Costa Rica is ranked in the 32nd position out of 144 countries in the 2016 Global Gender Gap Report. This index evaluates the gap between man and women in different fields: economic, education, political empowerment, health and life expectancy. Costa Rica scored 0.736, with 2 being the maximum gender equality, the country went up 6 positions in comparison to 2015. Costa Rica ranked 105 ...

By Wendy Anders Source: Cool Mountain, photo for illustrative purposes. A proposal to levy a temporary 2 percent tax on non-alcoholic beverages has been introduced by Christian Socialist Legislator Rafael Ortiz Fábrega. The funds from the tax would finance the purchase of expensive drugs by the Costa Rican Social Security’s (CCSS) public health-care system. The proposed initiative would ...

By Wendy Anders After many days of small but constant emissions of ash and gases, Costa Rica's Turrialba Volcano, located southeast of the capital city, had a secular eruption early this morning. The event was captured on a home video at 5:25 a.m. by Jesús Edu Jimal from his home in Turrialba. Some beautiful photos of the eruption, which could be seen from many locales due to the clear we...

By Wendy Anders A successful fundraising campaign by the Costa Rica Forever Association, a local non-profit conservation agency that supports the country’s conservation areas and national park system, netted $230,000, allowing the group to purchase a much-needed patrol boat, and create a fund for the boat’s maintenance, said Zdenka Piskulich, the group’s executive director, in a press statement...

By Wendy Anders Source: Red Cross of Costa Rica Roughly 1,500 immigrants stranded at Costa Rica’s northern border on their journey northward are being provided with shelter, water, electricity, showers, portable toilets, a cooking area, and play places for children, according to the Communications Minister Mauricio Herrera. The Costa Rican Food Bank has recently pulled 8 tons from their ...

By Wendy Anders La Carpio, an impoverished neighborhood in the San Jose metro area. (CRS Archive) The United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in mid-October shared with the Costa Rican Ombudsman’s Office observations on health, safety, social issues, poverty, employment, and rights of vulnerable populations; and urged the government to undertake actions in these are...

By Wendy Anders A surgery in Costa Rica, Wikimedia Commons An interview with Pablo Guzman Stein, director of the private Medical Sciences University (Ucimed), located west of La Sabana Park in San José, Costa Rica, revealed the ways in which specialists in certain medical fields are actively maintaining a shortage in such areas to curtail competition, reported La Nación, Costa Rica’s mainst...

The Global Institute of Entrepreneurship and Development headquartered in Washington showed that Costa Rica is the country in Central America with more opportunities for entrepreneurship. Costa Rica’s strong points are in the Perception of Opportunities and Abilities; however the Institute indicated that the country is behind in process innovation, risk capital and absorption of technology. ...

The Osa Conservation Area (ACOSA) of the Costa Rica National Area Conservation System (SINAC-MINAE), through the Program of Control and Protection and along with the Ministry of Public Security, unite efforts to run Inter-Institutional operations against the environmental offenders. Yesterday, October 20, members of the Police force and the Frontier Police along with personnel of the Osa Conse...

Costa Rican seismologist Marino Protti visited the Antarctica for the first time in 2013 as part of the Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling (WISSARD), with the objective of installing twenty seismologic stations to measure the displacement of the glacial and the earthquakes produced by the same. Now, three years later, Dr. Marino Protti, an experienced seismologist from the ...

By Wendy Anders Rescue of bus crash victims in Cinchona, Thursday, Oct. 20, courtesy of CRHoy.com. A group of retired university professors from the country’s National University (UNA) were en route to Guatuso in northern Costa Rica when their bus plunged off a cliff in Cinchona, north of Heredia, yesterday, reported local police. The bus was transporting 13 men and 18 women on a trip to...

We had reported some weeks back that Costa Rica has the most contaminated river in Central America and the repercussions this is having in two beaches in Puntarenas. It is important that we raise awareness on the magnitude of this problem. The Tarcoles River extends through 111 kilometers (69 miles), it carries the water of 23 other rivers, among them, Maria Aguilar, Torres and Tiribí, it goes ...

By Wendy Anders Costa Rica's Legislative Assembly. The “Vamos” party, which in English means “Let’s Go,” has just joined Costa Rica’s political fray in an attempt to “fight for equal rights for discriminated groups in Costa Rica,” reported the Costa Rican news site ElMundoCr.com. This latest political party is made up of long-standing Costa Rican human rights activists who want to fight ...

By Wendy Anders Barceló Hotel at Tambor Beach was flooded extensively on Monday. Photo, CRHoy.com. The rainy season is at its heaviest, as is typical in Costa Rica and much of Central America in October. Flooding is common, and caution must be taken especially when traveling in low lying areas and near rivers at this time of year. In August, three U.S. tourists drowned in a flash flood i...

By Wendy Anders Changes proposed by the Costa Rican telecom regulatory agency (Sutel) in Internet pricing that would eliminate postpaid Internet plans and charge per download fees is under criticism by the Costa Rican Professional Journalists Association (Colegio de Periodistas or Colper). “The move would be a step back in access to information,” said the association recently to Informa-Tico...

By Wendy Anders A hammock that was improvised to cart an indigenous woman in the Limón province by foot to be treated for appendicitis. She died from complications. While tourists fly from around the world to San José, Costa Rica for top notch medical and dental services, entire towns in remote parts of the country still lack even the roads to reach the nearest under-staffed public health p...

By Wendy Anders Crocodile Man Tour at the Tarcoles River near Jaco, Costa Rica A surfer is taking legal action to attempt to change the way the Costa Rican government manages the country’s fierce crocodiles which during certain times of the year enter estuaries and coastal waters from swollen river mouths, reported GrindTV, the adventure and outdoor lifestyle station, Saturday. Last week...

Costa Rica students will benefit from a scholarship program with the Korea University for postgraduate studies in science, technology, engineering and mathematics as well as master’s degrees and doctorate’s. Korea is one of the global leaders in science, technology and innovation. The signing of this agreement was made between the Minister of Science, Technology and Telecommunications (MIICITT...

By Wendy Anders At 3:00 a.m. yesterday in northern Costa Rica, judicial investigative agency (OIJ) police captured a man suspected of infringing Costa Rica’s wildlife protection laws. The 55-year-old was carrying 50 baby iguanas and an adult iguana in a sack on a bus. Police had been monitoring the man’s activities for a few days prior to the arrest, and they called in  some support from ...

By Wendy Anders Costa Rican school children, Wikimedia. Costa Rica’s government initiated a program to subsidize children under the age of 18 to help them stay in, or re-enter, the educational system. A budget increase of CRC375 million (US$688 million) was allocated for this specific initiative aimed at eradicating child labor, and thus reduce poverty, stated the Ministry of Labor and S...

By Wendy Anders Costa Rica’s telecommunications regulator, the Superintendency of Telecommunications (Sutel), has proposed new practices to increase competition among phone and Internet providers. The proposal, which is open for a 10-day public consultation period, includes a greater opening of international telephone services, internet plans, international roaming, and telecommunications tr...

By Wendy Anders A Long Line for Free Health Care at the Calderon Guardia Hospital One of San José, Costa Rica’s main public hospitals, the Hospital México, announced it has succeeded in reducing wait times for heart surgery by 652 percent. The wait time has been reduced from 745 days to 99 days, said Dr. Juan Antonio Ugalde, deputy director of the medical center, due to a special project...

By Wendy Anders Water tanker truck in Costa Rica. More than 16,000 residents of Atenas, a small town west of San José, will continue without water indefinitely due to damage to a potable water pipeline that supplies the area, reported local media this week. The Costa Rican Institute of Aqueducts and Sewers (AyA) reported that work is underway to replace the pipe, which was affected after...

By Wendy Anders Source: Flickr Commons Last month, the Costa Rican Agency on Personal Data Protection (Prodhab) passed a resolution reaffirming the Costa Rican Treasury Department's right to access individual’s personal data, including name, home address, phone number, email, telecommunications plans, among other information. Mauricio Garro, director of Prodhab, on the agency's Facebook ...

By Wendy Anders Santa Ana, Costa Rica wind farm, CNFL. The 17 wind power generators along the Tacuacorí mountain in Salitral, Santa Ana have been in operation for almost four years, said Costa Rica’s National Light and Power Company (CNFL) in a press statement. Since the start of their operations on December 13,  2012, the wind power project has generated more than 132,369 Megawatt hours...

By Wendy Anders An appeal to the Costa Rican Supreme Court on an article of the Family Code regarding men’s role as prime breadwinners for their families was struck down recently, reported El Diario Extra, Costa Rica’s main Spanish tabloid paper. The appeal claimed Article 35 of the country’s Family Code violates the country’s constitution and also the Universal Declaration of Human Rights b...

A quick summary of some achievements by different Costa Ricans: Ana Corrales, currently the Chief Financial and Operating Officer of Nest Labs, is Costa Rican, and she was listed in Worth Magazine’s article “New America” as one of 25 immigrants “… living and working in the U.S., whose successes are shaping the future of the country – and reminding us that the American Dream shouldn’t be a natio...

EFE/Costa Rica will host from the next international congress that will promote the sustainable tourism intelligence and recreational, social and cultural entertainment tourism. “The sustainable tourism intelligence converts data into knowledge and information with which destinations can adapt their offer to the new demands and needs of visitors, while recreation and entertainment tourism seek...

Costa Rica is in the sixth position in the world among the preferred destinations by expats according to a study carried out by InterNations, an expat network that provides information on destinations around the world and assessment on Visas, work permits, lodging, international schools etc. The study was applied electronically to 14, 272 expats of 174 different nationalities and that reside in...

By Wendy Anders Image of the Turrialba Volcano at night posted to the Ovsicori-UNA Facebook site by a reader this week. When Costa Ricans are tired of washing their cars, you know it's bad! After days of ash from the Turrialba Volcano settling over most of San José, Costa Rica's greater metropolitan area, one Facebook user said he was fed up, and was giving up trying to keep his car clea...

By Wendy Anders Facebook post denouncing xenophobic attitudes in wake of the Education Ministry's inclusion of Nicaragua's culture in independence day festivities. On September 15, Costa Rica’s Education Ministry issued a memo indicating that schools in San Jose with a high percentage of Nicaraguan students could sing the Nicaraguan national anthem at the close of this month’s celebrations ...

By Wendy Anders Officers from Costa Rica’s regional anti-drug program (PRAD, in Spanish) chased a vehicle Sunday night from La Sabana park just west of downtown San José to Alto Palomas in Pozos, Santa Ana, a suburb about 12 kms west of San José, reported the Public Security Ministry yesterday. They detained a gray Mitsubishi Outlander which was driven by a 46-year old Costa Rican man named ...

By Wendy Anders La Carpio, an impoverished neighborhood in the San Jose metro area. (CRS Archive) After participating in the United Nations General Assembly last week, Costa Rica has been reviewing its progress on a number of fronts. The UN has an ambitious goal of ending all forms of social exclusion and to promote inclusive development by the year 2030. The 2030 UN Agenda for sustainab...

By Wendy Anders Sept. 22 early morning eruption of Turrialba Volcano. Starting at about 3:20 a.m. and lasting for a solid four hours this morning, researchers at Costa Rica's National University's Volcanology and Seismology Research Institute (Ovsicori-UNA), reported that the Turrialba's eruptive column reached 2,000 ms above the highly active volcano's crater. Winds have been carrying t...

By Wendy Anders Karina Córdoba posted this beautiful image of the Turrialba Volcano, taken from Alajuela, on the Ovsicori FB page. The feather of white color indicates the presence of water vapor and gases. After a brief end to a recent 25-hour eruption yesterday afternoon, Costa Rica's Turrialba Volcano started spewing ash again. The National University's Volcanology and Seismology Rese...

By Wendy Anders Wikimedia Commons Costa Rica’s National Child Care and Development Network (Red de Cuido Infantil) has added an early childhood education component to 11 of its public daycare centers starting this month, reported the Ministry of Education. The program is Costa Rica’s first step towards offering broad public early childhood education. The Ministry of Education has allocat...

Updated on Monday, September 19. By Wendy Anders Source: OVSICORI The Turrialba Volcano is in a new phase of eruptive activity, reported the National Costa Rican University’s Volcanology and Seismology Research Institute (Ovsicori-UNA) today on their Facebook page. Starting last Tuesday, September 13 volcanic tremors have been recorded daily. These have caused plumes of 100 - 400 mete...

By Wendy Anders Dreams Las Mareas Guanacaste, Costa Rica Hotels in Guanacaste, Costa Rica’s northern Pacific province, report spending an average of US$120,000 per month to provide drinking water to their guests, reported CRHoy, a Costa Rican Spanish digital news media, earlier this month. Business leaders, who say they will probably need to lay off workers to cut costs due to the additi...

Famous sex tourist David Strecker who was arrested in September 4, 2015, and is a prisoner in La Reforma, will face trial in Costa Rica in November for allegedly having engaged in the promotion of the country as a destination for sexual tourism, this through several online blogs, his facebook page and you tube videos. According to an article by Michael Krumholtz published in media website VICE ...

Last week Costa Rica’s achievement of running on green energy was all over the news. Today, the country gives another big step towards electric independence and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Today, September 16, 2016 Costa Rica inaugurated the biggest hydroelectric plant in Central America, the Reventazon megaproject began working three months before the expected time frame. This i...