Quijano pledged to continue the management model that had made the operation of the canal successful. He also vowed to redouble efforts to train operating personnel and to face new challenges, such as the current expansion project, which will double the capacity of the 80-km canal, built between 1904 and 1914 by the U.S. Quijano also highlighted the importance of expanding the capacity o...

Investors can begin construction in six months on three privately run cities in Honduras that will have their own police, laws, government and tax systems now that the government has signed a memorandum of agreement approving the project. An international group of investors and government representatives signed the memorandum Tuesday for the project that some say will bring badly needed eco...

Costa Rica is preparing an international tender for a 34 kilometer extension of the "Canal del Sur", in Guanacaste, and 52 kilometers of secondary canals. In approximately two months the administrative processes will be to completed allowing the National Groundwater Irrigation and Drainage Services (Senara in Spanish) to publish the tender for the redevelopment of the canal south of Arenal...

The modernization of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Canada and Costa Rica is in its final stages after progress was made in a fourth round of negotiations last week. This was announced yesterday by the Ministry of Foreign Trade (COMEX). Details related to market access are still pending. Costa Rica has emphasized its interest of including products in the trade-free zones to elim...

Fair Trade USA has announced that two groups of independent, small-scale coffee farmers have achieved Fair Trade certification. As part of Fair Trade USA’s Fair Trade for All initiative, these new pilot programs will provide 800 small farmers in Costa Rica and Colombia access to the opportunities and benefits of Fair Trade, including: fair prices, safe working conditions, direct relationshi...

Crystal Weekes of Port Richmond added the Costa Rica Taekwondo Open Championship to her growing martial arts resume. Weekes, 14, captured the female junior heavyweight division to become a two-time gold medalist at the tournament. She is the youngest member of the USA Junior World Team and now prepares for an international competition Oct. 14-17 in Bolivia. The biggest prize? The P...

After the failure of the first tender, the government of Costa Rica published in October 2012 a tender for the construction of new hangars for COOPESA. With capacity for up to six large scale aircraft, the new hangars will be built on the south side of Juan Santamaria Airport, costing approximately $12 million. The total investment required for the transfer of the COOPESA hangars from th...

Managua, Nicaragua – How much does a 3 bed house cost in Central America? It may seem like a simple question, but in countries like Belize, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama, where official property statistics are not available, it’s hard to find reliable market comps. This leaves buyers entering the market relying only on thin slices of information for their investment decisions - a glossy bro...

A Colombian woman known as "the queen of cocaine" for her prominence in the illegal drug trade in the 1970s and the star of Cocaine Cowboys was shot to death by gunmen, authorities said. Gunmen on a motorcycle shot Griselda Blanco, 69, twice in the head Monday as she was leaving a butcher shop in the northwestern city of Medellin, they said. Officials said Blanco had kept a low profile s...

The tiny Central American country of Belize is making plans to offer more than Maya Ruins, sun and sand to visitors as it prepares to launch a medical tourism infrastructure a release today from the Belize Trade and Investment Development Service says. In early August 2012, a workshop on medical tourism was coordinated, with the objective to create awareness of the new industry and to deter...

This was demonstrated in the latest survey by Red 506, made by the Unimer Company, for the newspaper El Financiero, which was recently released. 127,000 Costa Rican's have joined Facebook in the last year and use it as their main website, followed by Twitter with 104,000 people. Mauricio Fallas, Unimer´s creative director and expert in the social networks, assured that the social netw...

The fallout from a 2010 incident over a historical territory in dispute between Nicaragua and Costa Rica continues to be a compass of relations between the administrations of Costa Rican president Laura Chinchilla and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega. The dispute is heavy on nationalistic sentiment but littered with corruption and administrational malfeasance. The latest development comes as Chinchil...

Evictions from homes, hotels and restaurants sited in protected or state-owned areas have been suspended for two years. In March this year, the Controller General's Office urged municipal authorities across the country to enforce the 1977 law prohibiting construction in the Maritime - Terrestrial Zone. The eviction and demolition activities started by the authorities, caused a stir espec...

The government of Guatemala has promised to support power projects promoted by cooperatives in rural areas. Over 10 projects for small hydroelectric facilities are being encouraged by the Confederation of Guatemalan Cooperatives Federation, with the support of the U.S. Federation of Cooperatives for Electricity Generation. There are now three such projects which are operating in Huehuete...

Five headless bodies, including those of four young women, were found over the weekend in the Caribbean port city of La Ceiba, a Honduran National Police spokesman said. The bodies were found in trash bags Saturday in a street in Rio Viejo, a community located near the Cangrejal River in La Ceiba, National Police spokesman Jose Lainez said. The unidentified victims, who range in age from...

The Government of China and the Government of Costa Rica continue to expand relations. The aeronautical authorities of China and Costa Rica signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to facilitate the establishment of air connections that promote tourism and trade between both countries. This MoU was written and signed during the visit of President Laura Chinchilla, and the Minister of Tour...

Young men have hurled fireballs at one another in the streets of El Salvador as part of a hundred-year old tradition. Local residents in the town of Nejapa gather every year on August 31 and throw fiery, gasoline-soaked rags in honour of a huge volcanic eruption in 1658, Reuters reports. 'We commemorate the eruption of San Salvador volcano in 1658 which wiped out the population of Nejapa...

Mr. Erwin Sperisen, a dual Swiss-Guatemalan national living in Geneva, was arrested on Friday, August 31, by the Genevan prosecuting authority. A criminal complaint had been lodged before Swiss authorities over four years ago for atrocities committed between 2004 and 2007, while Mr. Sperisen was the head of the National Civil Police of Guatemala (PNC). The coalition of NGOs working on the case...

Nicaraguan police announced Saturday the dishonorable discharge of three officers accused of raping a mentally retarded 12-year-old girl. Police spokesman Fernando Borge told reporters that the dismissed cops had been guarding the premises of the general secretariat of the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front, or FSLN, which the nation's President Daniel Ortega occupies as the seat o...

Russia is ready to welcome young military men from Nicaragua for a course of study and training, chief deputy of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Alexander Postnikov said during his visit to Managua. He also said that Russia and Nicaragua agreed to boost military-technical cooperation. In Managua Mr. Postnikov led the Russian delegation at the celebrations dedicated to the 3...

Young Cuban artists Jeosviel Abstengo Chaviano, Liesther Amador González, and Fernando Caluff, will represent Cuba on the first edition of Hispanoamericanos, Traveling Souls exhibition, scheduled to be held at the Albernathy Arts Center, in the US city of Georgia. The exhibition will open on October 5 and will be open to the public until the 31st. The event will be attended by some one hund...

The Whale Festival will be held on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, September 7/8/9 & subsequently on the 14/15/16. The whale & dolphin boat tours will take place every hour out of the main entrance; sector Punta Uvita of the Ballena Marine National Park. The tour lasts about an hour and a half and costs 16,000 colones (approx. $32 USD) per adult and 10,000 colones (approx.. $20 USD) for ...

On a day when U.S. women's national team head coach Pia Sundhage announced that she was stepping down, the team went out and hammered Costa Rica, 8-0, in a friendly. Sundhage said she will be returning to her native Sweden after a five-year spell in charge of the American side, and she watched on Saturday as her team easily dispatched Costa Rica. Abby Wambach, a Rochester native, returne...

The councilors of Carrillo, Guanacaste approved by a unanimous vote the regulation plan in Playa Matapalo in favor of the RIU hotel, without even reading the document that they presented with lack of information. This was denounced by Elpais.cr, Francisco Davila, Prosecutor of Guanacaste´s environmental organization, who attended last weeks session and asked for a digital copy of the docume...

Long before hosting the ASP 3-star Copa Quiksilver El Salvador, Punta Roca was considered Central America's premier righthand pointbreak. Roping off the town of La Libertad some 25 miles south of the capital city of San Salvador, Punta Roca (named such as to distinguish it from every other "La Punta" in the world) was often referred to as the "Rincon of Latin America," even in its infancy. ...

Date: Sunday September 30 Place: Rancho Arizona Shooting Range Time: 8:00 am 5 stages 75 rounds For more information email [email protected] About Us ACSI is the IDPA Club in Costa Rica. The International Defensive Pistol Association (IDPA) is the governing body of a shooting sport that simulates self-defense scenarios and real life encounters. It was founded in 1996 as...

President of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, said that the resumption of dialogue between the government and guerrillas in Colombia is important for the purpose of converting Latin America and the Caribbean into a peaceful zone. In act for the anniversary 33 of the National Army, the statesman welcomed the decision of his Colombian counterpart, Samuel Santos, of resuming talks aimed at resolving ...

Guatemala has announced that ex-President Alfonso Portillo will be extradited to the US, removing any possibility he can use the country's notorious injunction, the "amparo," to halt future proceedings. Despite praise for the ruling, the country still has much to do to address its weak judicial system. Guatemala's Constitutional Court ruled unanimously on August 29, that former President Po...

Nicaragua and the European Union (EU) signed an agreement on Tuesday for the EU to provide aid to bolster Nicaragua's education. Under the agreement, the EU will grant 32 million euros (about 40 million U.S. dollars) to fund a countrywide educational program aimed at improving infrastructure, enrolment and quality of teaching staff. The fund will be provided in the next five years, Nicar...

Chepo de la Torre has named his 23-man roster for Mexico's World Cup qualifiers versus Costa Rica. Several of Mexico's biggest names are in the team, with Javier 'Chicharito' Hernandez, Andres Guardado, Pablo Barrera and Jesus Zavala all in the team. The most notable omission is Giovani dos Santos, who injured himself in his first training session with Tottenham Hotspur after the Olympics. ...

This summer, Stanford medical students contributed to projects in communities around the globe as part of the Medical Scholars Research Program. In this special back-to-school Q&A series, five students share their experiences developing preventive medicine strategies, gaining hands-on clinical experience and conducting field research. The Osa and Golfito Initiative (INOGO) is an ongoing eff...

There is a brewing controversy in the schools of Costa Rica over some of the proposed changes to the school curriculum, specifically dealing with sexual education. In a recent statement the Bishops of Costa Rica denounced and heavily criticized a new sexual education curriculum that was recently approved by the Costa Rican government. They claimed that the new school curriculum promotes a "...

An interview with former drug boss "Freeway" Ricky Ross. Former cocaine trafficker and C.I.A./Contra/crack-conspiracy fall guy Rick Ross only refers to the rapper "Rick Ross" by his real name, William Roberts. You can understand why. It must be pretty strange to be sitting in a jail cell back in 2006, and hear of a new rapper out there with your name, claiming to know all about the cocaine ...

Mexican and Belize officials have begun a two day meeting to discuss ways to combat transnational organized crime, an increasing concern for Belize, a country that has seen a marked increase in foreign gang activity over recent years. On August 30, officials from Mexico and Belize met in the Commercial Free Zone between the borders of both countries to begin the seventh Mexico-Belize Binati...

El Salvador’s elite anti-terrorism unit will join police in patrolling the bus routes most vulnerable to extortion by criminal gangs, but the security plan is expensive, and the transporation system will remain vulnerable as long as transactions remain cash-based. Police director General Francisco Salinas said that the anti-terrorism unit, known as CEAT, will be working with other elite pol...

An officer in a special forces team of Honduras' National Police has apologized to a journalist and paid for breaking her camera during a 2011 protest. It's an unusual gesture in a country where journalists face some of the worst violence in the world. Reporter Sandra Sanchez says she hopes the apology from officer Jhonny Alexander Carrasco will set a precedent. The leader for Honduras' ...

President Laura Chinchilla announced a public tender of a contract for finishing the works on the stretch of road alongside the San Juan River, on the border with Nicaragua. The president said at a press conference that the government is looking for sources of funding in order to complete the work. The administration's plan is to have the process completed by the end of the year, so wo...

A directive from the Taxation authority transforms the sales tax paid for packaging and packing material into an additional cost for industries. A statement from the Chamber of Industries of Costa Rica (CICR) reads: Industrial products seriously affected with new guideline by tax authority. -Rising prices of domestic products compared to imported ones is a blow to competitiveness, p...

Two legal projects have been approved on fiscal transparency and fiscal management, including streamlined procedures for lifting bank secrecy. A statement from the Ministry of Finance of Costa Rica reads: TREASURY CELEBRATES APPROVAL OF FISCAL TRANSPARENCY AND STRENGTHENING OF TAX MANAGEMENT The Treasury welcomed the adoption on the second reading of Bill number 17677 for Compliance...

Fresh off scoring his 100th regular season goal in Major League Soccer, Dwayne De Rosario will have the opportunity to hit another milestone with his national team as he leads an experienced squad into a pair of crucial World Cup qualifiers against Panama early next month. De Rosario was named to Canada's 21-man roster, which was announced on Thursday. With his next goal, the 34-year-old wi...