Leo and Zana Finkenbinder. Source: Olivet Nazarene University Olivet Nazarene University Press Release - An innovative educational and research facility in a Costa Rica cloud forest has been named for Dr. Leo Finkenbinder, zoology professor at Olivet Nazarene University, and his wife, Zana. The couple has worked for more than three decades in that region to advance scientific knowledge and eco...

(FILE/ARCHIVE. Photo courtesy of Conarroz.) Costa Rica’s rice growers are urging President Luis Guillermo Solis against joining the Pacific Alliance, a Latin American trade bloc which currently consists of its four founding member states: Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru. Costa Rica began the process of accession to become the Alliance’s fifth full member state in 2014 during the administr...

(Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Public Security) Officers of Costa Rica’s border police arrested a suspected people smuggler, commonly referred to as a “coyote,” and four undocumented migrants from Ghana in Golfito on Wednesday. The smuggler, identified by the last name Fonseca, was arrested on charges of human trafficking, while the four migrants – men aged from 24 to 41, were turned ov...

(Facebook) Costa Rica’s Ministry of Public Security and immigration officials confirmed in a press statement Thursday that Reynaldo Ruiz, a Nicaraguan stand-up comedian who had previously mocked Ticos (Costa Ricans) in a skit that was published in an online video to his YouTube channel which has 300,000 subscribers, will be denied entry to Costa Rica for a comedy show that was scheduled betwee...

(ICR/CRS Archive) On Wednesday, just one day after leaders of Costa Rica’s agricultural sector warned that some 500,000 jobs could be at risk should the country decide to move forward with plans for full membership in the Pacific Alliance, Costa Rica’s industrial and manufacturing leaders came out in support of the pact, saying that the Alliance would expand trade and access to international m...

Zika is spread by the Aedes aegyptie mosquito (Wikimedia Commons) Two people who traveled to Nicaragua have returned to Costa Rica infected with the Zika virus, health authorities said Wednesday, bringing to 12 the number of people with Zika infections in Costa Rica. Of the total, there have been eight indigenous cases, all of which where contracted in the canton of Nicoya, specifically in ...

Wikimedia Commons The Government of Canada has updated its travel advisory for Costa Rica with warnings about the Zika virus and new concerns about security for visitors. In general, Canadian travelers are urged to be careful and vigilant when visiting Costa Rica. The summary of the travel advisory states: There is no nationwide advisory in effect for Costa Rica. However, you should exercis...

A "pink and chic" Banca Kristal branch. (FILE/courtesy) Lawmakers from Costa Rica’s ruling Citizen Action Party (PAC) in the country’s Legislative Assembly questioned representatives from Costa Rica’s controversial women’s-only bank, Banca Kristal, a subsidiary of the State-owned Banco de Costa Rica (BCR), about the bank’s marketing and business practices on Wednesday. Critics of the “pink ...

New York (March 3, 2016)—With support from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) have embarked on an ambitious plane-based survey to gauge the influence of humans and their livestock on the largest remaining forests in Central America. Dubbed the “Central American Megaflyover,” the project is gathering detailed images of the largest five rem...

(ICR/CRS Archive) Lawmakers in Costa Rica’s Legislative Assembly are close to a vote on a bill that seeks to eliminate criminal records, which supporters of the bill argue make it difficult for former convicts and those with criminal records to find a job. Under the current law, criminal records remain on a convicted person’s record for 10 years from the time they finish serving their court...

Wikimedia Commons The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) has certified Costa Rica as being free of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as mad cow disease, the director general of Costa Rica’s National Animal Health Service (SENASA) told reporters this week. “ Costa Rica has a solid basis for further growth in exports of beef and ensuring the health safety of consu...

Some 500,000 jobs in Costa Rica could be at risk should the country decide to move forward with plans for full membership in the Pacific Alliance, a Latin American trade bloc which currently consists of its four founding member states: Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru, agro leaders warned Tuesday. Costa Rica began the process of accession to become the Alliance’s fifth full member state in 201...

Source: UCI University of California Press Release - Irvine, Calif., March 7, 2016 — On a cool, fog-shrouded mountain of Costa Rica, University of California, Irvine biologist Caitlin Looby is finding that warming temperatures are becoming an increasing problem for one of the most ecologically diverse places on Earth. Seeking to determine how shifts in the tropical mountain cloud forest eco...

(Illustrative image. Courtesy Thomson Airways) What fellow passengers described as utter “chaos” ensued aboard a Thomson Airways flight shortly before takeoff on its way to Costa Rica on Monday, the Daily Star reported Tuesday. Some 25 drunk and disorderly passengers had to be removed from the aircraft by police officers after the pilot of the aircraft refused takeoff due to the chaos takin...

(Photo courtesy of Toyota) While most countries in the region have seen a significant slowdown in new vehicle sales, the sale of new model-year vehicles in Costa Rica increased 24.9 percent in 2015, according to the organizing committee of Expomovil 2016, an annual car show that brings together the country’s largest dealers offering their biggest discounts of the year to thousands of car buyer...

The existing structure has stood for more than a century but now poses a danger, according to officials. (Photo: Screen capture / TVN Panama) Construction of the $15 million border bridge over the Sixaola River linking Panama and Costa Rica is expected to start in June, the Panamanian Economy and Finance Ministry announced late last week. Bidding for the project is scheduled to take place i...

A Costa Rican bus driver was arrested by Nicaraguan Army soldiers on Sunday after the discovery of US $467,000 in cash in a hidden compartment above the driver’s seat of the bus he was driving, authorities in Nicaragua report. The cash was contained in 16 packages of $20 and $50 bills, according to who authorities, who identified the driver as 32-year-old Luis Alberto Corrales Jimenez. The d...

(Stock / Archive) COSTA RICA STAR NEWS BRIEF A US man from Atlanta, Georgia drowned late Saturday afternoon after apparently succumbing to a powerful rip tide at Playa Domincalito on Costa Rica’s central Pacific coast. Authorities identified the victim as 33-year-old Brian Gum, who was vacationing in Costa Rica with friends. Two of the man’s companions were able to escape with the ass...

(Wikimedia Commons) Half of Costa Rica’s so-called “millennial” generation lacks any college or university education and yet manage to earn on average ¢405,335 per month (about US $775), according to an analysis by Amelia Rueda of data provided by the Continuous Employment Survey of the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INEC), the latest of which is based on the third quarter of 201...

Main Line Health Press Release - Prior to embarking on a humanitarian trip to Costa Rica, Villa Maria Academy High School juniors, seniors and their parents received advice from Main Line Health’s Chief of Infectious Diseases, who helped separate fact from fiction regarding the Zika virus epidemic. “Traveling to areas affected by the Zika Virus, such as Central America, does pose a risk” said D...

The United States Department of State submitted the International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) to Congress earlier this week, and it included an unflattering report of Costa Rica as a haven for laundering illicit proceeds from drug trafficking and terrorism.   According to the U.S. Department of State:   The two-volume report offers a comprehensive assessment of th...

Wikimedia Commons GMB UK Press Release - GMB is calling for Fyffes, the Irish multinational fruit company, to improve working conditions for Honduran and Costa Rican plantation and farm workers and to pay them a living wage. At an advisory meeting to the EU-Central America Association Agreement on March 1st, Bert Schouwenburg, one of 3 European trade union representatives, condemned Fyffes ...

Source: MGP Costa Rica According to statistics reported by the Civil Registry of Costa Rica, less than 69,000 naturalized citizens were properly registered in 2014. When considering the number of foreigners living in Costa Rica under various legal statuses such as temporary residents, permanent residents and perpetual tourists, those who chose the naturalization path are the minority.  ...

Source: FreeStockPhotos.biz Prosecutors in Honduras have added two glamour models from Costa Rica to the list of defendants involved in a major scandal involving sex, drugs, money laundering, and the massive swindling of that country’s Social Security system.   According to a report published by La Tribuna, a national newspaper in Honduras, the names of the Costa Rican women have be...

Boeing 737 engine The first international route of Air Costa Rica will fly to Guatemala, followed by Panama and hopefully Miami in the next few months. Such are the ongoing plans of Costa Rica's newest international airline, which will fill a decades-old void in the history of commercial aviation in our country. According to a news report filed by business reporter Stefania Colombari of nat...

By Alexis Barrera (Al Bar) of Oaktown Crack Comics.http://pixolid.com/Home/About/http://oaktowncrack.com/bios/index.html - http://oaktowncrack.com/Smoking_Crack/index.html, http://pixolid.com/Home/Archives/See , for additional information., CC BY-SA 3.0At any given time, someone in Costa Rica might be getting high by smoking crack, the freebase form of cocaine. Popular wisdom would suggest that ...

Playas del Coco Beach in Guanacaste A male tourist from the United States passed away at the public clinic in Playas del Coco, one of the Gold Coast beaches of Costa Rica, after suffering a fatal heart attack during a snorkeling expedition.   According to a news report published on Friday by daily tabloid Diario Extra, the U.S. tourist was in his mid-50s. He was on vacation along wi...

U.S. DOJ Press Release - SAN DIEGO - Over four years after the disappearance and death of Yvonne Baldelli, Brian Karl Brimager pleaded guilty in federal court today to her murder, admitting that he fatally stabbed Baldelli in the back with a knife, dismembered her body with a machete and disposed of her remains in a remote jungle on the Panamanian island where they lived as a couple for two months...

Illustrative image. (Flickr) A parking lot attendant at a San Jose bar is being described as a “hero” after being killed by a gunshot wound to the abdomen while trying to defend two women from an armed robber Saturday night. Marco Villalobos Arias, 45, was killed around 8 p.m. Saturday night in the parking lot of Bar Micheladas in Moravia. Villalobos, who was the father of a 16-year-old, wa...

A probe by investigators in the United States is attempting to determine if Englewood, Colorado-based money transmitter, Western Union was aware of gambling transactions by its agents in Costa Rica and other Latin American countries, the company revealed in an annual filing with regulators on Friday. The government is investigating “concerns the company was aware there were gaming transactions”...

Zika is spread by the Aedes aegyptie mosquito (Wikimedia Commons) Costa Rica’s Ministry of Health has declared a health emergency in the canton of Nicoya, Guanacaste and is considering declaring a national health emergency after two fully confirmed cases of Zika were detected in two women in Samara, the ministry announced at a press conference late Monday afternoon. One of the women is pregnan...

File photo HSI Press Release - The Costa Rican Minister of Environment presented the country’s official stance on wildlife, stating that wildlife issues are a priority to the nation. During a press conference, Minister Edgar Gutiérrez highlighted the importance of respecting wildlife in a country where tourist activities are developed around its natural resources and are one of Costa Rica’s ma...

San Jose, Feb 18 (EFE; additional context by The Costa Rica Star).- Government representatives and environmentalists attending the second meeting of signatories to the United Nations Environment Program's Memorandum of Understanding on the Conservation of Migratory Sharks, or Sharks MOU, agreed to work to enlist coastal communities in protecting the marine predators. A total of 22 species of sh...

Wikimedia Commons The United States Embassy in San Jose, Costa Rica, informs U.S. citizens that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued a travel notice for Costa Rica regarding the Zika virus.  There is evidence that Zika is linked to birth defects in the fetuses of infected pregnant women and Guillain-Barré syndrome in infected individuals of any age or gender.  Zika i...

Adrian Salmerón Silva (MSP photo) Costa Rica’s Minister of Public Security, Gustao Mata announced shortly before 5:30 p.m. on Friday that authorities in Nicaragua have apprehended Adrián Salmerón, the Nicaraguan man suspected of murdering 57-year-old US expat, Dirk Beauchamp, his 38-year-old Costa Rican wife and three children over the Valentine's Day weekend in the small community of Matapalo...

Costa Rica's Ministry of Public Works and Transport (MOPT) purchased 64 Harley Davidson "Iron" 883's, pictured here, at a cost of US $1.5 million. (Photo courtesy of Harley Davidson) Costa Rica’s Ministry of Transport (MOPT), which oversees the traffic police, is defending its recent decision to purchase 64 brand-new Harley Davidson motorcycles at a cost of around US $1.5 million, or a little ...

(ICR/CRS Archive) The Costa Rican public health and social security administration, known as CCSS or ‘La Caja,’ is preparing to shutdown the headquarters of Costa Rica’s ruling political party, the Citizen Action Party (PAC), as the result of unpaid mandatory employer contributions of some ¢380 million (~US $710,000) that PAC failed to pay during a four-year period between 2006 and 2010, the d...

Guatemala City, Feb 18 (EFE).- Costa Rican President Luis Guillermo Solis announced Thursday that some 4,100 Cuban migrants remain in his country awaiting transportation to the United States. In response to reporters' questions after meeting in this capital with his Guatemalan counterpart, Jimmy Morales, Solis expressed his wish that "in a few weeks" all the Cubans will have been able to travel...

Prisoners prepare to unload computers for their new computer lab. (Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Justice and Peace) More than 250 computers are being delivered to nine different adult prisons as well as juvenile detention facilities in Costa Rica to set up computer labs for inmates, the Ministry of Justice and Peace announced on Thursday. Amongst the institutions that will receive a com...

(Archive/stock image. For illustrative purposes only). For a month, doctors at the Max Peralta Hospital in the city of Cartago, located east of Costa Rica’s capital San Jose, had been keeping a brain-dead woman on artificial life support in hopes of allowing her unborn child a chance at life. On February 8th, doctors and family received their wish, as a team of more than a dozen specialists...