By Wendy Anders What might possibly be the largest of the recent Turrialba volcano eruptions started at 7:22 this morning, according to the National University's Volcanology and Seismology Observatory (Ovsicori-UNA). A photo on their site shows a cloud of ash reaching nearly 3,000m. The blast caused tremors that were felt by nearby residents. A Facebook follower in Alto de las Palomas, Es...

By Wendy Andershttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cn91WdKhUmE Eyewitness accounts in and around Peñas Blancas on Costa Rica’s northern border with Nicaragua show growing desperation and also health concerns among hundreds of Haitian and African immigrants trying to journey to the U.S. Costa Rica’s national TV Repretel documented a thwarted attempt last Wednesday by a boisterous group of immigra...

Wikimedia CommonsThis afternoon, following a two week trial, a federal jury in Brooklyn, New York, returned a guilty verdict against Gregorio and Angelo Gigliotti for their operation of a transnational cocaine trafficking operation that stretched from Italy, to Queens and to Costa Rica. Gregorio Gigliotti was also convicted of possessing a stash of firearms in connection with the operation. Whe...

Areli Arevalo FacebookA powerful mid-afternoon eruption of the Turrialba volcano, currently the most active in Costa Rica, opened new vents in the crater, which suggests that a new caldera could form in the future. According to geologists from the Observatory of Volcanology and Seismology of Costa Rica (Spanish acronym: OVSICORI), the eruption took place at 3:42 pm on a cloudy Friday afternoon...

By Wendy Anders The Central American business magazine, Revista Mercados y Tendencias, reported July 19 on a commercial ferry service between Costa Rica and El Salvador that will open at the end of this month. The ferry will operate three weekly trips in both directions between the Costa Rican Pacific port of Caldera and El Salvador’s La Unión port, with a capacity of up to 85 trailers per t...

Source: ECSUIn the wee hours of May 22, 13 Eastern biology students and biology professors Patricia Szczys and Matthew Graham trekked to the rainforest of Costa Rica to experience a 12-day trip they had been preparing for since January. The students had spent the spring semester in groups of three and four students each reading scientific literature and preparing research proposals for studies...

Although most of the terrestrial world is covered in trees, there are precious few vertebrates that make the canopy their home and subsist solely on a diet of leaves. Tree sloths are among the most emblematic tree-dwelling mammals. However, they are best known for their pokey demeanor rather than the fact that they spend the majority of their lives in trees munching leaves. But the slow motion...

Dengue, Chikungunya, and Zika are spread by the Aedes aegyptie mosquito (Wikimedia Commons)Bismarck, N.D.— The North Dakota Department of Health (NDDoH) has confirmed a second case of Zika virus illness reported in a North Dakota resident. The individual who tested positive for Zika virus is a man who traveled to Costa Rica. This case was not hospitalized for his illness. As reported by Th...

By Wendy Anders Yesterday Costa Rican Foreign Trade Minster Alexander Mora announced the start of $2.5 million construction on the Invenio University campus in Guanacaste that will house the Illinois, U.S.-based Continuum Data Center, LLC. Continuum Data offers purpose built data centers and colocation solutions to businesses. Starting with a staff of 20 they plan to eventually grow to 300 a...

By Wendy Anders Every year public school administrators in Costa Rica face a troubling school drop-out reality, both at the start of the school year and mid-year. This year has been no different, reported Radio Monumental yesterday, with close to 20,000 kindergarten - university public education students failing to return after the two-week mid-year break that just ended. According to Son...

Source: EurekAlert and University of Central FloridaAn international team of scientists has solved a case of mistaken identity and discovered a new species of venomous snake, according to a recent press release by EurekAlert. The newly discovered Talamancan Palm-Pitviper is a striking green-and-black snake living in some of the most remote regions of Costa Rica. The coloring is a characterist...

Source: MSPA disarmingly cute newborn jaguarundi, sometimes called an eyra cat, was rescued by officers from Fuerza Publica (the national police force of Costa Rica) on Friday afternoon. The rescue took place in Gamalotal, a rural district of Nicoya in the province of Guanacaste. According to an official press released issued by the Ministry of Public Security, the wild kitten was actually fo...

Billy Geno and Christi Carr A visitor from the United States enjoying his honeymoon in Costa Rica made a daring water rescue to save a man from drowning. According to the Facebook Timeline of the Volusia Surf Lifesaving Association, the rescue took place recently while Billy Geno and Christi Carr, newlyweds from Florida, were celebrating their honeymoon at a beach resort in Costa Rica. A c...

By Wendy Anders The judicial branch in a press statement summarizing this week’s activity noted that the Alajuela Criminal Court found two men guilty of illegal drug dealing, and a woman guilty of money laundering. The court sentenced a Hungarian man by the last name of Halasz to 10 years in jail, and another man named Otárola to eight years. This same court sentenced a Mexican woman by ...

Wikimedia CommonsDrug interdiction agents in Panama seized a major shipment of pink cocaine that was intended to reach Costa Rica before being repackaged and smuggled to the United States and Europe. According to a news report filed by Manuel Estrada of daily tabloid Diario Extra, the National Police of Colombia worked together with Panamanian law enforcement to arrest Alejandro Arboleda Uribe...

By Wendy Anders Source: UN Women Citizen Action Party (PAC) Legislator Epsy Campbell recently introduced legislation that seeks to further expand the participation of women in governance by establishing quotas. The law comes after a recent constitutional court ruling that requires political parties to include women in equal numbers on ballots, a measure also supported by Campbell. The new...

By Wendy Anders A 500-strong special police operations force set up by Public Security Minister Gustavo Mata last October has been working hard to make a dent in local illegal drug-related activities. The Costa Rican police has made over 25,000 illegal drug-related arrests throughout the country since then. These crimes, which include everything from drug possession and drug dealing to mo...

Source: UC Blue Ash College By Pete Gemmer Saving a damaged sea turtle nest along the coast of Costa Rica was among a few of the life-changing activities students enjoyed this summer as part of two study abroad trips hosted by the University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College. The Costa Rica Study Abroad trip was based on the Osa Peninsula, home to about 3 percent of the world’s biodiversity...

Wikimedia Commons 12 July 2016 – Continuing a series of ‘firsts’ regarding the selection of the next United Nations Secretary-General, candidates for the world’s top diplomatic post will this evening participate in a globally televised and webcast event in the UN General Assembly Hall, where they will take questions from diplomats and the public at large. Christiana Figueres, the candidate ...

By Wendy Anders Costa Rican public health officials renewed a health alert put in place July 2 in response to a severe respiratory virus that is especially virulent in young children. The temporary extension of hours in peripheral clinics will remain in effect until August 8, or until the respiratory emergency wanes sufficiently, stated officials in a press statement today. The following ...

William Albert Ulmer, aka “Bill Ulmer,” 49, of West Dickinson, North Dakota, was sentenced today to three years in prison for traveling with a stolen passport and aggravated identity theft charges, announced Jill Westmoreland Rose, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina. U.S. District Judge Robert J. Conrad, Jr. also sentenced Ulmer to three years of supervised release after he i...

By Wendy Anders Cine Magaly, in downtown San Jose’s California neighborhood, is hosting Costa Rica’s 6th Annual European Film Festival with pictures from 10 different countries. Here’s the schedule for the remainder of the festival: Sunday, July 10: El Olivo, 3:40pm, (Spanish) Terapia para Un Vampiro, 6:15pm, (Austrian) La French, 8:25pm, (French)   Monday, July 11: ...

The subject wanted in the Villarreal, Guanacaste stabbing. By Wendy Anders This article has been updated to include new information from police sources: Yesterday, two separate murders of women in Guanacaste have kept police and investigators very busy, and the local community very concerned. The first, apparently a lover's quarrel between two Nicaraguans, occurred in the presence of ...

from Costa Rican Firefighters' Facebook page. By Wendy Anders Early this morning firefighters reported putting out a fire caused by a candle in San Rafael, Alajuela that ravaged 11 poor homes and displaced 45 people. The Benemérito Cuerpo de Bomberos de Costa Rica on their Facebook site responded to comments throughout the morning in response to the news. One woman inquiring about any pets t...

Wikimedia Commons One of the most popular Costa Rica volcanoes in terms of tourism is going through a renewed period of activity to the delight of visitors. A recent time-lapse video captured by a camera near the crater of the Poas was posted to the Facebook Timeline of the Observatory of Seismology and Volcanology of the National University of Costa Rica (Spanish acronym: OVSICORI). In the...

Wikimedia Commons. By Wendy Anders This afternoon, Public Security Minister Gustavo Mata, addressed Costa Rica’s Legislative Assembly to push for the need to regulate the sale of violent toys in the country. The meeting came on the heels of an assault this morning in Limón in which a man used a toy gun to rob a woman while she was walking with her young son, said the ministry in a press ...

Source: Wooster Surfboards Costa Rica Surfers from the United States visiting Costa Rica rescued a dolphin calf that had become stranded on the beach and separated from its mother. The rescue was witnessed by a shaper from Wooster Surfboards Costa Rica, and it was also captured on video and posted to the Facebook Timeline of the National Surfing Federation. The surfers self-identified with ...

By Wendy Anders Every year in July, the National Census Institute (INEC) sends surveyors to a sample of homes throughout Costa Rica to provide updated demographic and economic data to policy makers. Starting today, the survey, known in Spanish as La Encuesta de Hogares, aims to reach an estimated 13,5000 homes with questions on income, poverty, equality, access to good and services, land use...

Source: U.S. National Museum of Health and Medicine A common sexually transmitted infection that was substantially reduced in Costa Rica decades ago is showing signs of spreading, and societal trends related to the Millennial Generation seem to be at play. According to a news report filed by health journalist Angie Guerrero of online news daily Costa Rica Hoy, statistics compiled by the Min...

Source: Fuerza Publica A sex offender from the United States is on the lam again after being extradited from Costa Rica. John Wesley Saatio, a fugitive facing several criminal charges in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, escaped from a van transporting prisoners in Florida on Saturday night. According to a news broadcast by WEAR, an ABC affiliate television station in Pensacola, Mr. Saatio h...

Thousands of Cuban migrants remain in shelters across Costa Rica. (CIDH/Twitter) By Wendy Anders After months of behind the scenes meetings and dialogue, the eight Central American Integration System (SICA, in Spanish) members met last week on Roatán Island, Honduras and welcomed Costa Rica back. At the June 28-30 meeting, leaders agreed to a forward-looking agenda that convinced Costa R...

Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome [email protected]://wellcomeimages.org By Wendy Anders As of 7:00 pm today the National Children’s Hospital has closed their general emergency services until further notice due to a saturation of services by children with a virulent sinus infection. Dr. Olga Arguedas told the press that the Children’s Hospital is only accepting chi...

Source; UNHCR On 6 and 7 July 2016, the Organization of American States and UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, will convene in San José, Costa Rica, a high-level roundtable meeting on refugees and displaced people from the Northern Triangle of Central America and the urgent need to find solutions to this growing protection situation. The two-day event in San José, the first international meeting...

The tents of Cuban migrant refugees are seen at a border post with Panama in Paso Canoas, Costa Rica, earlier in December Photo: Reuters OMX The United States on Thursday included Haiti, Venezuela and Belize on its list of countries that are not doing enough to combat people trafficking, a measure that could lead to sanctions, while Colombia and Chile were given the best marks in the hemispher...

https://vimeo.com/171124011 Meet Andre Moreno Hamm, an elite skier who aims to represent Costa Rica at the 2018 South Korea Winter Olympics. A Costa Rican skier? That’s right. This 20-year-old slope style skier for the Costa Rican Olympic Committee will embark on the World Cup circuit in January to qualify for the 2018 Winter Olympic Games. Raised in Boulder, Colorado, Andre divides hi...

ARCHIVE / ILLUSTRATIVE (Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Public Security) By Wendy Anders Over the weekend, Costa Rican immigration police cooperated in a regional sting operation, El Operativo Mesoamérica, to detain alleged human traffickers, reported Radio Monumental yesterday. At least 25 arrests were made in Guatemala, El Salvador, Panamá, Honduras, and in Costa Rica, where eight we...

Bathroom with lights on. By Wendy Anders Yesterday, the Public Services Regulatory Agency (Aresep) announced changes to electricity rates which will be in effect from July through September. The agency cited a 6.64 percent increase in energy production costs due to the use of fossil fuels to meet the growing energy demand earlier this year, mainly to cover industrial and commercial energ...

Source: TeenSmart The Carlos Slim Foundation on Tuesday presented its Health Awards to Costa Rica's TeenSmart institution, which informs young people about health risks, and to Mexico's Dr. Rafael Lozano Ascencio for his research linking disease with socio-demographic factors. Foundation executive director Ricardo Mujica presented the honors to the winners in the Exceptional Institution and...

Costa Rica Railway with Passenger Train By Wendy Anders You aren’t alone in feeling there’s been lots of talk and little action on urban trains; the law to modernize the sector that finally passed the Legislative Assembly on April 26 has been under discussion since 2011. It appears that some concrete changes might actually start to take place soon, as the law has already passed scrutiny ...

Illustrative image. (Flickr Commons) A young man who came to Costa Rica to help foreign language students at institutions of higher learning is currently recovering from multiple stab wounds sustained after a violent robbery. According to a recent news report filed by Yaslin Cabezas of online news daily Costa Rica Hoy, the man is of French nationality and has been solely identified by the l...