By Wendy Anders In November 2006, Costa Rica and the state of New Mexico in the United States formed a civil-military partnership under a United States Department of Defense program managed by the U.S. National Guard to exchange and develop best practices in disaster response, emergency management, education, drug demand reduction, border security, and counternarcotics. The National Guard St...

By Wendy Anders Each year, the United States determines the major illicit drug producing and major drug-transit countries; the major sources of precursor chemicals used in the production of illicit narcotics; and major money-laundering countries, according to the International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) published today on the U.S. Department of State’s website. Costa Rica was ...

Paris, Sept. 13 - One person was killed and four were seriously injured in an accident near a French port involving a lifeboat on the world's largest cruise liner, Royal Caribbean International, a Marseille Fire Department spokesperson told EFE today. The five victims, who were crew members of the MS Harmony of the Seas, were presumably taking part in a security drill when the lifeboat they wer...

Beijing, Sept. 12 - The U.S.-led war against terror has "led to more terrorism," and must be corrected, warned China's state-run news agency Xinhua yesterday on the 15th anniversary of the downing of the World Trade Center towers in New York City. An opinion piece by the news agency says military intervention in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and other places has led to European allies (of the U.S.) "to b...

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 15th sad anniversary of the World Trade Center tragedy has come and gone, while Hillary Clinton is making excuses for her ‘deplorable’ comments about Trump supporters and Trump continues his rise in national polls. All this just as th...

By Wendy Anders EFE reported today on a CNN report that John Hinckley, the man who tried to assassinate U.S. President Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981 - wounding the president and three other people in the process - was released from a Washington, D.C., psychiatric hospital on Saturday. Hinckley was released from St. Elizabeth's Hospital, CNN said, Attorney Barry Levine, who had earlier c...

Part II in a series on 2018 Winter Olympic hopeful, Andre Moreno Hamm. By Wendy Anders It’s not the way most colllege students start their year in the U.S., but bi-national Andre Moreno Hamm, Costa Rica’s Winter Olympic hopeful slopestyle skier, isn’t your usual student. And right now, his studies at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah are on hold while he's in South America for a sk...

Los Angeles, Sept. 8.- Veteran Hollywood actors Robert De Niro and Al Pacino revealed secrets of filming Heat, the 1995 classic Michael Mann film, on Wednesday night, during a tribute organized by the Hollywood Academy and moderated by British filmmaker Christopher Nolan, who called the film a 'masterpiece' and an 'American classic'. The greatest revelation of the evening came from Pacino, who ...

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 Wednesday night’s ‘Commander-In-Chief’ Forum in New York between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump did little to change minds about which candidate would best serve as the next president of the United States. Neither Clint...

MIAMI, Sept. 7  -- At least two people have died due to Tropical Storm Newton, which is spreading heavy rains into Arizona and New Mexico on Wednesday after making landfall as a hurricane in Mexico's mainland. A shrimp boat capsized in the Gulf of California amid rough seas. At least two people died and three others were missing. BBC News reported that officials said the five people ignored war...

Pixabay Commons The U.S. Food and Drug Administration Friday, September 2, 2016, issued a final rule establishing that over-the-counter (OTC) consumer antiseptic wash products containing certain active ingredients can no longer be marketed. Companies will no longer be able to market antibacterial washes with these ingredients because manufacturers did not demonstrate that the ingredients are b...

MSU Today, Michigan State University Contact(s): Hui Liu and Andy Henion Having sex frequently – and enjoying it – puts older men at higher risk for heart attacks and other cardiovascular problems. For older women, however, good sex may actually lower the risk of hypertension. That’s according to the first large-scale study of how sex affects heart health in later life. The federally fund...

By Wendy Anders Anti-crime efforts in Costa Rica’s southern Caribbean region are getting a boost with recent funds pledged by the U.S. government, said the Ministry of Security in a press statement this weekend. During a visit to the National Guard Substation in Sixaola, canton of Salamanca, in Limón province, Minister of Public Security, Gustavo Mata, as well as several police chiefs, met w...

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 Politics or religion -- take your pick – both can boil your oil faster than anything else, bursting gaskets, and causing humanity to come apart at the seams. Both have been the basis for unending wars throughout the world li...

Los Angeles, Sep 3.- The story of the legendary motorcycle brand Harley-Davidson is coming to the small screen in a three-episode mini-series that aims to bring TV viewers the sounds and sights of the iconic American bikes. Produced by Discovery Channel, "Harley and the Davidsons" will premiere tomorrow, Monday September 5, in the United States, and features "Game of Thrones" actors Michiel Hui...

By Wendy Anders This morning at 7:02 am, 8 miles northwest of Pawnee in northern Oklahoma, U.S. near the Arkansas River, a 5.6 magnitude earthquake was registered by the U.S. Geological Survey’s Earthquake Hazards Program. Only one injury was reported by a man who was hit by bricks falling from a chimney inside his home, said The Oklahoman, Oklahoma’s daily. One building lost its brick facad...

02/09/2016--18:36 GMT  Miami, Sep 2.- Residents of northern Florida could breathe a mild sigh of relief after reports that Hermine, which made landfall in that state early Friday as a Category 1 hurricane and is still a tropical storm threatening the rest of the U.S. Southeast, did not leave more victims or damage in its wake. In a brief statement to the media, Florida Gov. Rick Scott said a h...

By Wendy Anders Interpol estimates that human trafficking earns between $5-6 billion a year, said EFE today. The United Nations Fund for Children said in a statement today that an estimated 500,000 children used traffickers to reach Europe over the past year and a half, reported EFE today. Meanwhile, the United States Department of States placed Costa Rica on its Tier 2 Watch List for the...

Santa Clara, Cuba, Aug 31.- The first regularly scheduled commercial flight between the United States and Cuba since 1961 landed today, Wednesday, August 31, at this central city's Abel Santamaria airport at 10:57 a.m. local time (1457 GMT). U.S. President Barack Obama and Cuba's President Raul Castro shake hands during their first meeting on the second day of Obama's visit to Cuba, in Havan...

By Wendy Anders Source: US Embassy Next week, the American Citizens Unit of the United States Embassy in Costa Rica will be in Puerto Viejo, Limón for two main events of interest to U.S. citizens living the area. Several times a year, the Embassy holds such outreach events in different parts of the country to facilitate access to their citizens services. Next Thursday, September 1 fro...

By Wendy Anders This afternoon, the Washington Post reported from Havana, Cuba that an agreement was reached by the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) leftist rebel group to end the continent’s longest conflict after after 52 years of fighting. After nearly four years of negotiations and a ceasefire announced in June, “'We have finished fighting with w...

By Wendy Anders Costa Rica’s President Luis Guillermo Solís and U.S. Navy Adm. Kurt Tidd, commander of U.S. Southern Command, greet each other prior to the opening ceremony for the Central American Security Conference April 7 in San Jose. Photo by Jose Ruiz, SOUTHCOM Today President Obama and Vice President Biden received Costa Rican President Luis Guillermo Solis at the White House. Enc...

By Wendy Anders Source: Wikimedia Commons Wednesday police responded to an alert received on their free anonymous report line, 1176, regarding suspicious activity in a house in San Antonio de Escazú, a mountainous suburb west of San José, according to official sources. The Security Ministry’s anti-drug police reported discovering hydroponic marijuana being cultivated by a 60-year-old U.S...

By Wendy Anders AT&T Inc., the Dallas, Texas-based multinational telecommunications conglomerate, was granted a 10-year data transfer and leased line license last week by Costa Rica's telecom regulator Sutel, reported Costa Rica’s Spanish daily La Nación today. This newest operator in Costa Rica’s telecom market will not offer services to individual consumers, rather will “Focus on offer...

ICR-CRS Archive/FILE (Pictured: Workers at a multinational medical device manufacturing company's facility in Heredia, Costa Rica) By Wendy Anders The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in its most recent edition of an annual series on Foreign Direct Investment in Latin America (June 2016) reported that FDI flows to Central America were up by 6 pe...

By Wendy Anders Source: Flickr PLEASE SEE SALES FOR OCTOBER 4TH HERE Airfarewatchdog.com announced today a one-day 99 percent discount on Spirit Airway round trip flights from several U.S. cities including Atlanta, Boston, and Minneapolis for Tuesday and Wednesday travel between Aug. 23 - Oct. 5, 2016 (Sept. 6 is a blackout date). Book this fare on Spirit.com using promo code 99PCT. ...

Cartoon by Clay Jones Milwaukee police reported on Sunday that the armed man an officer killed after a traffic stop on the weekend was black. The city is trying to recover its calm after a night of disturbances on the weekend that have made it a new focus of tension as a result of police violence. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker on Sunday ordered the National Guard deployed in Milwaukee to p...

By Wendy Anders Mexican soldiers fighting the Drug War. Wikimedia Commons A recent political analysis of the region raises questions about the continuation of a militarized approach to illegal drug trafficking in an era where the decades long US sponsored “war on drugs” has been repeatedly called a failure. From 2004-2014 the United States provided $768 million in police and military aid...

Photo from one of various Twitter accounts attributed to Caro QuinteroMexican drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, a fugitive from justice since 2013, said in an interview with Proceso magazine that he did not kill U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique Camarena in 1985 and denied that he was trying to grab control of the Sinaloa drug cartel. Caro Quintero, considered one of Mexico's mo...

The number of undocumented Cuban migrants arriving in the U.S. has quintupled over the past five years, increasing dramatically after the December 2014 announcement by Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro of a normalization of relations between Washington and Havana. Fewer than 8,000 Cubans reached the U.S. in the 2011 fiscal year, compared with more than 44,000 so far in fiscal 2016, which ...

Cartoon by Clay JonesGavin Eugene Long, the African-American former U.S. Marine accused of killing three police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, left several videos posted online in which he declared he wanted to "fight back" against police for the shootings of blacks. "You gotta fight back - that's the only way a bully knows to quit," Long said in one of his videos, using the pseudonym of ...

Illustrative image. (Flickr Commons)A black former US Marine today killed three police officers and wounded three others in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on his birthday, in an incident similar to the one ten days ago in Dallas, Texas, where another black former soldier killed five policemen. The perpetrator of this new police shooting was identified as Gavin Eugene Long, a former marine who turned 2...

Wikimedia Commons A New Jersey resident who was gored as he ran with the bulls in Spain's famous San Fermin festival in Pamplona on Wednesday has described the experience as the highlight of his life. Matthew Levin, 39, had clambered onto a fence during his first ever running of the bulls when a charging bull slammed into him and his friends completely by accident, driving a horn into his l...

Ex Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev said on Saturday that the rhetoric used by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in its summit in Poland is a sign of war. "All the rhetoric used in Warsaw is almost a declaration of war against Russia," he said to Russian news agency Interfax, adding that "the Cold War is preparing to get hot." The decisions made by NATO, such as the deployment...

Wikimedia Commons President Barack Obama on Wednesday announced that the scheduled reduction of U.S. troops in Afghanistan will be decelerated and, when he leaves office next January, 8,400 U.S. soldiers will still remain in that country, significantly more than the 5,500 he initially had promised. In a White House speech, Obama noted that "The security situation in Afghanistan remains prec...

Source: IKEA Swedish furniture giant Ikea said Wednesday it was recalling 29 million dressers and chests in the MALM line from the U.S. market after a sixth child was crushed to death when one of the pieces fell on him. The recall also covers 6.6 million drawers sold in Canada, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, or CPSC, said. "The recalled chests and dressers are unstable if they a...

Orlando Police Twitter Miami, Jun 17 (EFE).- Omar Seddique Mateen, perpetrator of a mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, that left 50 people dead - including the attacker - and 53 wounded, exchanged text messages with this wife, Noor Zahi Salman, throughout the assault, local media reported Friday Apparently, according to the NBC News channel, Salman's mother called her dau...

Orlando Police Twitter Orlando, Florida, Jun 14 (EFE).- Two days after the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history at a gay nightclub in Orlando this Sunday, families of the dead and wounded struggle to carry on with their lives, while authorities investigate the background of the gunman, Omar Seddique Mateen. At Orlando Regional Medical Center where most of those wounded at the Pulse night...

Wikimedia Commons Austin, Texas, Jun 13 (EFE).- Hilda Ramirez is a Guatemalan Indian who has spent four months in a church that has provided her with sanctuary in this Texas city in order to prevent U.S. authorities from detaining her and complying with the deportation order issued against her and her 10-year-old son. She has no wish to return to Guatemala, from where she fled north in 2014...

EFE file photo United States President Barack Obama addressed his nation on Sunday afternoon in the wake of a horrific shooting being investigated as an of terrorism. As of mid-day on Sunday, reports indicated that at least 50 people were killed by a man identified as Omar Mateen, a U.S. citizen of Afghan ethnicity, who burst into a nightclub that caters to gay revelers before shooting into...