(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...

(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) Remember when Rush Limbaugh vowed to relocate to Costa Rica if Obamacare passed? It didn’t happen, of course, but according to The Washington Post, Costa Rica is a prime destination to relocate for those wishing to flee the United States in the event that Donald Trump is elected president of the world's lone superpower. Perhaps Limbaugh opted out of relocating to Costa R...

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 Just days since Panama and Costa Rica declared that the airlift of thousands of Cuban migrants that had been stranded in both countries en route to the United States had been completed, ostensibly putting an end to the Cuban migrant crisis that saw some 8...

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...

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...

(CRS Archive) President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua seems destined to win reelection in November, according to the latest national poll conducted by M&R Consultores, published by Nicaragua’s Nuevo Diario on Monday. According to the poll, Ortega, who has held the presidency since 2007, has the support of 66.7 percent of likely voters. As such, Ortega is running essentially unchallenged, a...

(Courtesy/WhatsApp) (VOA) Popular messaging app WhatsApp is reportedly in a battle over encryption with the U.S. Government similar to the one involving Apple. According to The New York Times, a federal judge has approved the monitoring of messages made via the Facebook-owned app in a criminal investigation, but end-to-end encryption makes it difficult. Some officials want to see the com...

(YouTube screen capture) Meet the woman who may be Nicaragua's biggest supporter of U.S. presidential candidate, Donald Trump. Her name is Evelyn, and during a Trump rally in Cincinatti, Ohio on Sunday, the Nicaraguan woman who hails from Managua took the opportunity to lavish Mr. Trump with praise when given a chance to ask the billionaire a question. "Mr. Trump, I don't have a question...

(FILE / White House photo) Editor's note: This story was updated on March 14, 2016 at 3:48 p.m. (GMT -6) with quotes obtained by the EFE news agency. Despite a long editorial by the Cuban government last week in state media stating that the communist island has no intentions of changing its policies and demanding that Washington cease meddling in its internal affairs, U.S. President Barack ...

(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...

(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 ...

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 ...

(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...

(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...

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...

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...