A sharp increase in real estate acquisition and development by foreign investors in Costa Rica contributed $377 million to the national economy in the first quarter of 2013 (Q1). In real estate offices around the Central Valley, purchasing activity during the first three months of the year climbed by 13 percent when compared to the previous year. According to a report by Oscar Rodriguez of La Nac...

Source: Wikimedia Commons Environmentalist Jairo Mora Sandoval was the victim of a violent and senseless murder, but his life was not in vain. Case in point: Around 82 leatherback sea turtle hatchlings were released by the volunteers of the Widecast environmental protection non-profit organization this past weekend in Moin, province of Limon. These hatchlings emerged from the eggshells and nests...

Source: Flickr Creative Commons Yes, espionage and monitoring take place in Costa Rica, but not to the Orwellian extent carried out by the United States. Unpleasant snooping activities in Costa Rica have been revealed in the past; in fact, there is an ongoing legislative effort to either shut down or minimize the National Directorate of Intelligence and Security (DIS), an agency tasked with prot...

A makeshift Costa Rica/United States flag arrangement flies in Portland. Source: Twitter The national football (or soccer, if you must go there) teams of Costa Rica and the United States delivered goal-fests against their respective Cuban and Belizean foes last night at the Jeld-Wen Field in Portland, Oregon. Fans who purchased tickets for both games were in football heaven: Costa Rica opened t...

At the recent Expoinnova 2013 fair of invention and ingenuity organized by the University of Costa Rica, one exhibitor's clever product stood out: Cookies made with the crushed and finely pulverized larvae of beetles. Equally ingenious is the name of these cookies: Buzzcrunch. The inventors of these elaterid-based delicacy admitted that their product is clearly destined for marketing to curious to...

Bitcoin, a controversial digital currency that is being widely adopted in many parts of the world, is not likely to make too much of a splash in Costa Rica. This is a sad fact of reality since the peer-to-peer nature of Bitcoin will probably appeal to many Ticos who do not trust in their Central Bank's ability to balance the value of the national currency against inflation and pressure from other ...

The world of international fashion and modeling already includes a few names from Costa Rica such as Juliana Herz, but Leonora Jimenez Monge is the closest we have to a supermodel. The achingly beautiful blonde, who is a native of Santa Ana, has graced catwalks in the major European haute couture (high fashion) capitals. Her classic looks and solemn demeanor give her a timeless beauty that designe...

A rising drug cartel from the state of Michoacan de Ocampo, located on the Southern Pacific coast of Mexico, is having a hard time establishing its operations in Costa Rica. Old-fashioned police work by members of Fuerza Publica, the Organization of Judicial Investigations (OIJ in Spanish) and the Drug Control Police (PCD in Spanish) is thwarting the nefarious work of the Caballeros Templarios (Kn...

A good way to summarize the frantic activity in the days leading up to President Barack Obama's historic visit to Costa Rica back in early May is by the use of onomatopoeia: THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD. Such is the distinct audio signature of a Sikorsky UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter as its massive rotor blades cut through the air, and it is what the skies over San Jose and its surrounding districts sounded l...

The Jaco Rays Club Sport Herediano (CSH) is the reigning champion of First Division football (or soccer for readers who insist) in Costa Rica, but that did not seem to prevent the second division team Jaco Rays from beating them during a visit by the champs to the beach. CSH traveled to the Garabito Stadium on Saturday night, and left with a loss to the Rays by a single goal. The goal by Jaco s...

Tip: it's important to note that in remote parts of Costa Rica your best chance of finding anti-venom for a snake bite is at a veterinarian clinic, even for bites that effect humans. Most CCSS medical clinics in remote locations do not have anti-venom. Fer-de-lance pit vipers, known as terciopelos in Costa Rica, are wreaking havoc in many rural areas across the country. Two children are the lat...

San Jose, Costa Rica – July 7, 2013 – Amatierra, a unique mountain Yoga retreat and wellness center located in the pristine mountains of Costa Rica, and the privileged recipient of the 2013 TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence, is happy to announce their current promotions. These new promotions are ideal for travelers who are looking to get away and immerse themselves in a surrounding of sere...

News reports of a proposed inter-oceanic canal in Nicaragua to be developed with a sizable investment by China have stirred up geopolitical debate not only in Central America but around the world. Costa Rica has every reason to monitor the situation, but the news reports and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega's rhetoric on the matter are also being followed by international news outlets. An edito...

Approximately 800,000 smuggled tobacco cigarettes are smoked in Costa Rica every day, an estimate that represents a 19 percent increase over the previous year. To get an idea of this quantity and its impact, imagine that a shipping container completely filled with packs of smuggled cigarettes enters Costa Rica every two weeks, with the caveat that the government and the people do not enjoy revenu...

Aedes aegypti mosquito, known dengue carrier. In Costa Rica and other countries located in the tropics and subtropics, advisories related to dengue fever are typically issued around this time each year. For this 2013 rainy season, however, Minister of Health Daisy Corrales has added some alarming statistics to go along with her annual advisory: There have been three recent deaths due to de...

File photo According to media reports of documents leaked by former spy agency contractor Edward Snowden, the United States National Security Agency (NSA) is capable of running a virtual wiretap on magicJack and other Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) communications. The NSA has admitted that it collects information about telephone calls originating from ...

Source: Widecast San Jose, Costa Rica - The senseless and thus far unsolved murder of the young environmentalist and biologist Jairo Mora Sandoval while he protected the delicate ecosystem of Playa Moin in Limon, where leatherback sea turtles massively arrive to nest, has prompted dialog between public officials and environmental protection groups to ensure that Jairo's legacy be continued and h...

President Morales, left, speaks with former President Lula of Brazil Naranjo, Costa Rica - President Laura Chinchilla is the latest Latin American leader to extend support to her Bolivian counterpart President Evo Morales on the matter of being forced to land in Austria on suspicions of fugitive Edward Snowden being aboard the presidential aircraft. President Morales and his Bolivian delegation ...

If you are familiar with products released by the Mozilla Foundation, such as the popular Firefox web browser, you might be interested in the latest offerings by smartphone manufacturers Alcatel and ZTE. Earlier this week, the Mozilla Foundation and its strategic partners announced the release of the ZTE Open and Alcatel Touch, two smartphones powered by the new Firefox OS mobile operating system....

The friendly skies over Costa Rica are attracting the attention of airlines and business leaders who see plenty of opportunities to generate handsome profits. The abrupt cancellation of a handful of flight and the summary layoff of more than two hundred employees by the airline Taca back in May left a sour taste in the air travel industry of Costa Rica, but recent news point to a positive recovery...

A nice and lovingly made cup of coffee is a perfect way to lift anyone's spirits, specially when someone else paid for it out of the kindness of their heart. Such is the underlying philosophy of cafe pendiente, a philanthropic practice that essentially consists of treating someone to a cup of coffee without even looking at the beneficiary. Cafe pendiente is a trend that recently started to make i...

A happy man who studies happiness: Prof. Ruut Veenhoven Although Costa Rica’s number one position on the World Database of Happiness has been publicized ad nauseam, skeptics and detractors have questioned the validity of the research. How can the people of a developing country with limited resources and a conservative, social-democratic system government riddled with corruption and bureaucracy...

ARC Valle del Cauca. Source: Colombian Navy Public Affairs On Friday, June 21st, the Vice Ministers of the Presidency and Public Safety along with the Director of Costa Rica's National Coast Guard Service welcomed the Valle del Cauca, a Colombian Navy patrol boat with a crew of about 100. The Valle del Cauca docked in Caldera for more than 1o days and was set to sail today. A few days later, th...

Although at first sight Brazil and Costa Rica seem to be sharply different nations, these two Latin American countries shared some unfortunate similarities during June 2013. In a recent opinion piece in El Pais, an online publication that often gives a voice to the current government's opposition, journalist and academic Juan Manuel Fernandez C. made four important observations about the ongoing p...

From Wikipedia Commons Edward Snowden is the 30-year old former CIA and NSA contractor who went public with damning evidence of sophisticated spying and monitoring by United States government agencies. He has been charged with a series of criminal offenses related to theft of government secrets and leaking of classified information, but his Orwellian revelations have placed him in a Kafkaesque s...

A still from Odyssey 2050 One of the most popular contemporary music bands in the world has agreed to contribute one of their videos to the film Odyssey 2050, an ambitious project being produced right here in Costa Rica. Odyssey 2050 aims to raise awareness among young generations about the effects of climate change. The video in question is Viva La Vida, which is also the title track of Coldpl...

On Friday morning, young Sofia McLean and her mother Ivonne Morales were outside the Teletica Channel 7 studios near La Sabana, looking for a new family member. After looking around and carefully discussing the delicate matter, they settled on Kenay -the offspring puppy of a stray mother that was rescued just a couple of months ago. Kenay was lucky. Dozens of other dogs and seven cats awaited ado...

Wikimedia Commons Recent news from the Phoenix Business Journal revealed that a Costa Rica-based investment firm purchased more than $12 million in cash to acquire an office complex in Arizona's capital. In October, The Costa Rica Star reported on the acquisition of North American Breweries Holdings by Florida Ice and Farm Company, S.A., a transaction valued at $388 million, also in cash. The t...

As evidenced by the recent media coverage of the Summer Olympics in London and films like Magic Mike, directed by acclaimed filmmaker Steven Soderbergh, the male physique is becoming sexually objectified by adoring women -including liberated Ticas. Costa Rica may seem like an unlikely place where women will gather in groups to gawk at, and very often grab a handful of, masculine hunks wearing noth...

The Board of Nutritionists of Costa Rica has threatened Home Economics high school teachers with lawsuits if they dare defy a new pilot program that favors the teaching of personal finance instead of cooking and household chores. According to a news report by Ana Amenabar of Diario Extra, the Association of Secondary School Teachers (APSE in Spanish) has filed an emergency motion for relief before...

Carlos Pascal, president of Limon F.C. -a Caribbean football team that has played in the First Division in Costa Rica- is scheduled to stand trial starting today and through the end of August. Mr. Pascal faces criminal charges of laundering more than $30 million over the last few years, according to a news report published by online newspaper Costa Rica Hoy earlier today. An investigation conduct...

Source: INBio Costa Rica People who live in the rural areas of intermediate elevation in Costa Rica, which happens to be a major portion of the country, are used to hearing a diversity of wild noises in the predawn hours, or after the sun goes down. While many of these animal calls come from the farms and forest areas surrounding residential neighborhoods, some homeowners and tenants are often a...

Source: Lady Gaga Fans in Costa Rica Fans of pop queen Lady Gaga in Costa Rica were left hanging on edge days ago when her tour schedule did not show any Central American stops. Back in June, The Costa Rica Star reported on the superstar singer-songwriter's plans to perform in Costa Rica; at that time, the National Stadium was confirmed as a venue by Juan Carlos Bonilla, a spokesperson for the t...

Costa Rica will celebrate Mother's Day on Wednesday, August 15th, 2012 with a national holiday, on the same day that the Roman Catholic faithful celebrated the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary to Heaven. Mother's Day in Costa Rica has always been one of the country's most important holiday celebrations, and while it has seen a number of transformations from a deeply religious eve...

Source: Casa Presidencial On the first day of her visit to the People's Republic of China, President Laura Chinchilla initiated an agreement that will allow GeSolar, a Chinese utility company work with a counterpart from Costa Rica in the development of a solar power plant. Our President was witness to the signing of the agreement between GeSolar and GreenerSys, and as the documents were execute...

The Teribe fight for this land in Costa Rica. Pablo Sibar, a grassroots leader from the Teribe native tribe of Costa Rica celebrated the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples on August 9th with a protest before the National Assembly. He has been doing so over the last ten years, sometimes at the steps of the Assembly, others just outside the Presidential Office in Zapote. Mr. Sibar...

The pretty white Marango tree flower. Source: INBIO Costa Rica There is a tree that grows in certain areas of Guanacaste and other regions of Costa Rica that -depending on who you choose to believe- could wipe out hunger on a global level, cure most diseases tied to vitamin deficiencies, boost sustainable farming practices, serve as a renewable energy source, and even make people rich in just a ...

Back in the water. Source: Ministry of Public Safety A leatherback turtle that was trapped by poachers in Costa Rica is once again swimming the waters of the Caribbean thanks to the quick action of Fuerza Public officers, who also apprehended four suspects. Tortugero National Park is a sanctuary for the sea turtles that massively arrive in the northern Caribbean coast of Costa Rica for nesting....

The old "cash is king" adage is losing stock in Costa Rica, and banks are cashing in on the new proclivities of Ticos who are charmed by plastic currency, online banking and mobile technologies. According to a comprehensive series of investigative articles on the prominent newspaper La Nacion, Costa Rica is a nation that is ripe for a cashless transformation, much to the delight of payment process...

Reaching out to the community in San Ramon. Source: Fuerza Publica Officials from the Ministry of Public Safety and Fuerza Publica are seeking assistance from law enforcement experts in Brazil and the Embassy of the United States of America to improve community police efforts and to combat corruption among their ranks. Costa Rica has been working towards the improvement and modernization of Fuer...