By Wendy Anders Last night at 10:22 p.m., scientists monitoring the Turrialba Volcano's latest eruption were stunned to see a brilliant streak crossing Costa Rica's skies at the same moment. The phenomenon was captured by the National University's Volcanology and Seismology Research Institute (Ovsicori-UNA) cameras and edited by scientist Javier Pacheco, and published on the Repretel TV stat...

By Wendy Anders The International Baccalaureate (IB) high school diploma offers students an internationally recognized, high quality education, that is a global gold standard of education, said a report on the program in Costa Rica’s EKA business magazine. Students at one of 26 public and private IB high schools in Costa Rica can apply to universities all over the world after graduating, and...

By Wendy Anders The Costa Rican Conservation Federation (FECON) and the Broad Front political party are preparing to file a case in the country’s constitutional court against the Costa Rican government, FECON announced in a statement on their website just before Christmas The environmental non-profit group says the government is violating the right to citizen participation in environmental m...

By Wendy Anders Costa Rica’s judicial investigative police (OIJ) detained two Peruvian men who are suspected of  robbing tourists and foreigners. The arrests were made after investigations, surveillance and follow-up into the men’s apparent participation in at least 10 cases of robberies mainly of foreigners. The loss associated with their robberies is estimated at 5 million colones, said...

By Wendy Anders According to Riteve, the company that carries out vehicle inspections in Costa Rica, there are about 125,000 vehicles that still haven’t passed inspection this year. Some of these are vehicles that failed inspection and need to undertake repairs in order to pass; and others simply haven’t bothered to make an appointment, said Riteve. "The main concern is that many of these...

All clients of PriceSmart Costa Rica who have recently purchased frozen raw tilapia should check to see if it is part of the lot #16080816172Y with expiration date: 08/07/2018 and if so, return it to the closest PriceSmart as soon as possible to receive a full reimburse, informed PriceSmart today through its local Facebook page. PriceSmart informed that they had been notified by the Costa Rica...

By Wendy Anders Costa Rica’s Renewal Party legislator, Gonzalo Ramírez, presented last week a bill that seeks to limit the expansion of abortion in the country, reported Diario Extra, the country’s main Spanish tabloid paper. Currently, Costa Rica allows abortion only for therapeutic purposes  when a pregnancy represents a risk to a woman's life. Anyone who practices abortion under other cir...

By Wendy Anders If your house or condominium is valued at more than $231,000 you likely are required to pay an annual tax to the Costa Rican treasury, reported tax officials this week. Homeowners have until January 16 to pay their 2017 dues. Forms are available online to declare and submit payment at www.hacienda.go.cr or at public banks. Houses valued from $231,000 (126 million colone...

By Wendy Anders Costa Rica is a full member state of the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), and in mid-December hosted the center’s fifth workshop on human RNA viruses. The topics in this and previous conferences include illnesses that affect humans and animals in developing countries such as dengue, zika, avian flu, rotavirus, hantavirus and others. D...

Costa Rica’s Animal Health Service (SENASA) continues to work in the communities affected by hurricane Otto. Officials continue feeding and caring for pets in the areas of impact and the temporary clinics. SENASA has delivered in the areas affected, 46,829.22 kilograms of pet food, with an estimated cost of 79 million colones (close to $150 thousand USD). To date, the lands in these northern ar...

Costa Rica is the country in Central America with more digitally attractive to tourists and it holds fourth position in America in this category according to Digital Country Index. This digital country index was developed by Bloom Consulting and it measures the total amount of searches performed worldwide towards any given country. A Digital Country, according to Bloom Consulting, “refers to a ...

Donald Salmon Melendez, Ernesto Centeno, Jose Bryan Quesada Cubillo and Hector Martin Cash Lopez were found guilty of murdering sea turtle conservationist Jairo Mora back in May 2013; they were sentenced to prison back in March 2016 and this sentence was finally confirmed this Friday, December 23. The decision was taken by the Sentence Appeals Court of San Jose. The four men received 35 year...

Costa Rica began a battle in favor of social inclusion. In this fight, one of the axes is the National Strategy CRDigit@l, which has as an end the reduction of the digital gap in the country. In May, Costa Rica was awarded with the WSIS Prize 2016 of the World Summit on the Information Society in the category of Access to Knowledge and Information, thanks to the project Connected Homes, one o...

By Wendy Anders A zero interest purchase promotion, photo for illustrative purposes. Costa Ricans significantly increased their credit card debt this year, and were also found to be victims of misleading special programs and promotions, said the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Commerce (MEIC) in a special report on credit cards. The Ministry’s Consumer Support Division evaluated specia...

By Wendy Anders Initial conceptual design of the proposed future international airport in Orotina off of Route 27 on the way to the Pacific coast. A delegation of aeronautical experts from South Korea gave a training to their Costa Rican counterparts as the country starts the lengthy process of establishing a new international airport in Orotina, Puntarenas. "Korea and Costa Rica are two...

By Wendy Anders Costa Rica accepted responsibility for violating the fundamental rights of a second group of people who could not access In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) during its ban in the country, reported Elmundo.cr, a digital Costa Rican Spanish language news media. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Inter-American Court of Human Rights) made public on Tuesday that it approved of th...

By Wendy Anders Upala Costa Rica after Hurricane Otto Rains over the past two days in northern Costa Rica are causing flooding in the same low-lying rural areas that were severely affected by Hurricane Otto less than a month ago, reported the National Meteorological Institute (IMN) yesterday morning. At least five families were evacuated from Upala yesterday morning due to flooding of th...

Costa Rica has many talented women that work hard to stand out in their respective fields. Petra Magazine consulted 75 people, among them professionals in media communication , agencies and press offices, business men and women, to come up with the list of the most influential women in Costa Rica in 2016; each person interviewed could nominate two candidates that had to meet the following crite...

Updated with more details on December 21, 206 By Wendy Anders FILE/ARCHIVE image for illustrative purposes only. (MSP) Yesterday police rescued two women and one man from Ecuador in Quepos near Manuel Antonio National Park on Costa Rica’s central Pacific coast. They three  appear to be victims of human trafficking. The three Ecuadorians, who were being driven in a Chevrolet car near L...

By Wendy Anders Photo for illustrative purposes, a police drug capture in Costa Rica. Costa Rican police dismantled 115 narco structures between January 1 and Dec. 14 this year, reported the Ministry of Public Safety, 37 of which were international and 78 local. Police also upped their cocaine captures from 14.5 tons last year to over 18 tons this year, along with sizeable quantities of ...

By Wendy Anders Dinoworld at City Mall Alajuela. Dinoworld is a Costa Rican-owned and operated attraction for all ages and abilities located in City Mall Alajuela. Tomorrow, Tuesday, December 20, 100 percent of  entrance fees to the exhibit will be donated to a Christmas program for low income children. Dinoworld has 22 animatronic dinosaurs on display, some up to four meters tall, in...

  By Wendy Anders A river in southern Costa Rica. Last week, the Public Services Regulatory Agency (Aresep) held a public hearing on the proposed 7.25 MW San Rafael Hydroelectric Project. An estimated 400 local residents filled the communal hall of San Pedro, Perez Zeledon in southern Costa Rica to protest the project, reported Costa Rica’s TV Sur. A local group called the San Ra...

Costa Rica had its traditional Festival de la Luz (Festival of Light or Parade of Light) this Saturday, December 18 with the participation of 14 floats and 15 bands and the presence of the national cyclist Andrey Amador who was this year’s honorary guest. Floats parade, bands, masquerades, live music and fireworks were part of a beautiful December night that thousands of Costa Rican families en...

The international firm Universum, published the results of the Global Workforce Happiness Index, which surveys more than 250 thousand professionals in 57 countries; Costa Rica ranked in the third position. The survey takes into consideration three factors: the employee satisfaction at their current job, their likelihood of recommending their current employer and their sense of job loyalty. Ac...

Actor and singer Cesar Melendez was known for his jovial and humble personality; his hard work and honest interpretations of different characters made him one of the favorite artists among the Costa Rican public. Cesar Melendez was born in Nicaragua, but lived in Costa Rica since he was 4 years of age. He passed away this Saturday, December 17 as he lost his battle to cancer. Melendez was be...

By Wendy Anders Zollner in Cartago, a new foreign investment in 2016. This year saw 40 new investment projects in the multinational services, life sciences, advanced and light manufacturing, and food industry sectors, reported the Costa Rican Coalition for Development Initiatives (CINDE), in conjunction with the Ministry of Foreign Trade (COMEX) in a press conference yesterday. The busin...

The construction of the National Congress and Convention Center (CNCC) will begin in January of 2017 as the Comptroller General of the Republic of Costa Rica notified that it has approved the contract for the construction of the center. The Costa Rican Tourism Institute confirmed that with this approval they will begin the construction in January 2017 and the awarded company, Edica, will have a...

By Wendy Anders An ATM skimming device being installed in the card slot, photo from Facebook for illustrative purposes. Over the past four months, bank officials in Costa Rica have discovered at least 20 skimming devices used to steal data from ATM users' cards. Rodney Jiménez, spokesman for the Costa Rican Banking Association (ABC, in Spanish), said the figure is worrying, as it shows t...

Washington, Dec. 14 —  The district attorney in the case against U.S. actor and comedian Bill Cosby accused him on Wednesday of "a lifetime of sexual assault" on women in a pre-trial hearing. Kevin Steele, the district attorney for Pennsylvania's Montgomery County, where this week another round of pre-trial hearings is under way, hopes to convince the judge that the 13 women who have accused Co...

The UN gave Costa Rican company Scosa, part of Florex Group (Grupo Florex), a global award for its inclusive employment policies. Scosa has been providing employment opportunities to the disabled population for over ten years and currently employs 12 workers in different areas: administrative, technical and others. The Association of Companies for Development presented the candidacy of Florex...

Although two students of the Vicente Lachner High-School in Cartago did not turn in their Civics project, the Costa Rica Ministry of Public Education forced the teacher to give them a grade of 100. During the second trimester of this year, the two students didn’t turn in any advances of their work or their final project, and therefore the teacher gave them a “1”; however, the mother of one of t...

By Wendy Anders Close up of a Marijuana plant flowering during the final stages of growth. EFE/file On Tuesday, Colombia legalized medical marijuana through a decree signed by President Juan Manuel Santos, which regulates the cultivation, processing, import and export of cannabis and its derivatives for therapeutic purposes. Colombia thus joins  Mexico, 23 states in the U.S., and Uruguay, w...

By Wendy Anders Wastewater treatment system in Costa Rica, source Aya. The Costa Rican Ministry of Health, in partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock and the Ministry of Finance seek to mitigate water pollution and improve the quality of wastewater. As an incentive for the creation of more domestic and/or industrial treatment plants, the institutions announced yesterda...

  By Wendy Anders Female condom; Pixabay Public Domain Although 78 percent of women in relationships reported using some form of contraception, a recent study in Costa Rica found that half of women’s last pregnancies weren’t desired. Women aged 15-49 said the ideal number of children is two. Results of the Second National Survey of Sexual Health and Reproductive Health-2015 we...

By Wendy Anders Photo for illustrative purposes, a police catch in Costa Rica. After police trade union representatives protested last week’s dismissal of 115 police officers linked to serious crimes, Costa Rican President Luis Guillermo Solis Rivera reiterated his support of the decision, and stated that illegal acts and corruption in the exercise of public function are not allowed. The...

By Wendy Anders Housing Minister Rosendo Pujol surveys damages to housing in the wake of Hurricane Otto, source Mivah. A total of 204 families need new homes after Hurricane Otto passed through the country in November. Preliminary data from the Ministry of Housing and Human Settlements (Mivah) confirmed that these houses are distributed throughout the areas affected by the extreme weather t...

By Wendy Anders Increased rainfall caused by the mid-November cold front followed by Hurricane Otto in late November resulted in large losses for Costa Rica’s coffee producers in the regions of Coto Brus and Perez Zeledon. To date, Coto Brus and part of Buenos Aires, in Costa Rica’s extreme south, have experienced a loss of up to 25 percent this year’s crop, or an estimated 50,000 bushels, a...

By Wendy Anders Costa Rican 'corrida de toro', Flickr Commons Along with tamales, ronpope (spiced rum), and school vacations, December and January also bring typical bullfights or “corridas de toros” to many small towns across Costa Rica, and with them, divided opinions and strong feelings. A recent survey by the National University in Heredia, Costa Rica found that 46.4 percent of Costa...

Kivu is an 18-year-old lion that had its home at the Simon Bolivar Zoo in San Jose until this week, when he was moved to his new home in the Zoo Ave facilities in La Garita, Alajuela. But Kivu is not just any lion, he is one that has created controversy for a very long time in Costa Rica due to the conditions he was kept in in the Simon Bolivar Zoo. Kivu arrived in Costa Rica from Cuba at the e...

The Burn Unit of the Costa Rican Children Hospital reached its maximum occupation capacity, this worries the authorities of the medical center, who reported that through November, 2016 reports a total of 378 cases of minors who have suffered a burn. “We are very worried ecause right now we are at 100% occupancy in the Burnt Child Comprehensive Care Unit, we even have the support of some pediatr...