The Costa Rican Tourism Institute announced the opening of a direct air connection between Costa Rica and Peru, the first direct connection to South America. The LATAM flight between San José, Costa Rica and Lima, Peru will facilitate connections to other South American countries. LATAM Airlines Group S.A. is a South American airline holding company incorporated under Chilean law and headqua...

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...

Lima, Dec. 30 — This capital's La Pampilla beach has become the first in Peru and in Latin America with night-time lighting, an improvement the municipal government says aims to encourage the country's world-class surfers to extend their activity past sunset. Starting this week, 1,000-watt LED lights atop four posts 18 meters (59 ft) high will illuminate the shoreline in the Lima district of Mira...

Bangkok Desk, Dec. 29 — Fifteen people have been detained in Australia in connection with the seizure of 1.1 tons of cocaine in an international operation against a drug smuggling ring, police officials said Thursday. A total of 500 kilograms were seized on Dec. 25 in the southern Australian state of New South Wales, and over 600 kilograms bound for Australia were intercepted in March in Tahiti, ...

Geneva, Dec. 13 — Malaria has retreated in almost all of Latin America. Mosquito nets are key in preventing malaria transmission. Costa Rica is listed as free of malaria transmission by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and it, along with several other countries will be certified malaria-free by the World Health Organization (WHO) in coming years. The exceptions to thi...

Lima, Nov. 30 — A spectacled bear was photographed for the first time in the Rio Abiseo National Park, a reserve in the Peruvian Amazon region of San Martin, officials said. A spectacled bear cub, source Facebook. Camera traps were used to capture an image of that vulnerable species, also known as the Andean bear, and which is of great cultural and ecological significance in Peru's Andean a...

Beijing, Nov. 10 — China hopes to take its economic relations with Latin America to a new level as its president is set to begin an official tour of Ecuador, Peru and Chile. Chinese President Xi Jinping, source Facebook. During his tour, between Nov. 17 and 23, Xi Jinping will meet with presidents of the three countries and sign two separate sets of cooperation agreements, including econo...

Shanghai, China, Sept. 15 - The proposed inter-oceanic railroad linking South America's Atlantic coast with its Pacific shores via Brazil and Peru will cost around $60 billion, Peruvian Vice-President and Transport Minister Martin Vizcarra revealed Thursday. "The preliminary report says the corridor would exceed $60 billion; given these figures and other projects that could be more urgent, it h...

By Wendy Anders Last year, many in Costa Rica were surprised by a governmental decision to ban imports of Mexican avocados. The government alleged the ban was due to a blight that might spread to local crops, according to reports in various local media sources, but inside sources said the allegation was unfounded. For the last two decades, Mexico has provided Costa Rica with the vast majo...

Arequipa. Wikimedia Commons A magnitude-5.3 earthquake left four people dead, 68 injured and 1,253 families homeless in a rural area of Caylloma province in southern Peru's Arequipa region, to which the authorities have sent humanitarian aid in helicopters and by land. The fatalities were an 80-year-old woman, another age 70 and her granddaughter, a minor, as well as United States citizen E...

Wikimedia Commons Peruvian scientist Marino Morikawa, who "revived" polluted wetlands in 15 days using nanotechnology, now plans to try to clean up Lake Titicaca and the Huacachina lagoon, an oasis in the middle of the desert. El Cascajo, an ecosystem of roughly 50 hectares (123 acres) in Chancay district, located north of Lima, began its recovery in 2010 with two inventions that Morikawa c...

By Wendy Anders The BBC confirmed today that a German tourist died yesterday while purportedly posing for a photo of himself leaping off a cliff as he toured the 15th-century Peruvian Incan citadel of Machu Picchu. Oliver Park, 51, said the BBC, “ignored safety signs and warnings from wardens and went into a restricted area close to the edge of a cliff on Wednesday, according to local offici...

Photo by Bill Damon, Flickr Commons Lima, May 30 (EFE).- A group of Peruvian shamans faced off Monday in a duel of rituals to bring an election victory either to Keiko Fujimori or to rival Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in the June 5 presidential runoff. The rituals were celebrated by six shamans, four in favor of Fujimori and two supporting Kuczynski, outside Lima's National Stadium. Empowered b...

Wikimedia Commons Santiago, May 27 (EFE).- Chile has completed the removal of an additional 31,000 land mines along its northern border with Peru, the Defense Ministry said. "The efficacy of the mine-clearance work by the armed forces is apparent in the numbers: out of 181,814 landmines planted in different areas of the national territory, 130,497 have already been destroyed in the existing...

YouTube Commons Lima, May 9 (EFE).- The Cuzco Decentralized Culture Directorate reported Monday that vandals had painted eight graffiti with aerosols on five streets of the historic center of that ancient Inca city, which they called a crime against culture. The graffiti were sprayed on the stone walls with black paint to form the word "KOYOS 16," at a height of approximately 40 centimeters...

Source: Animal Defenders International Lima, Apr 30 (EFE).- A group of more than 30 lions rescued from circuses in Peru and Colombia have departed this capital for a natural sanctuary in South Africa, an operation known as "Spirit of Freedom" that was organized by the British-based non-governmental organization Animal Defenders International. "Simba is sleeping. The 'Spirit of Freedom' has ...

Pixabay Commons Lima, Apr 12 (EFE). - Two American tourists died in Peru when the cruise ship on which they were touring the Amazon River caught fire, the head of the Iquitos port authority, Oscar Garrido, told EFE. The fatalities were Larry Morris Hammer, 74, and Cristy Jeins Hammer, 72, who died while being taken to the hospital in Iquitos, capital of the Amazon region of Loreto in northe...

Image;: Wikimedia Commons Lima, Apr 10 (EFE). - The death toll from the ambush of a military patrol earlier this weekend in the jungles of central Peru has risen to four, with five others wounded, while an attack in a nearby region wounded two people, the Armed Forces Joint Command said Sunday. The patrol from the 311th Counterinsurgency Battalion was attacked early Saturday by remnants of ...

Wikimedia Commons Lima, Mar 4 (EFE).- A Frenchman, 28, and an Englishman, 23, were arrested by Peruvian tourism police for taking nude pictures of themselves at the ancient Inca citadel of Machu Picchu in the Cuzco region in the southeastern part of the country, police authorities said. Culture Ministry guards alerted tourism police last Wednesday to the presence of two tourists in the agri...

LIMA (EFE) The Pacific Ocean washes plastic waste, wood, pipes and other construction materials every day onto Peru's Carpayo beach, considered Latin America's dirtiest stretch of coast with tons of refuse and waste from the capital, Lima. No other beach in Latin America gets the 2.8 kilos (6.2 pounds) of trash per square meter (10.8 sq. feet) collected from Carpayo during the most recent c...

Wikimedia Commons By Maria Clara Montoya Lima, Jan 13 (EFE; additional context by The Costa Rica Star).- Scientists at Peru's International Potato Center, or CIP, are working on a project to explore the possibility of growing potatoes on Mars. The idea for the project came from researcher Julio Valdivia, who is conducting studies for NASA and found that the soil in an area in southern Pe...

Source; Google Maps Lima, Nov 24 (EFE).- An earthquake measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale on Tuesday struck the mutual border area between Peru, Brazil and Bolivia but there have been no reports as yet of any injuries or material damage. The powerful quake occurred at 5:44 p.m. and had its epicenter in the Madre de Dios Amazon region, 83 km (51 mi.) south of the town of Esperanza some 90 km...

"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 ...

Tacna region Santiago, Nov 7 (EFE).- The Chilean government rejected Saturday the enactment in Peru of a new law creating a district on the border between the two countries which, it says, "includes territory that is unquestionably Chilean," and announced that it is sending a note of protest to Lima. Peruvian President Ollanta Humala enacted Saturday the creation of the La Yarada-Los Palos ...