A green sea turtle that was seen tied to and being dragged behind a car in Limon, Costa Rica in a shocking online video on Tuesday was subsequently tortured and killed, according to the environmental activist and lawyer who uploaded the video. Alvaro Sagot told the Spanish EFE news agency that in the full version of the video, the sea turtle is tortured and killed in a “very cruel” manner after...

Costa Rican environmentalist Jairo Mora was murdered in 2013. (ARCHIVE / Photo courtesy of WIDECAST) This is a developing news story.  Stay tuned to The Costa Rica Star for updates. A criminal court in Costa Rica found four out of seven defendants guilty of murder and other crimes on Tuesday, sentencing all four to the maximum sentence permitted by law and concluding the second trial in the...

The victim's motor scooter was found parked on the bank of the river. (Facebook / Noticias en linea Puriscal) Partially dismembered remains found in a river in Parrita, in Costa Rica’s central Pacific province of Puntarenas are those of 79-year-old retired pilot, Ovidio Segura Roman, a nearby resident, according to numerous reports. The remains were discovered by an area resident on Monday,...

A shocking video, which shows a live sea turtle tied to and being dragged behind a car, sparked outrage in Costa Rica and social media on Tuesday.   The video is believed to have been filmed recently in Moin, Limon, on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast. The vehicle’s license plate is clearly visible in the video, which could assist authorities in identifying the subjects in the video, though...

ARCHIVE / ILLUSTRATIVE (Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Public Security, March 2016) A massive group of at least 117 undocumented migrants from a variety of African nations including the Democratic Republic of the Congo illegally flooded across the mountainous border from Panama into Costa Rica on Monday, attempting to avoid the attention of authorities by entering the country through severa...

Source: Zoo Ave Discovery Channel unveiled two additional documentaries that will air as specials under the Discovery Impact banner, a slate of groundbreaking documentaries focusing on humankind’s impact on the environment and what individuals and society as a whole can do to solve some of the largest problems facing the planet.  Airing May 19, SONIC SEA highlights the continued emergence of noi...

La Carpio, an impoverished neighborhood in the San Jose metro area. (ICR-CRS Archive) Editor's note: Special reports from The Costa Rica Star contain in-depth analysis by our staff of the facts, data and trends affecting our country that you won't find anywhere else.  Stay tuned to The Costa Rica Star for part 2 of this story later this week. By Timothy Williams, The Costa Rica Star Desp...

Source: Wikimedia Commons A six-year old boy and an adult male are the latest victims of attacks by large reptiles in Costa Rica. The incidents took place during Holy Saturday in the communities of Parrita and Los Chiles. According to a news report filed by Tatiana Gutierrez of online news daily Costa Rica Hoy, a six-year old boy was rushed to the public hospital in Quepos after he was brut...

Wikimedia Commons San Rafael, Alajuela, Costa Rica, March 21, 2016 --(PR.com)-- On Thursday,  the Public Services Regulatory Authority (Spanish acronym: ARESEP) held its final public meeting on the pricing structure for the new distributed solar program. It is scheduled to open with compliance of the power companies in Costa Rica April 7th, 2016. I.C.E., the main power company, and Acesolar, t...

Mabel Flores, Flickr Commons More than 70 Fire Departments across Costa Rica will be very vigilant from now until the early hours of Easter Sunday as communities engage in the traditional burning of the Judas Iscariot effigy. The burning of Judas begins with the hanging of the effigy, which happens on Good Friday and is followed by burning on the night of Holy Satruday. This religious tradi...

Illustrative photo. / Wikimedia Commons A medical marijuana bill being debated in Costa Rica’s Legislative Assembly since 2014 now has the necessary support to pass plenary by May 1st, according to Rep. Marvin Delgado Atencio, the PAC lawmaker who first presented the bill. The bill, which now has the approval of lawmakers from almost all caucuses, seeks to legalize and regulate the cultivat...

By Jack Donnelly Ujarrás is a wonderful place you should not run off to visit. You should plan a trip to several attractions in the area and spend some time in Ujarrás as part of your trip, maybe a nice picnic lunch. The Ruins of Ujarrás are not well known, even though they were declared a National Monument of Costa Rica by executive decree in 1985. They lie east of Paraíso (Cartago), just o...

ICR-CRS Archive/FILE (Pictured: Workers at a multinational medical device manufacturing company's facility in Heredia, Costa Rica) The United Nations (UN) Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and Oxfam describe as “appalling” the rate of corporate tax avoidance and evasion by corporations operating in Latin America – particularly in Costa Rica – in a report issued th...

Costa Rican president, Luis Guillermo Solis tours the Reventazon hydroelectric plant while still under construction in 2014. (Casa Presidencial) The first of four turbines at Costa Rica’s Reventazon hydroelectric plant, recently made famous after the discovery of ancient, 12,200-year-old human settlements by workers at the site, is set to come online by the end of the month, according to proje...

(ICR-CRS Archive) Costa Rica’s National Council of Financial System Supervision (Conassif) and financial regulator, SUGEF are working on a new bill that would provide universal deposit insurance for all banks in the country, following a recent recommendation by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Currently, depositors in Costa Rica’s state-owned banks, such as ...

Scarlet Macaw Mar. 23, 2016 / PRZen / NEW YORK -- Costa Rica's Institute of Tourism (ICT) will launch its 2016 promotional tour of the United States with visits to San Francisco on March 29, Los Angeles on March 30 and San Diego on March 31. Organized by the Pro Imagen Costa Rica Group, the entity in charge of the country's image as a tourist destination in potential markets, the educationa...

A tourist captured images of a supposed UFO while visiting Costa Rica’s Irazu Volcano National Park in Cartago last month. The tourist reported the sighting and sent images to the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), an organization that maintains a database of UFO sightings around the world. According to the witness, he and his girlfriend were taking pictures of the volcano and the landscape sho...

COSTA RICA STAR NEWS BRIEF Costa Rica’s Daniel Oduber Quiros International Airport in Liberia, in the northwestern province of Guanacaste, has resumed operations after being forced to close for nearly three hours due to an out of control brushfire adjacent to the airport, airport operation authorities and the fire department confirmed to The Costa Rica Star Tuesday afternoon. The airport...

Source: US CBP US CBP PRESS RELEASE - PHILADELPHIA — The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) confirmed today that a long horned beetle that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agriculture specialists intercepted in a shipment of Costa Rican pineapples is the first recorded find of this species in the United States. CBP discovered the beetle January 29 in a container of 1,575 cases of...

Broken windows seen at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels, Belgium, March 22, 2016. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir Costa Rican president, Luis Guillermo Solis condemned on Tuesday the “savage terrorist attack” in Brussels that left at least 34 people dead and at least another 150 injured or wounded. The Islamic State (ISIS) is claiming responsibility for the suicide bomb att...

Nutrivida By Anne Salter. SEUK UK Social Enterprise News Release - As a part of the British Embassy programme ‘Exporting Social Enterprises’, in February 2016 Social Enterprise UK traveled to San Jose to represent the UK social enterprise sector in Costa Rica. The week included conferences, meetings with government, press, charities and social enterprises to discuss the opportunities for the mo...

(ICR/CRS Archive) Costa Rica’s ruling political party, the Citizen Action Party (PAC) is attempting to negotiate a payment plan with the Costa Rican public health and social security administration, known as CCSS or ‘La Caja,’ in order to pay some ¢465 million (~US $870,000) in past due mandatory employer contributions that it failed to pay for some 490 staffers during a four-year period betwe...

(Archive/CRS) The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is urging Costa Rica’s banking regulator known as SUGEF to make the results of tests of the country’s banks that measure their ability to cope with crisis, known as “stress tests,” available to the public. SUGEF periodically conducts stress tests on the country’s banks, but the results of the tests are not made p...

(Illustrative image. ICR-CRS Archive) Lawmakers in Costa Rica’s Legislative Assembly unanimously approved last week a reform that limits landlords’ ability to increase rent paid by tenants to that of the rate of inflation. Lawmakers approved the measure in first debate, during the last plenary session before the Easter holiday. Currently, landlords who rent properties in colones are allowed...

Wikimedia Commons By Carol Blair Vaughn March 20th is International Day of Happiness; as adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2011 this day promotes, preserves, and observes happiness as a universal right and goal, and has been celebrated every year since. “Happiness is your birthright,” said singer Pharrell Williams on Happiness Day 2015. “Happiness is a fundamental huma...

Wikimedia Commons The current drought conditions experienced in various regions of Costa Rica may extend well into May and early June; however, substantial rainfall may cause floods and landslides once the green season takes hold. According to a recent press conference conducted by the National Meteorology Institute of Costa Rica (Spanish initials: IMN), the 2016 green season will feature h...

(Photo courtesy of the MSP) While a second wave of more than 1,000 Cuban migrants once again massed on Costa Rica's southern border this week, Costa Rica's immigration police are also simultaneously dealing with a significant increase in undocumented migrants and refugees from the Middle East and Africa attempting to traverse the country's territory on their way to the United States. Early ...

(Facebook) The Costa Rican government’s decision last week to ban the entry of controversial Nicaraguan comedian, Reynaldo Ruiz was the subject of questioning Wednesday by the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations, which concluded and released on Thursday its sixth periodic report of Costa Rica on its implementation of the provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political ...

(ICR-CRS archive/stock) Marijuana use in Costa Rica has increased 400 percent in the last decade, according to preliminary data released this week by the Institute on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (IAFA). According to the IAFA, which conducts the study every five years, 4.1 percent of the Costa Rican population were marijuana users in 2015, compared to just 2.6 percent in 2010 and 1 percen...

(Photo courtesy of the OIJ) Agents from Costa Rica’s Judicial Investigative Police (OIJ) arrested Thursday morning four police officers accused of “shaking down” a motorist in December of last year and taking the driver’s mobile phone. The arrests come after an investigation, including the electronic tracking of the motorist’s mobile phone, determined there was sufficient evidence to issue ...

Wikimedia Commons Organized crime groups from Panama operating in Costa Rica may be using a novel method to smuggle cocaine across Central American borders. The new technique involves the use of cows as couriers that can pack dozens of kilograms of powdered cocaine hydrochloride in their intestines and scrotal sacks. According to a news report filed by investigative journalist Carlos Castro...

Dengue, Chikungunya, and Zika are spread by the Aedes aegyptie mosquito (Wikimedia Commons) An additional 443 cases of dengue were reported during the first week of this month, bringing to 4,865 the number of those who have fallen ill with dengue fever in Costa Rica as of the first week of March, according to Costa Rica’s Ministry of Health. With 1,779 cases, Alajuela stands out as the prov...

(Image for illustrative purposes. Stock/123RF/ICR-CRS Archive) COSTA RICA STAR NEWS BRIEF An investigation is underway into the death of a 16-year-old boy who was apparently playing “Russian roulette” with three friends and a loaded firearm in a bar in Venecia de Osa, the tabloid daily, Diario Extra reported Thursday. The unidentified teen reportedly shot himself through the right side o...

Global Peace Foundation Press Release - Five former Central American presidents proposed an integrated regional approach as the only way to tackle the endemic problems of organized crime, drug trafficking, violence, and rising income inequality. “No nation can be an island of democracy, in a sea of conflict,” said former Guatemalan president Vinicio Cerezo. The presidents met at the Organizatio...

Radiocarbon dating of items at an archaeological site discovered by workers at Costa Rica’s Reventazón Hydroelectric Project has revealed the 66 human settlements at the site to be 12,200 years old, which would represent the oldest find of its type in Central America to date, the Costa Rican Electricity Institute announced in a press statement on Wednesday. Exploration of the site, which covers...

Wikimedia Commons The decomposed body of an expatriate from the United States was removed from a luxury condominium tower located in an upscale subdivision of Escazu, a municipality located in the western suburbs of the capital city of Costa Rica. According to a report filed by Pablo Rojas of online news daily Costa Rica Hoy, Red Cross volunteers assigned to Escazu confirmed that they found...

(Archive) COSTA RICA STAR FINANCIAL NEWS BRIEF Costa Rica’s economy grew by 4.9 percent in the 12 months leading up to January, according to the latest data of the Monthly Economic Activity Index (IMAE), a rolling monthly measurement of annual (year on year) economic growth produced by Costa Rica’s Central Bank. January also marks the seventh consecutive month of economic growth in Costa...

Many suspects awaiting trial are housed alongside convicted criminal in Costa Rica's La Reforma Prison, pictured. (ICR/CRS Archive) The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH), an autonomous body of the Organization of American States (OAS) headquartered in Washington, D.C. is calling on Costa Rica to end what it considers the excessive use of pretrial imprisonment in the country. ...

(Image for illustrative purpose / ICR-CRS Archive) Fleeing violence and misery in their home countries, the number of people seeking refugee status in Costa Rica nearly doubled last year, according to data from the Office of the United Nations High Commissions for Refugees (UNHCR). Costa Rica received some 2,300 applications for asylum in 2015 compared to some 1,400 a year earlier, accordin...

Wikimedia Commons British Embassy Costa Rica News Release - On Wednesday 2 March, the Deputy Head of Mission of the British Embassy, Melanie Smart, attended a workshop organised by the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE) at its headquarters in Turrialba, which was also attended by more than 90 Costa Rican livestock producers. The workshop was organised as part...