Rio de Janeiro, May 19 (EFE).- Brazilian police are investigating the murder of investigative reporter Evany Jose Metzker, who was found decapitated earlier this week in the town of Padre Paraiso, in Minas Gerais state, authorities said Tuesday. Commissioner Fabricia Nunes, who is in charge of the case, is pursuing two investigative lines, that it was either a crime of passion or that it was carr...

Miami, May 18 (EFE).- Florida officials are spending $1.6 million on a project to remove about 90,000 tires dumped into the Atlantic Ocean off Fort Lauderdale in the 1970s as part of an artificial reef project, media reports said Monday. A team of divers began removing the tires last week from the ocean floor off Hugh Taylor Birch State Park, the Sun Sentinel newspaper said. The project is e...

Unidentified U.S. federal agent during the seizure of Elián González from his uncle's residence on April 22, 2000. Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography. Photograph taken by Alan Diaz of the Associated Press. Wikimedia Commons Fair Use.  Miami, May 18 (EFE).- Young Cuban student Elian Gonzalez, who as a child was rescued at sea in 1999 by two U.S. fishermen, said in an interview Monday ...

The town of Salgar before the landslides. Source: Government of Antioquia Bogota, May 18 (EFE).- At least 33 people died and an unknown number are missing in a landslide caused when a creek overflowed in the town of Salgar, in northwest Colombia, a regional government spokesman confirmed to Efe. "The latest official figure provided by the Dapard (emergency management department) is of 33 de...

Wikimedia Commons Washington, May 17 (EFE, plus additional context by The Costa Rica Star).- At least nine people died and 18 others were injured in a shootout between rival biker gangs in Waco, Texas, on Sunday afternoon, police said. The shootout, which began as a fist- and knife-fight but quickly escalated to gunplay, took place in a parking lot between the Twin Peaks and Don Carlos rest...

Montevideo, May 16 (EFE).- Organizations for and against abortion in Uruguay clashed about whether an 11-year-old girl who became pregnant after being raped by a man of 40 should continue with the gestation process now in its 15th week. The anti-abortion movement known as Pro-Vida published Friday a communique slamming the statement by a group of six human-rights NGOs that came out in favor of ...

Crocodile Man Tour at the Tarcoles River near Jaco, Costa Rica Mexico City, May 14 (EFE).- Five crocodiles were returned to their natural habitat and a sixth is undergoing treatment for wounds at a wildlife center following trapping operations in populated areas in Mexico's Tamaulipas, Guerrero and Tabasco states, the Profepa federal environmental protection agency said. Three crocs were tr...

Mexican soldiers fighting the Drug War. Wikimedia Commons Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, May 13 (EFE).- Six people were killed when suspected drug traffickers shot down a small plane in Urique, a city in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, state officials said Wednesday. The victims were aboard an air taxi that was on its way from the northwestern state of Sinaloa to Chihuahua when it was shot...

Quito, May 12 (EFE).- Ecuadorian police seized 2.2 tons of cocaine that was intended for shipment to the United States in sacks of zeolite, a porous mineral used as an absorbent in the agricultural and petrochemical sectors, the Interior Ministry reported Tuesday. Deputy Interior Minister Diego Fuentes said in remarks broadcast by Ecuavisa television that five suspects were arrested in the oper...

Managua, May 12 (EFE).- Nicaragua hopes to lure European tourists with tours of active and inactive volcanoes, nature preserves, pristine forests, archaeological sites and colonial cities, as well as the chance to see wild birds or whales. Sustainable tourism, deemed the best fit for a country with unexplored regions and the lowest crime rate in Central America, has given Nicaraguan officials a...

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro, May 11 (EFE).- Rio de Janeiro's "pacified" favelas, or shantytowns, have a lower murder rate than the rest of this Brazilian city, according to a study released Monday by the regional government after a violent weekend when six people were gunned down in several central neighborhoods. The 196 favelas occupied by police as part of the "pacification" program las...

Wikimedia Commons Geneva, May 10 (EFE).- Five people were killed in a shooting in the Swiss town of Würenlingen, police said Sunday, adding that the lone shooter was among the victims and that apparently a family dispute had sparked the rampage. Argovie police chief Michael Leutpold at a press conference confirmed the death toll, adding that the 36-year-old shooter, the father of three and ...

Aedes aegypti mosquito, known dengue carrier. By Fabio Agrana Panama City, May 9 (EFE).- Panama's Gorgas Memorial Institute for Health, or ICGES, found in a recent study that genetically modified mosquitoes can be used to combat dengue with a high degree of effectiveness, scientists involved in the project said. The director of the ICGES study, Lorenzo Caceres, told Efe that in a period ...

Source: Flickr Commons Mexico City, May 8 (EFE).- The charred, decapitated remains of three people were discovered inside a vehicle in a highland area of the southern Mexican state of Guerrero. Police, who were informed of the killings shortly before 7:00 a.m. Thursday, found a narcobanner left at the crime scene - along the road linking the towns of Chilapa de Alvarez and Ahuacotzingo - bu...

ISIS fighters in Iraq. Source: Wikimedia Commons Washington, May 7 (EFE).- Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced Thursday that U.S. troops will begin training moderate Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State. Although Carter did not specify where the training program was being conducted, it is expected that Jordan is the country that is hosting the first rebel fighters selected by the ...

Source: UNHCR SABALITO, Costa Rica, May 7 (UNHCR) – Elida Andrade has lived in the green hills around the small southern Costa Rican town of Sabalito for her whole life, but until recently the 18-year-old mother never really belonged anywhere. Her parents, members of the indigenous Ngöbe Bugle people, were born across the nearby border in Chiriqui, Panama, and moved to the coffee-growing Sa...

Wikimedia Commons Paris, May 6 (EFE).- The Brigitte Bardot Foundation on Wednesday called on the Spanish city of Cartagena to scrap a plan to trap and kill stray cats, urging officials to instead use the techniques employed in other cities to control feral cat populations. Christophe Marie, director of the foundation's animal protection office, sent a letter to Cartagena Mayor Pilar Barreir...

Wikimedia Commons Bogota, May 5 (EFE).- At least 53 underage girls were raped by U.S. military personnel and contractors based in Colombia, according to a report prepared as part of the ongoing peace process between the Colombian government and the FARC rebel group. The 800-page document is the work of 12 experts, six picked by the government and another six by the Revolutionary Armed Force...

Source: Flickr Commons Austin, Texas, May 4 (EFE).- U.S. authorities on Monday identified the two men shot dead by police as they were allegedly preparing to mount an attack on a cultural center in the Texas city of Garland, where an exhibition of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed was being held. Elton Simpson, 30, five years ago was arrested as he was trying to travel to Africa allegedly to...

Wikimedia Commons Rome, May 3 (EFE).- Italian authorities on the weekend rescued some 3,700 illegal migrants who were sailing from North Africa to Italy in more than a dozen boats, the Coast Guard said in a communique on Sunday. Coast guard personnel said that 3,690 migrants were rescued in 17 separate operations. Italy continues to receive waves of African immigrants due to its geograph...

"Radiation hotspot in Kashiwa 2012" by Abasaa - Own work. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons Tokyo, May 2 (EFE).- A small quantity of radioactive water has leaked from a storage tank at Japan's tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Tokyo daily Asahi Shimbun reported Saturday. A worker at the facility, located in northeastern Japan, found a wet patch measuri...

Flickr Commons By David Blanco Bonilla Lima, May 1 (EFE).- Surfers have rebelled against the Municipality of Lima after it decided to lay a new road and place rocks on one of the most popular beaches for that sport near the Peruvian capital. The clash has been full of mutual accusations and even calls for intervention on the part of the navy, which says it has not authorized any construc...

"Calbuco 22-4-15" by Aeveraal - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons Santiago, Apr 30 (EFE).- Chile's Calbuco volcano on Thursday began erupting for the third time after two eruptions last week, the National Geology and Mining Service reported. The cloud of ash emanating from the volcano, located in the southern Los Lagos region, initially rose to three kilometers (1....

Washington, Apr 29 (EFE).- President Barack Obama called on police departments nationwide, instead of "closing ranks" around officers who act inappropriately, to bring them to account, in a radio interview broadcast on Wednesday. If police departments want to create a safer environment for their officers, they must "build more trust (with their communities). It's in their interest to root out p...

Nigerian soldiers during a mission briefing. Wikimedia Commons Lagos, Apr 28 (EFE).- The schoolgirls from Chibok are not among the 200 minors freed on Tuesday in the forests of Sambisa, considered to be the bastion of the jihadist Boko Haram group, Nigerian army spokesman Col. Sani Usman reported. The Nigerian armed forces came to that conclusion after completing the first phase in identify...

Source: Tri-Hard (TRAVPR.COM) USA - April 28th, 2015 - Unlimited Vacation Club (UVC) by AMResorts continues its rapid expansion with the recent news that it will open eight new properties in Mexico, Latin America and the Caribbean over the next three years. Upon completion, these latest additions will bring the total of UVC hotels to 45 with a combined 17,087 rooms in 23 destinations across Me...

Jurassic footprints. Source: Wikimedia Commons Madrid, Apr 28 (EFE).- The newly discovered Chilesaurus diegosuarezi, a 145-million-year-old dinosaur and the first from the Jurassic period discovered in Chile, is "one of the strangest found so far" and amounts to an "evolutionary puzzle," one of the researchers who found the dinosaur's fossil told Efe. The discovery is described in the lates...

The global community of English-speaking individuals who settle in countries other than their native lands is currently embroiled in a heated discussion over semantics. The discourse of discontent focuses on the English-language terms “expatriate” and “immigrant,” which can be used as nouns or adjectives to describe those who move to other nations on a long-term or permanent basis. English-lang...

Mountaineers perished during an avalanche in Mount Everest. Source: Wikimedia Commons With an official communication issued yesterday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Costa Rica sent heartfelt condolences and a message of solidarity to the people of the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, who recently suffered a major loss of life and property after a powerful earthquake. ...

"Calbuco 22-4-15" by Aeveraal - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons Santiago, Apr 24 (EFE).- A total of 6,400 people have been forced to leave their homes because of the activity of Chile's Calbuco volcano, which erupted two days ago for the first time in 42 years. Authorities ordered the immediate evacuation Friday afternoon of 2,000 people from three towns in the L...

Jairo Mora loved to teach children about nature. Wikimedia Commons April 23, 2015 – FRIDAY HARBOR, Wash. – Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (Sea Shepherd) announces sea turtle defense campaign Operation Jairo, to take place this summer in three regions critical to nesting sea turtles and their hatchlings – southeastern Florida, Honduras and Costa Rica. Last season, Sea Shepherd was involved i...

Longline tuna haul. Source: Greenpeace. Washington, Apr 23 (EFE).- Oceans are worth at least $24 trillion, but their economic value is threatened by pollution, climate change and overexploitation, according to a report published by the World Wide Fund for Nature, or WWF. Working with The Boston Consulting Group and the University of Queensland's Global Change Institute, WWF appraised the oc...

EFE file Madrid, Apr 23 (EFE).- Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo said here Thursday that Spain has no intention of breaking off diplomatic relations with Venezuela, adding that he hopes for "democratic stability and economic prosperity" in the Latin American country. Garcia-Margallo made these remarks in his speech at the Leaders Forum, organized by EFE and KPMG, where he introd...

By Jorge Mederos Chicago, Apr 21 (EFE).- Private prisons that have contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, spent millions of dollars lobbying Congress to keep a steady population of 34,000 migrants detained at all times, a study by the Austin, Texas-based Grassroots Leadership group found. Grassroots Leadership researched detention conditions across the country and c...

Dominican Republic Santo Domingo, Apr 20 (EFE).- Seven people died Monday in the Bavaro tourist area in the eastern Dominican Republic when the small plane in which they were flying crashed onto a golf course. Sources at the Dominican Civil Aviation Institute, or IDAC, told Efe on Monday that aboard the plane were four Spanish tourists, two Britons and the Dominican who was piloting the pla...

Source: Wikimedia Commons Berlin, Apr 19 (EFE).- The Skansen Aquarium in Stockholm, Sweden, sent 10 Cuban crocodile hatchlings, descendants of a pair of the animals donated by Fidel Castro to a Soviet cosmonaut in the 1970s, to the Caribbean island this weekend, aquarium director Jonas Wahlstrom said. Cuban crocodiles have been sent to several countries and Cuba expressed an interest in rec...

A massive Corinthians club flag,. Wikimedia Commons Sao Paulo, Apr 19 (EFE).- Armed men gunned down eight members of a radical fan group for Corinthians, one of Brazil's most popular soccer teams, although police on Sunday ruled out linking the massacre to a fight among rival teams' supporters. The killings occurred after 11 p.m. on Saturday in front of the Pavilhão Nove group's headquarter...

THE HAGUE (ICJ Press Release) -- During the public hearings due to open on Tuesday 14 April 2015 at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, experts have been called by the Parties in the joined cases concerning Certain Activities carried out by Nicaragua in the Border Area (Costa Rica v. Nicaragua) and the Construction of a Road in Costa Rica a...

Rome, Apr 19 (EFE).- A total of 28 of the nearly 700 migrants aboard a boat that capsized in the Mediterranean have been rescued and 24 bodies recovered, the Italian coast guard said Sunday. Navy and coast guard ships continue searching for other survivors from the vessel that sailed from Libya and went down near Sicily. The boat carrying the migrants capsized at night, U.N. High Commissione...

Source: Wikimedia Commons WASHINGTON (DOJ) —Brian Karl Brimager, 37, prior boyfriend of murdered Los Angeles woman Yvonne Baldelli, was indicted by a federal grand jury in San Diego, California, today on first degree murder charges. Brimager was arraigned in court on the superseding indictment and pleaded not guilty. Brimager has been in U.S. custody since June 2013 on charges of obstructio...