Costa Rica's Emergency Medical Response Team is the first in the Americas to achieve the EMT recognition by the World Health Organization. Costa Rica's emergency response team (EMT) is now recognized among the world's emergency medical teams that can be deployed quickly when requested by countries affected by disasters or emergencies, said the WHO last week.     Meanwhile...

Editor’s note: The views expressed by guest columnists are not necessarily those of The Costa Rica Star, its advertisers, or its staff.  By Britt Nelson The worldwide uproar over President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the USA out of the United Nations sponsored Paris Climate Accord is mostly due to two reasons – one the loss of trillions of dollars overtime to help other countries c...

The Global Peace Index (GPI) 2017 published by the Institute for Economics and Peace found that the world became 0.28% more peaceful over the past year, even though over the last decade it has become considerably less peaceful. The GPI takes into consideration peace indicators such as the homicide rate, the impact of terrorism, armed services personnel in the population, relationship with neigh...

Costa Rica lead the redaction of the first draft text of a legally binding instrument at the United Nations to ban nuclear weapons, which was presented to the international community this week for review, said the Costa Rican Foreign Ministry. According to Foreign Minister Manuel González, the presentation of the draft proposal is an important milestone resulting from years of efforts to prohib...

Editor’s note: The views expressed by guest columnists are not necessarily those of The Costa Rica Star, its advertisers, or its staff.  No sooner had President Donald Trump spoken about the continuing threat of radical Islam in Saudi Arabia – the heart of Islam -- a lone suicide bomber walked right up to a pop-music concert in Manchester, England and blew himself up along with 22 others, mostly ...

A reported explosion at the Ariana Grande’s concert in the packed Manchester Arena in England happened towards the end of the concert late this Monday night, causes are still unknown. The police said in a statement which was also posted on twitter: “Police responded to reports of an incident at Manchester Arena. Emergency services responding to serious incident at Manchester Arena. Avoid the ar...

A record number of refugee and migrant children are travelling solo to escape violence and poverty, falling prey to abuse and human traffickers in their journey to a new life, the United Nations children's agency said on Wednesday. Be it to escape war in Syria or gang violence in Central America, natural disaster or famine, increasing numbers of children are on the move and are travelling alone...

The U.S. Department of Justice has begun a criminal investigation into Uber Technologies Inc's use of a software tool that helped its drivers evade local transportation regulators, two sources familiar with the situation said. Uber has acknowledged the software, known as "Greyball," helped it identify and circumvent government officials who were trying to clamp down on Uber in areas where its s...

UPDATED: 5/3/17 4:50 pm WhatsApp is now operational again in CostaRica : At around 2 p.m. Costa Rica time the instant messenger system WhatsApp went down affecting millions of users all over the world. When the users first noticed the problem the messages were simply taking a while to go through, but eventually they either wouldn’t go out at all or were left in the screen with just one ch...

Mexico's Lower House of Congress passed a bill on Friday to legalize the use of marijuana and cannabis for medical and scientific needs, a step closer to outright legalization in a country long scarred by warring drug cartels. The bill sailed through the Senate in December and will now be sent to President Enrique Pena Nieto, who is expected to sign it. "The ruling eliminates the prohibition...

How often do we hear people complain about how expensive Costa Rica is? Yes, very very often, and it is true that in the past 10 years or so the country has indeed become more expensive, and some articles or items of course, more than others, for instance clothes, shoes, cars, touristic destinations, jewelry, personal care items, electronic devices, electricity are usually very expensive in Costa ...

The Pulitzer Prize is a recognition given by the University of Columbia in New York, for achievements in newspaper, magazine and online journalism, literature and musical composition. This year the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists received this prize for their work in the Panama Papers in the category Explanatory Reporting. This investigation exposed the hidden structure us...

North Korea on Tuesday condemned the deployment of a nuclear aircraft carrier and its strike group by the United States near the Korean peninsula and warned that the country was prepared to respond to a "pre-emptive strike," authorities reported. "If the US dares opt for a military action, crying out for preemptive attack and removal of the headquarters, the DPRK is ready to react to any mode o...

Editor’s note: The views expressed by guest columnists are not necessarily those of The Costa Rica Star, its advertisers, or its staff.  With the U.S. Congress out for a 2-week Easter break, President Donald Trump has time to kick some ISIS butt – especially in Egypt – before asking Congress for a declared war against radical Islamic terror in whatever countries it is known to exist. It’s...

- The United Nations considers Costa Rica an exemplary sustainable tourism destination. The General Assembly of the United Nations declared 2017 as the “International Year of Sustainable Tourism Development,” and elected the President of Costa Rica, Luis Guillermo Solis, as special ambassador for the activity. Taleb Rifai, secretary general of the World Tourism Organization, said the recogni...

WARNING GRAPHIC IMAGES: The United States launched dozens of cruise missiles on Thursday into Syria, in the first direct military action by the US on President Bashar al-Assad's regime since the civil war began. The strike came in response to a chemical attack that struck a town in northern Syria on Tuesday which killed around 80 people. The US fired dozens of Tomahawk missiles at the Sha...

A U.S. Navy strike group will be moving towards the western Pacific Ocean near the Korean peninsula as a show of force, a U.S. official told Reuters on Saturday, as concerns grow about North Korea's advancing weapons program. Earlier this month North Korea tested a liquid-fueled Scud missile which only traveled a fraction of its range. The strike group, called Carl Vinson, includes an aircra...

The United Nations System and the Government of Costa Rica signed a new Development Assistance Framework for Costa Rica 2018- 2022 (UNDAF) on Friday, March 31. The document defines the cooperation and support pledged by the UN to the country over the next five years in a program named "Nobody Left Behind", said Danilo Mora Díaz, communications officer for the UN System. The activity was atte...

President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced the creation of a commission to seek solutions to the increase in deaths from addiction to heroin and opiates, a situation he called a "total epidemic" and one of the "biggest problems" that the US has at present. "This is a total epidemic and I think it's probably, almost un-talked about compared to the severity that we're witnessing," said Trump a...

President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order that starts to undo the environmental policies put in place by - and the legacy against climate change of - his predecessor, Barack Obama. A key element in Trump's executive order, signed at the Washington headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency is that it eliminates the requirement that federal government agencies factor t...

US President Donald Trump would like to see the United Kingdom remain engaged with Europe following Brexit, the White House said Wednesday after the British government formally notified the European Union that it was starting the process of withdrawal from the bloc. "Whatever the future EU-UK relationship looks like, we want the UK to remain a strong leader in Europe," spokesman Sean Spicer tol...

A 59.6 carat pink diamond could become the most expensive precious stone of its class on Apr. 4 at an auction organized by Sotheby's Hong Kong, the company said Wednesday. The "Pink Star" diamond was presented in Hong Kong on Wednesday, six days before it was to go on sale, and the final bid could exceed $60 million, according to expectations of the auction house. It was the biggest pink dia...

Although Costa Rica has obtained a high level of human development, there is a notable gap experienced by women as far as economic benefits, ​​and women also lag behind in other areas, said the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) this week. For example, on the positive side, women in Costa Rica live on average five years longer than men and average a year more formal education than men, a...

Bloomberg Global Health Index evaluated 163 countries based on variables like life expectancy, health risks related to behavioral/endogenous factors such as high incidences of population with cholesterol, high blood pressure, overweight, children malnutrition etc., or environmental/exogenous factors such a polluted environment, availability of clean water, among others; also mortality by communica...

By Wendy Anders The Costa Rican Public Health System this week became the first institution in the Latin America and Caribbean region, and the seventh in the world to be internationally certified for its emergency and disaster relief services. The World Health Organization granted the emergency medical team of the Costa Rican Social Security Fund (CCSS), which runs the country’s universal pu...

Thirty girls died and 32 others were injured in a fire that broke out on Wednesday in a Guatemalan children's shelter, when female residents attempted to protest over alleged sexual and physical abuse they were suffering. Secretary general of the Public Ministry, Mayra Véliz, said that of the first 19 deaths, 17 of them were caused by severe burns, while the other two were still being investiga...

With a 154.6 percent increase in asylum petitions in 2016, Mexico has gone from being a transit country to a possible destination for refugees, a trend that figures to continue and even accelerate under the policies of the current president of the United States. After receiving just 3,424 asylum requests in 2015, that number jumped to 8,781 in 2016, according to figures from the Mexican Commissio...

A boat used by a Dutch non-government organization to provide abortion pills to women in countries where that practice is illegal has been ordered to leave Guatemala, an army colonel told EFE Friday. The colonel, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the dock where the so-called "abortion ship" is anchored was private and that the owner had only accepted payment for Thursday night, meaning ...

Migrants from developing nations could be tempted to return home if exempted from paying taxes on their savings and given opportunities to build on their foreign experience, an intergovernmental think-tank said in a major report on Friday. The recommendations, which come amid the largest movement of refugees and migrants since World War Two, are among proposals put forward by the Organisation f...

The two founders of Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca were arrested on Saturday, the attorney general's office said, after both were indicted on charges of money-laundering in a case allegedly tied to a wide-ranging corruption scandal in Brazil. Firm founders Jurgen Mossack and Ramon Fonseca were detained because of the risk they might try to flee the country. Attorney General Kenia Porcel...

President Donald Trump tweeted Saturday that the media was wrong to say the cost of his promised wall along the United States' border with Mexico would be steeper than initially projected, promising that his negotiating skills will bring the price down sharply. "I am reading that the great border WALL will cost more than the government originally thought, but I have not gotten involved in the d...

Secretary General António Guterres urged the United States not to scale back its support for the United Nations, saying that any move to defund or disengage from the world body would pave the way for other nations to fill in the void, according to a report from Dow Jones Newswires made available to EFE on Monday. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Guterres said he hoped to send a messa...

President Donald Trump on Saturday slammed a federal judge who halted enforcement of his executive order temporarily barring refugees and people from seven mainly Muslim countries from entering the United States, saying it would be overturned. Trump expressed his displeasure in a series of Twitter posts. "The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from ...

The president of the United States on Saturday signed an executive order giving the Defense Department 30 days to present a strategy for defeating the Islamic State terrorist group. Donald Trump also signed another order to reorganize the White House National Security Council, a forum the US president uses to address issues of national security and foreign policy with advisers and cabinet members...

President Donald Trump on Friday signed an executive order subjecting immigrants from several mainly Muslim countries to what he calls "extreme vetting" as a way of preventing terrorists from entering the United States. "I am establishing new vetting measures to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the United States of America," Trump said as he signed the measure at the Pentagon after witnes...

US President Donald Trump said Friday that he had a "very good" telephone conversation with Mexican counterpart Enrique Peña Nieto amid a diplomatic spat over Washington's plans for a border wall. During a joint press conference with visiting UK Prime Minister Theresa May, Trump confirmed that he and the Mexican president spoke for nearly an hour. "It was a very, very friendly call," Trump s...

TripAdvisor®, the travel planning and booking site, today announced the winners of its Travelers' Choice® for Hotels awards. Travelers' Choice award winners were determined based on the millions of reviews and opinions collected in a single year from TripAdvisor travelers worldwide. In the 15th year of the awards, TripAdvisor has highlighted the world's top 7,612 properties in 109 countries and ei...

By Wendy Anders Over two-thirds of the 176 countries and territories in this year’s Corruption Perceptions Index fall below the midpoint of a scale spanning 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean), said Transparency International (TI) upon the release of the non-profit’s 2016 report. No country reached above 90. The global average score is a paltry 43, indicating endemic corruption in a co...

Passport Index presented its Global Passport Power Rank 2017 which basically ranks passports of the world according to their total visa-free score. The study included 199 countries. The country with the best passport in the world is Germany, holders of a German passport can visit 158 countries without the need of a Visa or getting the Visa upon arrival. Sweden and Singapore tied in second ...

The songstress Madonna made a surprise appearance in the massive Women's March in Washington that included many artists that refused to attend Donald Trump's inauguration as president of the United States this Friday. Madonna, provocative and combative, said she had "thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House" after Trump won the Nov. 8 election, but instead she chose a "revolution o...