By Wendy Anders 1 in 5 Canadians enjoy sex on the beach in Costa Rica, file photo. To create a realistic film for young people promoting condom use for safer sex, Coventry University in England is recruiting couples who are willing to be filmed having sex in ‘natural settings', reported England’s The Daily Mail last week. The university is offering £400 in compensation to three young cou...

By Wendy Anders The Cessna that crashed into the sea off the coast of Tambor, Puntarenas on Wednesday, Oct. 19 around 6:00 p.m. due to bad weather. Photo courtesy of Teletica. England’s Daily Mail reported today that yesterday’s plane crash near Tambor Beach involved four crew members of the British reality TV show “Made in Chelsea.” The crew was on their way to prepare things in advance...

Brussels, Oct. 19 - The European Police Office announced Wednesday the results of an international operation that hit hard against organized crime in the European Union. Photo for illustrative purposes. In a report released on its website, Europol said agents participating in operation Ciconia Alba seized 2.62 tons of cocaine, identified 529 victims of human trafficking, and arrested 314 ...

LONDON, Oct. 18 — Today marks the 7th anniversary of Michael Dixon’s disappearance in the seaside holiday town of Tamarindo, Costa Rica, on the country’s northern Pacific coast. Michael Dixon's parents pictured at press conference in London. (PRNewsFoto/David Dixon) His family is still seeking answers on what happened to their loved one, a British journalist. Evidence indicates he was th...

MOSCOW, Oct. 9 -- Tensions continue to rise between the United States and Russia as the Russian foreign minister said Sunday recent actions and statements threaten his country's national security. Russian marines take part in the landing operation during the strategic military exercises at the Khmelevka training range in the Kaliningrad region on the Baltic Sea in 2009. More recently, in Octob...

By Wendy Anders Technology to clean the ocean of trash being developed by The Ocean Cleanup. The Ocean Cleanup concluded its first-ever reconnaissance flight over ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’ this week, the group reported on their website. Founded in 2013 by Boyan Slat when he was 17, The Ocean Cleanup is a Dutch Foundation developing advanced technologies to rid the world’s oceans of p...

Warsaw, Oct. 3  - Tens of thousands of black-clad women protested across Poland Monday against a proposed near-total abortion ban in the devoutly Catholic country, where the law is already among the most restrictive in Europe. Polish women take part in a nationwide demonstration against a proposed near-total abortion ban in the devoutly Catholic country in Warsaw on October 3, 2016. AFP Pro...

NOBEL MEDICINE  Tokyo, Oct. 3 — Japanese biologist Yoshinori Ohsumi, who won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering the mechanism of cellular autophagy, underlined Monday the importance of challenges. After hearing about his win, the 71-year-old scientist told media outlets the recognition by Stockholm's Karolinska Institute was an honor because his study was in basic m...

COPENHAGEN, Denmark, Sept. 8 (UPI) -- Denmark's tax minister said the government will buy data leaked from Mossack Fonseca, the law firm involved in the Panama Papers scandal. Police officers stand guard next to a company list showing the Mossack Fonseca law firm outside their office in Panama City April 12, 2016. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso Taxation Minister Karsten Lauritzen said an anonymous of...

By Wendy Anders Photo for illustrative purposes. A 65-year-old German woman had her home in Quebrada Azul, Tilarán broken into by four masked, armed men on Tuesday evening, said Michael Soto, press spokesperson for the Judicial Investigative Agency (OIJ). The woman, Cristina Caglass, a legal resident of Costa Rica, was alone in her house at the time. The house is situated on a farm on a ...

BRUSSELS GRAFFITI (Report) Brussels' recent unidentified penis and vagina graffiti. Brussels, Sept. 23 — An anonymous artist is wreaking havoc on the streets of Brussels, a city whose authorities are flummoxed by the sudden appearance of a mysterious series of sexually-explicit graffiti showing human genitalia of gargantuan proportions. The third masterpiece in this unclaimed oeuvre, a 6-m...

BRITAIN SCIENCE Photo for illustrative purposes only. London, Sept. 27 — The United Kingdom saw the birth of the first baby in the world conceived by an assisted reproduction technique which used DNA from three different parents, revealed the British science magazine New Scientist on Tuesday. The publication noted that Abrahim Hassan, a five-month-old baby, was the result of a controvers...

SPAIN PROSTITUTION  Alicante, Spain, Sept. 18 — The Spanish police have dismantled a group dedicated to human trafficking, prostitution and drugs, and managed to arrest six suspects. Police officials announced that this group is part of a criminal organization specialized in sexual exploitation of women of different nationalities to make revenues that have been transferred to Brazil. The ma...

By Wendy Anders Man watching porn. Photo for illustrative purposes, Flickr. Yesterday morning the Minors Section of the Judicial Investigative Agency (OIJ) conducted two simultaneous raids in Escazú and Cartago, both in Costa Rica’s Central Valley, to gather evidence for an investigation on a 17-year-old male teen who is suspected of production, possession and distribution of child pornogra...

Paris, Sept. 13 - One person was killed and four were seriously injured in an accident near a French port involving a lifeboat on the world's largest cruise liner, Royal Caribbean International, a Marseille Fire Department spokesperson told EFE today. The five victims, who were crew members of the MS Harmony of the Seas, were presumably taking part in a security drill when the lifeboat they wer...

By Wendy Anders Japan yesterday opened its 'scientific whaling' season on the north coast of country, during which it expects to capture 51 minke whales, said the Japanese Fisheries Agency to the Spanish newswire EFE. The season will end late October in the North Pacific, and it’s stated aim is to help manage maritime resources based on an analysis of the stomach contents of captured whales. ...

By Wendy Anders Interpol estimates that human trafficking earns between $5-6 billion a year, said EFE today. The United Nations Fund for Children said in a statement today that an estimated 500,000 children used traffickers to reach Europe over the past year and a half, reported EFE today. Meanwhile, the United States Department of States placed Costa Rica on its Tier 2 Watch List for the...

By Wendy Anders Oxfam Germany’s recently published report detailing working and living conditions for Costa Rica’s pineapple and Ecuador's banana workers, “Sweet Fruit, Bitter Truth,” does not mince words. “This investigation reveals (too) many violations of human and labour rights in the production of bananas and pineapples,” said the report based on numerous interviews conducted with worke...

An electrical storm has caused the deaths of 323 reindeer living in a national park in southern Norway, authorities announced Monday. The animals' corpses were found Friday night by a ranger at Hardangervidda National Park in a small area with a diameter of between 50 and 80 meters (164 and 262 feet). "It is something very unique. I've heard of cattle killed by lightning before, but never in...

Cartoon by Clay Jones A court on Friday suspended the ban on Islamic burkini swimming costumes imposed by a French Riviera town in a ruling likely to set a precedent to be followed in France's other beaches. France's Council of State, the country's top administrative court, lifted the ban in the Cote d'Azur town of Villeneuve-Loubet. The ruling was expected to be adopted by 30 other muni...

Source: RAI The old mountain village of Amatrice was obliterated by a 6.2 magnitude earthquake that hit early Wednesday morning, leaving nearly 200 people dead and at least 53 missing. From the ground, EFE could see that many houses collapsed and cars were crushed by the falling rubble. In this scene of destruction and pain, a man tried to cycle through debris-strewn streets with tears i...

By Wendy Anders This morning in Geneva, Switzerland, Costa Rica’s Security Minister Gustavo Mata reiterated Costa Rica’s wholesale commitment to the effective implementation of the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty. The Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) is a multilateral treaty regulating international trade in conventional weapons, according to the United Nations website that entered into force in Dec...

Wikimedia Commons French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Wednesday he supported the ban issued in several parts of the country against the burkini, but ruled out government legislation on the matter. Valls said in an interview with La Provence newspaper that general laws dictating clothes are not a solution. The Prime Minister's comments arrive in the wake of an all-out beach brawl i...

ICR-CRS Archive/FILE (Pictured: Workers at a multinational medical device manufacturing company's facility in Heredia, Costa Rica) By Wendy Anders The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in its most recent edition of an annual series on Foreign Direct Investment in Latin America (June 2016) reported that FDI flows to Central America were up by 6 pe...

By Wendy Anders Last Wednesday August 10 at Germany’s Federal Foreign Ministry Office, Costa Rica and Germany celebrated the ratification of the establishment of legal instruments as part of an agreement to eliminate double taxation of income and assets, stated Costa Rica’s Ministry of Foreign Relations in a press release Friday. The agreement aims to provide clear guidelines for both co...

Britain could remain in the European Union until the end of 2019, almost a year longer than anticipated by the British government, according to The Sunday Times newspaper. The Theresa May-led Conservative government is preparing to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, which provides for a two-year period to negotiate cutting off of ties with Brussels. London has publicly stated that it ha...

Wikimedia Commons Controversy has sparked in France after a French NGO decided to arrange a day at a water park near Marseille for women who wear the Islamic full-cover swimsuit known as "burkini", while French authorities plan to ban it. On its Facebook page, Smile 13 announced the organization of the day on Sept. 17 at SpeedWater Park, giving access only to women wearing burkinis, while m...

Wikimedia Commons The State of Israel has been buying gas masks for decades from suppliers who also sold them to the Nazi regime, Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot reported Wednesday. The country obtains its gas masks from two companies: the German firm Drager and the American MSA, which used to be German and whose previous name was Auer. Based on recent findings, both companies manufactu...

Wikimedia Commons A total of 4,027 refugees and migrants have died in the Mediterranean in the first seven months of this year, a 35 percent increase compared with the same period of 2015, the International Organization for Migration, or IOM, reported on Tuesday.   Drowning was the main cause of death though fatalities sometimes resulted from violence among people on the crowded boa...

By Wendy Anders Canada’s low-fare leader WestJet announced last week it will add dozens of new flights to its growing domestic and international networks as part of its 2016-2017 winter schedule. New flights will run from Toronto to a number of Canadian and international destinations including Vancouver, Ottawa, Moncton, Myrtle Beach, Aruba, Kingston (Jamaica), San José and Liberia (Costa Ri...

Scotland Yard, the London Metropolitan Police, believes that a terrorist attack in Britain is a matter of time. The Metropolitan police commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said, in an article published on the Mail on Sunday, that he could not promise that there will never be an attack, noting that the security forces are working hard to avoid what may occur. Hogan-Howe added that he understo...

Photo: JayPLee Flickr CommonsGerman police is investigating the possibility that the Sunday night explosion in the city of Ansbach in Bavaria, southern Germany, which killed the perpetrator of the attack and injured at least ten people, is an Islamic attack. Bavarian Interior Minister, Joachim Herrmann, said at a press conference that the fact the attacker attempted to kill several people near...

Today's print cover of Tageszeitung -tz- tabloid from MunichFriday's assault at a Munich shopping mall was "probably" the work of a lone assailant who took his own life after fatally shooting nine people, German police said. "We found a man, who killed himself. We assume, that he was the only shooter," the Munich police said on Twitter shortly after authorizing the resumption of transit servic...

Turkey state TV headquarters after the coup attempt. Anadolu AgencyTurkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday said the attempted coup was a "gift of God to cleanse the military". "This act is a great gift of God to us because the military will be cleansed," the president said at a press conference in Istanbul, adding that those behind the attempted coup would have to pay for their "tre...

Turkey's army claimed Friday that it has taken full control of the country with the aim of "restoring democracy." "All international accords will remain in effect. We expect to maintain good relations with all countries," the General Staff said in a statement. At the same time, the Anadolu news agency said that the army chief of staff, Gen. Hulusi Akar, had been taken hostage by a group of s...

Source: RFIAt least 77 people have died in the alleged terrorist attack on Bastille day by a truck driver in Nice, the mayor of Nice Christian Estrosi reported. French president Francois Hollande and prime minister Manuel Valls are now in the inter-ministerial crisis cell due to the attack. A spokeswoman for the Elysee Palace told Efe that Hollande went to the crisis cell in the Ministry of...

French President François Hollande. EFE/FileFrench President Francois Hollande defended himself on Thursday after he was criticized for having hired a personal hairdresser with a gross salary of 9,895 euros ($10,099) a month, noting that he has reduced the costs of the presidency as well as his salary by 30 percent since he came to the Elysee in May 2012. On the occasion of the French National...

Wikimedia Commons A New Jersey resident who was gored as he ran with the bulls in Spain's famous San Fermin festival in Pamplona on Wednesday has described the experience as the highlight of his life. Matthew Levin, 39, had clambered onto a fence during his first ever running of the bulls when a charging bull slammed into him and his friends completely by accident, driving a horn into his l...

Wikimedia Commons A terrifying and chaotic running of the bulls on Friday left a toll of 16 thrill-seekers injured and two of the eight participants gored were in critical condition, officials said. Of the wounded, five were American citizens, three of whom suffered goring injuries, the regional government said. One American, identified only by his initials P.G., received a 10 centimeter...

Ex Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev said on Saturday that the rhetoric used by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in its summit in Poland is a sign of war. "All the rhetoric used in Warsaw is almost a declaration of war against Russia," he said to Russian news agency Interfax, adding that "the Cold War is preparing to get hot." The decisions made by NATO, such as the deployment...