Costa Rica Star has published on SENASA and Humane Society International partnering on animal welfare here in Costa Rica. According to a Unimer survey, 73% of Costa Rican’s claim to own pets. In 1994, the Law for Animal Welfare was established to maintain standards for the protection of animals. Since then, the National Animal Health Service, SENASA, has been protecting the rig...

In the past The Costa Rica Star has published on Costa Rica Cybercrime Law 9048. Ticoblogger, a community of Costa Rican bloggers, invites everyone to attend the forum “Online Anonymity, Pseudonyms and Freedom of Expression” on Wednesday, October 24, 2012, at 9:00 PM (GMT-03:00) at the Legislative Assembly in San José, Costa Rica. The forum will discuss (Facebook) Article 230 of the ‘Cybercrime...

WASHINGTON | Tue Oct 23, 2012 8:23am EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican leaders in the U.S. Congress expressed surprise and doubt on Tuesday about President Barack Obama's comment in debate with Republican challenger Mitt Romney that the automatic spending cuts set for the new year "will not happen." At the same time, they said it was unclear whether ...

By John Whitesides WASHINGTON | Tue Oct 23, 2012 4:02am EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It was billed as a debate on foreign policy, but that did not stop Democratic President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, from sparring repeatedly on issues that polls indicate are more important to voters: the economy and jobs. After two con...

By Steve Holland and Matt Spetalnick BOCA RATON, Florida | Tue Oct 23, 2012 3:17am EDT BOCA RATON, Florida (Reuters) - President Barack Obama scolded challenger Mitt Romney for being "all over the map" on foreign policy in their final presidential debate on Monday, but the Republican appeared to have passed the "commander-in-chief" test of lookin...

By Susan Cornwell and Lucy Shackelford WASHINGTON | Tue Oct 23, 2012 2:55am EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, faced off on Monday in their last debate before the November 6 presidential election. Here is some fact-checking of claims made by the two candidates. OBAMA: ROMNEY SAID THE...

By Arshad Mohammed WASHINGTON | Tue Oct 23, 2012 2:51am EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - At times, it was as if Mitt Romney had come to praise Barack Obama's foreign policy rather than to bury it. Monday night's foreign policy debate between the Republican presidential nominee and the Democratic president was striking for the frequency with which Romne...

By Matt Spetalnick BOCA RATON, Florida | Tue Oct 23, 2012 2:36am EDT BOCA RATON, Florida (Reuters) - Mitt Romney passed up on his last best chance to put President Barack Obama on the defensive over his handling of a deadly September 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Libya when the Republican challenger held fire on the issue in their final debate...

WASHINGTON | Tue Oct 23, 2012 2:33am EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama, in some of his most blunt remarks to date, said on Monday that Osama bin Laden would have escaped if the United States had sought Pakistan's permission ahead of the raid on the al Qaeda leader's compound. Obama administration officials have previously justified t...

By Tabassum Zakaria WASHINGTON | Tue Oct 23, 2012 2:18am EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney vied on Monday over who was Israel's strongest defender but both agreed that a military strike over Iran's nuclear program must be a "last resort." Tehran's nuclear program, which the West suspects ...

By Patricia Zengerle WASHINGTON | Tue Oct 23, 2012 1:56am EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - "Horses and bayonets" became the most memorable catch phrase of the debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney on Monday night, as the Democratic president reached far back into the past to paint the Republican's foreign policy ideas as outdated. Romney has crit...

By Paul Eckert WASHINGTON | Tue Oct 23, 2012 1:24am EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney vowed on Monday to get tough on China's trade policies, but they mostly used the Asian giant as a foil to air competing domestic economic programs in their final debate before the November 6 election. In a sh...

By Steve Holland and Matt Spetalnick BOCA RATON, Florida | Mon Oct 22, 2012 11:02pm EDT BOCA RATON, Florida (Reuters) - President Barack Obama aggressively attacked Republican challenger Mitt Romney on foreign policy on Monday in their third and final debate in an effort to blunt his opponent's surge in the polls with two weeks left until Electio...

WASHINGTON | Mon Oct 22, 2012 10:25pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Monday that newspaper reports that Iran and the United States had agreed to hold one-on-one talks on Tehran's nuclear program were "not true." Obama made the comment at a debate on foreign policy. The New York Times quoted unnamed U.S. administration officials...

By Steve Holland and Sam Youngman BOCA RATON, Florida | Mon Oct 22, 2012 2:34pm EDT BOCA RATON, Florida (Reuters) - President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney face off in front of the cameras for a final time on Monday as opinion polls show their battle for the White House has tightened to a dead heat. With 15 days to go until t...

By Andy Sullivan WASHINGTON | Mon Oct 22, 2012 2:34pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican Mitt Romney has closed the gap with President Barack Obama and the two candidates are now tied in the November 6 presidential race, according to a Reuters/Ipsos daily tracking poll released on Monday. The online survey of likely voters found Obama and Romn...

By Richard Cowan WASHINGTON | Mon Oct 22, 2012 12:46pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An idea percolating in the Congress, aimed at helping avoid the "fiscal cliff," would scrap the steep across-the-board spending cuts of $109 billion set to start on January 2 and replace them with more targeted savings of about $55 billion, according to aides famili...

By Matt Spetalnick and Steve Holland WASHINGTON | Sun Oct 21, 2012 5:20pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney face off on Monday in their third and final debate, it will be the Republican challenger's last best chance to recover from his botched "Libya moment" and exploit vulnerabilities in his opponent's foreig...

By Kim Palmer CLEVELAND | Sun Oct 21, 2012 6:52pm EDT CLEVELAND (Reuters) - More than 140 billboards in Ohio and Wisconsin warning of the criminal consequences of voter fraud will be taken down starting on Monday after the sponsor chose to remove them rather than reveal its identity, the billboard owner said. The billboards, which show a large ju...

WASHINGTON | Sun Oct 21, 2012 3:12pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate's number two Democrat and others in his party criticized a Republican House of Representatives committee chairman on Sunday for releasing government documents related to last month's violent attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi. Senator Richard Durbin charged that Darrell I...

By Steve Holland and Sam Youngman DELRAY BEACH, Florida | Sun Oct 21, 2012 3:12pm EDT DELRAY BEACH, Florida (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney were tied in a dead heat on Sunday with 16 days to go until the election, increasing the stakes for their third and final debate. A NBC/Wall Street Journal poll h...

By David Bailey Sun Oct 21, 2012 1:03pm EDT (Reuters) - Former U.S. Senator George McGovern, a liberal Democrat and fierce opponent of the Vietnam War whose 1972 presidential race against Richard Nixon led to one of the worst electoral defeats in U.S. history, died on Sunday at the age of 90, his family said. The McGovern family said he died Sunday mornin...

WASHINGTON | Sun Oct 21, 2012 12:02pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney are tied at 47 percent support each among likely voters with just over two weeks to go before the U.S. presidential election, a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released on Sunday said. The nationwide poll, which was conducted after l...

UPDATED 8/20/19 -The Costa Rica Star has recently published updated  information here about receiving your residency  residency in Costa Rica to avoid border runs, wasting time, and money. The article below is not intended to be legal advice, it is simply a guide outlining the process of applying for residency in Costa Rica. Always seek advice from a lawyer in good standing with the Colegio...

By Gabriel Debenedetti Sun Oct 21, 2012 1:13am EDT (Reuters) - In today's highly polarized political environment it is somewhat surprising to find voters who backed John McCain in 2008 and now support President Barack Obama, but they exist. Roughly 5 percent of respondents in Reuters/Ipsos polls said they chose the Republican contender in 2008 and will sw...

By John Whitesides WASHINGTON | Sun Oct 21, 2012 1:03am EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Suddenly, Republican Mitt Romney has a viable path to victory in the tight battle for the White House. Democratic President Barack Obama still appears to have the upper hand in the state-by-state fight to cobble together the 270 electoral votes needed to win the pr...

By Alina Selyukh and Patrick Temple-West WASHINGTON | Sat Oct 20, 2012 8:15pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic donors gave unprecedented amounts of money in September to their party's three main "Super PACs," federal disclosures revealed on Friday, a reflection of how wealthy Democrats' reluctance to give to such groups has faded in the week...

By Jeff Mason and Steve Holland WASHINGTON/DEL RAY BEACH, Florida | Sat Oct 20, 2012 7:13pm EDT WASHINGTON/DEL RAY BEACH, Florida (Reuters) - Facing a cliffhanger re-election attempt, President Barack Obama will launch a round-the-clock, two-day campaign blitz through six battleground states next week to try to fend off the challenge from Republi...

By Jeff Mason WASHINGTON | Sat Oct 20, 2012 2:42pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The race between President Barack Obama and rival Mitt Romney has tightened in the days before their final televised debate, with the Republican closing the gap on Obama's slight but steady lead in a Reuters/Ipsos online poll. Data from the daily tracking poll released ...