Drug traffickers in eastern Costa Rica are reportedly keeping schoolteachers out of an indigenous town in an attempt to pressure locals into cultivating marijuana, pointing to criminal gangs’ increasing influence in the country. In a recent trip to the eastern Costa Rican province of Limon by Education Minister Leonardo Garnier to mark the opening of several public schools, La Nacion report...

The New York Yankees have signed two Nicaraguan pitching prospects, Corby McCoy and Luis Garcia, reports Ben Badler of Baseball America. McCoy, 16, signed for $150,000 and is one of Nicaragua's best pitchers. At 6'3", 170 pounds, the young left-hander has an athletic, projectable body. His velocity has ranged from 85-88 mph in the past, but Badler reports McCoy's fastball has touched as hig...

Panama has always welcomed foreigners from all points and now they’re making it even easier with its new “Immediate Permanent Resident” visa. The visa was passed into law in May 2012 and applies to residents of 22 countries that Panama deems to have maintained friendly diplomatic and economic ties with the country. Some of these countries include the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom and Austra...

While Guatemala saw a significant drop in homicides in the first seven months of 2012 compared to the previous year, the country continues to face a serious problem of violence and insecurity. Guatemala’s national forensic institute, INACIF, registered 3,410 homicides between January and July of this year. This statistic is down 7.7 percent from the same period in 2011, when there were 3,69...

This incredible footage of mating marble rays was captured by our Cruise Director Federico Pochet during the MV Sea Hunter Trip to Cocos Island from July 26 - August 4th 2012. After getting their shark fix at legendary Alcyone, Fed led the group to a safety stop and witnessed marble rays gracefully performing their mating ritual. The cameras were rolling, and as you can see, it is noth...

The UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, James Anaya, will visit El Salvador from 13 to 17 August 2012. “During my mission, I will analyze the situation of indigenous peoples, who are among the most vulnerable and marginalized groups worldwide,” said Mr. Anaya. This will be the first visit to El Salvador by an independent expert appointed by the UN Human Rights Council...

Panama City, Republic of Panama — The Panama Jazz Festival, one of Central America’s most successful jazz programs, launched the celebration of its 10th anniversary with the announcement of a stellar line-up of jazz greats from around the world. At a press conference held at Hotel El Panama Hotel, the host hotel for the 2013 event, Danilo Perez, founder and artistic director, revealed the na...

In retrospect, perhaps Fredrik Gertten should have known he was in for a slippery ride when he took on the world's biggest fruit and vegetable company. But then again there's really no way the Swedish journalist and filmmaker could have anticipated just how far Dole Foods would go in its bid to prevent his 2009 documentary Bananas from reaching the big screen. ''Maybe I was naive, but then ...

Besides the great right hand breaks, Matapalo is also a key spot for Humpback Whale watching. The 5th largest of the whale species, they can grow as long as 52 feet and weigh up to 50 tons. They may be gray, black or mottled and most likely have white on its flippers and underside. These great mammals of the sea arrive here twice a year from the Northern Hemisphere in January and February and...

Canadian Simon Whitfield dreams of London Olympic gold literally came crashing down this week. The defending silver medalist in the men’s triathlon, he said his bike hit a “speed bump” early in the cycling stage in Hyde Park. The damage both to the bike and the athlete necessitated his pulling out of the race. During the crash, his bike made contact with that of Leonardo Chacon of Costa ...

There is no such thing as a free lunch. What is being borrowed today so that the state can continue carrying on with its criminal rate of consumption, will have to be paid for tomorrow, of course, with interest. The analyst Juan Carlos Hidalgo, on his blog Por la Libre in Elfinancierocr.com, rightly describes the issuance of Eurobonds that the Costa Rican Congress has just approved, as wh...

Mobile transaction platform tPago is expanding across Latin America to cater for the unbanked, its parent company GCS International has announced. As you may know, it has been operating in the Dominican Republic since 2010, and will now be available to users in Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador and Puerto Rico. Mobile payments are an attractive and fast-growing segment; according to Pyramid ...

Honduras' Congress is set to approve a bill to establish a new elite military police unit to fight organized crime, known as the "Tigers," according to a legislator. Representative Augusto Cruz Asencio said Congress would approve the legislation in a matter of days, and that there was consensus among lawmakers that the new unit was necessary to improve security, reported La Tribuna. Arme...

During the first half of 2012, 40,000 tablets were sold, 52% more than in the same period in 2011. This record growth contrasts with the increase of only 5% in sales of computers, laptops and netbooks. The president of the Union of IT Businesses, Barreondo Manuel said that maintaining this growth rate, they will end the year with a total of 80,000 tablets sold. "In the local market ...

The technology installed in the towers is from the 21st Century. The bureaucracy that is authorizing them is from the 19th century. The progress of communications is getting slower in Costa Rica, with cell phone companies unable to meet the deadlines for achieving the necessary territorial coverage, because municipalities are taking up to 5.5 months to give permission for each tower. I...

The Costa Rica White Hawk Project's mission is to purchase forested lands to protect all of the wildlife in the Carate River Valley, creating a crucial wildlife corridor all along the Osa Peninsula where animals can roam freely and be protected. Mission The goal of this project is to purchase forested lands for protection of all of the wildlife in the Carate River Valley. It will be part...

France, Italy, Costa Rica and Argentina are the main providers of fruit imported by Spain, with 43% of the total imported in 2011, according to data from the Department of Customs and Special Taxes from the AEAT (Tax Agency), from the Ministry of Economy, and processed by FEPEX (Spanish Federation of Associations of Producers and Exporters of Fruits, Vegetables, Flowers and Live plants). Sp...

Express Inc., a leading U.S. men’s and women’s specialty retail apparel chain operating over 600 stores, today announced that one of its subsidiaries has entered into a franchise agreement with Fastco Commercial S.A., a retail franchise operator led by a management team with over 30 years of experience operating retail franchises in Central and South America. The agreement provides an opportu...

“Chepe Luna,” the trafficker who has done the most to develop El Salvador’s drug trade, was freed just one day after being arrested in Honduras, in the latest of his series of narrow escapes from the law. Jose Natividad Luna Pereira, known as “Chepe Luna,” was arrested by Honduran police at 11:30 a.m. on August 7 in the offices of his company Transportes Ulua, in Tegucigalpa, as La Prensa r...

Three Belizean businessmen have been blacklisted by the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). On Tuesday, August 7th, the State Department sent out a release under the heading “Treasury Targets Belize-Based Operatives of Chapo Guzman Sanctions Directed Against the John Zabaneh Drug Trafficking Organization Linked to the Sinaloa Cartel”. The release goes on t...

Beginning negotiations for the opening of a Chinese free trade zone in Costa Rica is one of the main goals that will accompany President Laura Chinchilla on her commercial mission during her visit to Asia. The tour will start next week to commemorate the fifth anniversary of establishment of diplomatic relations with the second largest economy in the world. The Minister of Foreign Trade (CO...

Costa Rica often seems like it was made specifically for adventure travelers. Where else can you spend the morning scuba diving in the ocean, the afternoon swinging from tree to tree in the rainforest, and the evening at some incredible clubs, restaurants or hotels? And, just in case that isn’t quite enough to satisfy your craving for adventure, you can always get up the next day and hike ...

A half century after Elvis Presley had a hit with "Return to Sender," a Dartmouth College professor and three other economists have used the same idea to rate the efficiency of the world's governments. Rafael LaPorta and three economists at other universities mailed letters to nonexistent businesses in 159 countries - two letters to each country's five biggest cities - and waited a year to ...

El Rosario, a municipality with a population of 6,500 that’s 32 miles south of the capital of Managua, has a waste system that has become a national model. The Mayor’s Office of El Rosario teamed with the Center for Social Studies and Promotion (CEPS) in 1998 to form a plan to create an ecological landfill to aid an area that lacks a trash collection system. The goal was to turn trash in...

Archaeologists say they have found traces of 2,500-year-old chocolate on a plate in the Yucatan peninsula, the first time they have found ancient chocolate residue on a plate rather than a cup, suggesting it may have been used as a condiment or sauce with solid food. Experts have long thought cacao beans and pods were mainly used in pre-Hispanic cultures as a beverage, made either by crushi...

Alejandro Duron's life changed in minutes when the envelope appeared under his front door. The note inside demanded that the 34-year-old systems analyst pay $2,500 for the privilege of remaining in the house in a high-end neighbourhood. It detailed Duron's daily routine so he would know the threat was serious. "If you don't pay, we will kill you," the message warned. He and his girlfrien...

Colombia is known for many things. On the plus side there is its vibrant lifestyle, its diverse and beautiful landscape with heart stopping vistas, its rich culture and history and, of course, its fabulous coffee. On the debit side there is its unfortunate place at the top of the world league of cocaine producers and a reputation for violence born out of South America's longest running armed co...

Guatemala does not have enough guns to arm the latest crop of police graduates, pointing to the financial factors holding back the reform and expansion of the force. Interior Minister Mauricio Lopez Bonilla said that the authorities were trying to find guns to equip 1,503 new police agents who graduated on August 1. He suggested that they could share guns with off-duty police, and said that...

Many gay people are unencumbered by deep and binding family ties; 90 percent of us have no children. As we age and our parents have passed on we can become more mobile than at any other time in our lives. Not having to be home for Christmas makes it easy to consider heading south. Retiring to a typical retirement area can be a frightening prospect. Even more so for perhaps three million gay...

Google announced on the Official Lat Long Blog today that it is expanding the Google Maps live traffic feature first launched in 2008 to cover 130 smaller U.S. cities and the capitals of Panama, Costa Rica, and Colombia. On top of travel time estimates and real-time traffic conditions for the new cities, Google also improved its traffic coverage in a list of other locations including parts of ...

The government of Costa Rica signed an agreement with Panthera, an organization dedicated to protecting cats, to take action on behalf of the Jaguar in Latin America. The Ministry of Environment, Energy and Telecommunications, said the deal with Panthera commits the parties to pursue scientific and conservation initiatives that help to preserve the largest cat in the Americas, which is in d...

One hundred and fifty hours: Divided out, that is about 6.25 days. This is the required number of CAS, or Creative, Action and Service, hours that an International Baccalaureate diploma candidate must volunteer for in Junior and Senior year. This year, to help make this feat less overwhelming, the IB Class of 2013 has adopted a charity: Proyecto Daniel, a charity based in Costa Rica that help...

The Costa Rican courts yesterday ruled in favor of APM Terminals in two lawsuits opposing its takeover of the Moin Container Terminal (TCM). The lawsuits were brought against the company and the Costa Rican government by the Atlantic Port Authority union, representing dockworkers, and the National Banana Workers union, which were intended to block the awarded concession for the new terminal...

Urban growth in the east of the Costa Rican capital is underpinned by investment proposals in the Special Economic Zone of Cartago. The achievements of investment attraction in the province include the opening in November of Paseo Metropolis and the opening of the first phase of Oficentro Terra Campus Corporativo, said Silvia Hidalgo, Director of the Center for University-Industry Links a...

Interpol issued a red notice for international eco-fugitive Paul Watson on Tuesday at the request of Costa Rican authorities, making him a wanted man worldwide. The Toronto-born founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) skipped bail in Germany in late July, where he'd been arrested on a Costa Rican warrant for a violent 2002 confrontation with shark hunters. He'd been arrested...

Guatemalan lawmakers approved Tuesday a decoration for racewalker Erick Barrondo in honor of his winning a silver medal last weekend in the 20-kilometer walk at the 2012 London Olympics. The 116 members present at the session voted unanimously in favor of making Guatemala's first-ever medal winner a Knight of the Order of the Sovereign Congress. Barrondo will also receive $64,000. "If...

A total of 25 high school students from the Honduras Technical Institute in Tegucigalpa were arrested on July 30 when the National Police broke up a protest by about 100 students on the Armed Forces Boulevard in the Villas del Sol neighborhood. The protesters were demanding that the government pay out a promised transportation subsidy. When police agents used tear gas and nightsticks to disper...

In light of the European crisis and slow growth in the U.S., the best protection for Latin American countries is macroeconomic discipline. Although it is believed that regional banks are "solid, liquid and stable," the recommendation for Latin America to avoid or at least mitigate the inevitable effects of the economic crisis in Europe and the slow recovery of the U.S., is to keep a lid o...

R.A.W. tours is excited to announce an updated line-up of 5 project options for volunteers to come participate in for the Fall / Winter sessions of 2012 and the beginning of 2013. R.A.W. Tours’ Operations Director, Kattya Lomel, states “We have received great feedback from both participating students and the communities in San Marcos de Tarrazu whom have been a part of our Fair Trade Coffee Pr...

On Saturday, August 18th, 2012 the Community Action Alliance of Costa Rica will be conducting a job fair with IBM Costa Rica. IBM will be bringing a team of recruiters and managers to accept resumes and conduct pre-screening interviews to identify the most talented professionals and students from the region. The IBM Job Fair will take place at the Universidad de Costa Rica Regional Museum in...