The entrance gate to The Walt Disney Co is pictured in Burbank, California February 5, 2014. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni Reuters - Walt Disney Co and Microsoft Corp; joined a list of potential suitors for Twitter Inc, according to media reports on Monday. Twitter shares were marginally down at $23.33 in after-market trading. The microblogging service has reportedly started talks with a number ...

BRITAIN SCIENCE Photo for illustrative purposes only. London, Sept. 27 — The United Kingdom saw the birth of the first baby in the world conceived by an assisted reproduction technique which used DNA from three different parents, revealed the British science magazine New Scientist on Tuesday. The publication noted that Abrahim Hassan, a five-month-old baby, was the result of a controvers...

Reuters- On Friday, Yahoo faced pointed questions about exactly when it knew about a cyber attack that exposed the email credentials of 500 million users, a critical issue for the company as it seeks to prevent the breach from affecting a pending takeover by Verizon Inc. The internet company has so far not provided a clear, detailed timeline about when it was made aware of the breach announced ...

Press Release- A new free online app created by the NGO’s Oceana and SkyTruth along with Google and partially funded by actor Leonardo DiCaprio’s eponymous foundation was presented at the US State Department’s Our Ocean 2016 conference. The Global Fishing Watch will allow everyone access to track commercial fishing activity worldwide. By providing the first free global view of commercial fishing*...

Washington, Sep 7 (EFE).- Apple Inc. on Wednesday rolled out the latest version of its iPhone, which dispenses with the headphone jack while adding much-requested features such as better photographic capabilities, longer battery life and water resistance. Consumers can place orders for the iPhone 7 and the 7 Plus starting Friday and the devices will go on sale Sept. 16 for $649 and $769, respec...

Careful with your Samsung Galaxy Note 7! Seoul, Sept. 2 (EFE).- Samsung Electronics announced Friday that it will recall its smart phone "phablet" Galaxy Note 7, after several users reported that their devices had burned while charging. The South Korean electronics giant will stop the sales of Note 7 provisionally in several countries and offer users temporary replacements of another phone m...

By Wendy Anders Wikimedia Commons Qualy TV, Costa Rica’s Direct-to-Home television service, announced today it will be ceasing its operations. The announcement comes just under two years after its commercial launch in Costa Rica, reported The Netherlands’ digital Telecompaper. “In the last few months we have experienced various difficulties beyond our control, prompting us to take the de...

Pixabay Commons PHOENIX – Attorney General Mark Brnovich announced a judge sentenced Steve Nolte to 9 years in prison for stealing more than $571,000 from his former employer. The sentence imposed by the Court was ordered to run consecutive to Nolte’s three-year federal prison sentence for passport fraud, aggravated identity theft, and use of a falsely-obtained Social Security Number.  ...

Source: Kahookashii at Deviant Art The Asia Adult Expo (AAE) in Hong Kong was all about silicone, sex and simulation to stimulate a few senses, as hundreds of visitors converged Monday at the Convention and Exhibition Center in Wan Chai, an epa journalist reports. The expo brought together dozens of mostly-female vendors selling sex toys, fetish devices, condoms, clothing, and silicone sex ...

Wikimedia Commons By Tânia Esteves for EFE No one knows for certain the reason why human beings need several hours of sleep every day, but a Portuguese neuroscientist has discovered the protein responsible for the mechanism regulating sleep. Diogo Pimentel, part of an Oxford University team studying the intricacies of sleep, is one of the lead authors of a paper recently published in "Na...

Source: NIS A New Jersey nanotechnology firm that provides solutions for industrial clients now has a presence in Costa Rica. In a recent statement, Nanotech Industrial Solutions (NIS) explained that it continues to improve their clients' performance by offering integrated solutions in lubrication, which can only be achieved by having alliances with high standard companies. NIS has come to...

By Wendy Anders  With no end in sight to Guanacaste's ongoing potable water shortages as wells throughout the region face very low levels, some businesses and also the government are turning to sea-water processing as an alternative. Last month, Reserva Conchal hotel inaugurated the first desalination plant in Costa Rica which produces 23 liters of potable water per second by processing ocea...

(Courtesy/WhatsApp) The world's most popular messaging service, WhatsApp, on Thursday announced it would begin to share users' numbers with social media giant Facebook with the aim of bringing companies and users closer together. The update in WhatsApp's terms and privacy policy was announced by the company on their official blog. The statement said that the move to strengthen ties with ...

Zoo Ave ROCK HILL, South Carolina, August 22, 2016 – 3D Systems (NYSE:DDD) announced today that its digital manufacturing solutions played a crucial role in the rehabilitation of Grecia, a toucan in Costa Rica that lost the majority of its upper beak as the victim of a senseless act of cruelty. The attack on Grecia not only left the toucan unable to feed and fend for itself, but it sparked ...

Google Duo Google Duo, a new communications app that greatly simplifies video calling, is now available for iPhone and Android device users in Costa Rica. The app can be installed from Google Play and from the iTunes App Store. Following is the announcement by Google about this new calling app, which includes social networking features: Video calling is the next best thing to being with so...

Alicia Chong RodrigueZ. Photo: Casey Atkins By Catherine Curro Caruso | MIT News correspondent   When Alicia Chong Rodriguez first toured the MIT campus as a high school student, she was so impressed by everything she saw that she still remembers excitedly phoning her mom back home in Costa Rica, calling collect from a pay phone in the student center. “It’s the first time I was fac...

File photo The ex-United States National Security Agency operative who was responsible for the largest-ever leak of top-secret intelligence files has hinted Russia could have been behind a possible cyber attack on the American agency. Edward Snowden, who was granted political asylum in Russia, said there was evidence to suggest NSA servers were the victims of a Russian-inspired malware atta...

Wikimedia Commons By Andres Sanchez Braun Tokyo, Aug 14 (EFE).- Blood produced artificially is the simple formula proposed by a Japanese firm whose revolutionary project seeks to reduce the scarcity of donor banks, bring down the cost of blood preservation and avoid contaminated transfusions. "One tends to think that blood is always available when a transfusion is required, but the truth...

Pixabay Commons Over the last couple of years, a major online poker and casino firm based in Costa Rica was targeted by hackers who threatened to take down the website unless a sizable amount of cash was transferred to a bitcoin wallet. While analyzing the ransom demand, the IT security staff of the online poker firm noticed that the cybercrime crew was not making idle threats. The servers ...

Many offshore sportsbooks based in Costa Rica manage to stay open for their clients 24 hours a day and seven days a week; this high rate of availability is achieved despite power and Internet outages caused by earthquakes, extreme weather conditions and business challenges. How do they manage to remain operational? Costa Rica is one of the major international hubs for offshore sportsbooks in th...

Galaxy Note 7 Samsung Electronics unveiled its new phablet, Galaxy Note 7, a curved-edge smartphone that comes equipped with a stylus, is fully water-resistant and boasts of an iris scanner, to the media in Seoul Thursday. The smartphone will hit the stores in the United States and South Korea on Aug. 19, after which it will be available to buy in other countries till September, a company r...

Dlodlo V1 Chinese company Dlodlo has developed the world's lightest virtual reality, or VR, glasses that weigh only 88 grams and looks like conventional sunglasses, as opposed to the chunky and larger VR glasses that hit technology markets this year. According to official newspaper China Daily, the V1 Dlodlo are not just the lightest but also the first virtual glasses to operate independent...

Photo by Arthur Caranta, Flickr Commons By Violeta Molina Gallardo Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have endowed certain machines with human qualities such as intuition and improvisation. Despite such technological progress, experts say future machines may never achieve self-awareness. "We don't really understand how consciousness works, we barely know anything at all a...

Cartoon by Clay Jones U.S. health authorities announced this week the start of the first safety trials for a vaccine against the Zika virus just as the disease has appeared in Florida with at least 15 people having been infected by locally-hatched mosquitoes. The National Institute of Health announced Wednesday that the first phase of the studies is aimed at establishing the safety of the e...

By Evelyn S. Gonzalez, Florida International University Amphibians that can tolerate higher temperatures are likely to fare better against disease, habitat loss and climate change, according to researchers. FIU biologist Maureen Donnelly contributed to two studies on the ability of frogs and amphibians to survive challenges brought on by a changing planet — challenges she said could lead to ex...

Auxis, a leader in providing performance-driven management consulting and outsourcing services and a pioneer in the Latin America Shared Services industry, announced today that its Founder and CEO Raul Vega will again serve as Chairperson for the upcoming 10th Annual Shared Services & Outsourcing Week Latin America scheduled for August 22-24, 2016 at The Ritz-Carlton Coconut Grove in Miami, FL...

Source: Microsoft Digital photography with the iPhone just got better in Costa Rica thanks to a new app developed by Microsoft. The new app is called Pix, and it combines photography with artificial intelligence. To develop Pix, Microsoft enlisted the expertise of a professional sports photographer. The following comes from the official Microsoft press release: As a professional photogra...

(CRS Archive) Panama Canal administrator Jorge Quijano said Tuesday that authorities are studying "prohibiting" the use of cell phones while vessels are transiting the waterway to increase safety. "The excessive use of cell phones concerns us because they are becoming elements of distraction and that cannot be permitted here," said Quijano after presenting to the accredited press in Panama ...

Cartoon by Clay JonesBy Britt Nelson Editor’s note: The views expressed by guest columnists are not necessarily those of The Costa Rica Star, its advertisers, or its staff Welcome to the world-famous Democratic Roadkill Café in Philly. This week two new menu items have been added: Bernie’s seasoned three-bean soup with bacon and Schultz’s strip steaks with hot sauce and a dash of disgust. ...

Have you ever wondered what it's really like to be colorblind? A new Android app developed in Costa Rica helps designers and developers experience colorblind vision so that they can apply accessibility to their work. Color Vision Deficiency (CVD) affects our ability to distinguish colors. It can impact on a child's ability to learn, the ability to select two socks that match in color, the sele...

Cartoon by Clay JonesJust a day after the much awaited release of the latest smartphone game 'Pokemon Go' in Japan, some of the country's most popular tourist attractions have started urging visitors to use caution when playing or stop playing altogether at their facilities. The most emphatic protest came from the Izumo-taisha shrine, considered the second most sacred in Japan, which banned th...

Screenshot of KAT.crCHICAGO — Federal authorities in Chicago have charged the alleged owner of today’s most-visited illegal file-sharing website with criminal copyright infringement and have seized domain names associated with the website. ARTEM VAULIN, 30, of Kharkiv, Ukraine, allegedly owns and operates Kickass Torrents, or KAT, a commercial website that since 2008 has enabled users to illeg...

Helthgauge.com - Flickr CommonsCHICAGO – 20 July 2016 – Tate & Lyle, a leading global provider of food ingredients and solutions, is pleased to announce the winner of this year’s Institute of Food Technologists Student Association (IFTSA) Developing Solutions for Developing Countries (DSDC) competition, McGill University. “Tate & Lyle is honored to be the new sponsor of this program,” said Sa...

Source: LigaPokemonCR FacebookCosta Rica is so enthralled with Pokemon GO, the latest mobile app by Nintendo and Niantic, that smartphone users are going online to research the game more so than they are viewing pornography. A few days ago, a news report filed by Cory McNutt of Android Headlines indicated that 4.6 percent of compatible Android devices in Costa Rica had installed Pokemon GO, th...

July 15, 2016 Costa Rica – Breakout Gaming, the online gaming entertainment company offering poker, sports wagering, casino games, fantasy sports and other gaming options from Costa Rica will soon be launching two new platforms powered by the company’s own Breakout Coin. The launch of Breakout PVP and its upcoming ‘Breakout Game Store’ follows the recent launch of its successful online poker games...

Source: Wikimedia CommonsTwo U.S. citizens and a Canadian citizen have pleaded guilty for their roles in a $9 million “sweepstakes fraud” scheme to defraud hundreds of U.S. residents, many of them elderly, announced Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Jill Westmoreland Rose of the Western District of North Carolina. Jeff...

EZ Waves Google PlayEZ Waves, an online charter booking service for fishing, sailing, kayaking and all other water-based activities, announces its launch today with nearly 500 captains available for bookings in the United States, Costa Rica, Mexico, Canada and Norway. EZ Waves is the only program that streamlines the maritime booking process, providing live scheduling that allows guests to book o...

Wikimedia Commons Bolivian writer Oswaldo Calatayud, the winner of his country's 17th National Novel Prize for his work "La Guerra del Papel" (The Paper War), says that the "ultra-tech" world has reinforced human loneliness. In an interview with EFE, the author explained that nowadays "there is little contact between people because technology intercedes in everything. Being on the cellphone...

By ESO/L. Calçada - https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1624b/, CC BY-SA 4.0 Astronomers have discovered a planet even more exotic than Tatooine, from the "Star Wars" saga, with its two suns. This new extra-solar world is known as HD 131399Ab and is the first one to be found in a wide orbit around three stars, according to a study published Thursday in Science magazine. This fascinating...

4grinz Casino Bitcoin Casino 4Grinz.com today announced details on its new reward program, Coin Back, that offers players a minimum 10% return in the form of real bitcoins. "Our seasoned team of gaming professionals wanted to do something different when they created Coin Back," said Lee Bruce, General Manager, 4Grinz.com. "It's a long-awaited solution to the outdated bonus systems currently...