By Wendy Anders This morning, Colombia's low-budget regional Wingo airline joins a growing number of regional flight options available out of Costa Rica when it touches down for the first time in the country with passengers from Panama. After an inaugural celebration at the Juan Santamaría Airport (SJO) in Alajuela, roughly 15 miles west of San José, passengers will then board for a flight t...

By Wendy Anders The low-budget Mexican airline Volaris will launch its regional flights in and out of Costa Rica today, reported La Republica, a Costa Rican Spanish newspaper. Volaris will start its service by offering two daily flights to Guatemala from Alajuela's Juan Santamaría (SJO) airport; one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Over the next three years the airline plans t...

By Wendy Anders Jaguar, image by Wikipedia. Tomorrow the British Broadcasting Corporation will show the first episode of a new documentary, “The Dark: Nature’s Nighttime World,” highlighting Costa Rica’s diverse nocturnal wildlife. Scheduled for 4:15 p.m. (which would be 10:15 a.m. in Costa Rica) on BBC Two, the "Central America Jungle" episode brings viewers up close to Costa Rica's rar...

Press Release / The Costa Rican Minister of Environment and Energy, Edgar Gutierrez Espeleta, and his counterpart of the Principality of Andorra, Silvia Calvo Armengol, signed this Monday in Marrakech, Morocco, the memorandum of understanding on Environment and Protection of Biodiversity. With this agreement both countries will exchange experiences in areas like the implementation of a carbon ...

Editor’s note: The views expressed by guest columnists are not necessarily those of The Costa Rica Star, its advertisers, or its staff. By Britt Nelson A Trump fan posted this on Facebook. There is much speculation going around about how the new President–elect Trump administration and his evolving foreign policy might affect Costa Rica along with the rest of Central America. Immediat...

Columbus, Ohio, Nov 12 — Mexico ended a humiliating string of 2-0 losses to the United States in this Midwestern city, getting a 2-1 victory over its arch-rival at the start of the fifth and final round of World Cup qualifying in the Concacaf region. Costa Rica beats Cuba Gold Cup Soccer. Friday night's match at Mapfre Stadium seemed destined to end in a 1-1 draw, but 37-year-old defender R...

By Wendy Anders File photo Costa Rica’s Ombudsman’s office considers the proposal presented by the telecommunications superintendency, Sutel, to eliminate set prices for postpaid mobile telephone services is unjustified. The proposed changes will not guarantee that charges for current Internet speed are maintained, and open the possibility that consumers will be charged on a per-download...

By Wendy Anders Gardasil, the controversial human papilloma virus vaccine that was tested in Costa Rica. F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG’s Central America and Caribbean subsidiary (Roche CAC) reported US$116 million in exports from January to October 2015, reported El Financiero (EF), Costa Rica’s business daily. As part of this growth, the company invested US$5.5 million last year in its distri...

By Wendy Anders Viogaz bio-digester in the Barra Honda National Park in Nicoya, Costa Rica. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)’s ‘Technology Review’, awarded Joaquín Víquez, manager of the Heredia, Costa Rica-based Viogaz company its young innovators in Central America award. The contest, which is held in partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank, recognized six o...

By Wendy Anders Photo for illustrative purposes. U.S. police in New Jersey deported a Costa Rican man who fled the country in 2003 presumably to escape after allegedly raping his daughter, reported El Diario Extra, a Costa Rican newspaper. According to local Costa Rica news, Jose Alberto Orozco Ramirez, 48, was accused of raping his under age daughter who then became pregnant. New Jer...

By Wendy Anders Over $180,000 in cash a Honduran man tried to smuggle into Costa Rica in a jalapeño-filled truck. This weekend at Costa Rica’s northern Peñas Blancas border with Nicaragua, anti-drug police seized some serious cash hidden in a jalapeño-filled truck arriving from Honduras, reported the Public Security Ministry press office. All told, a Honduran man had US$182,680 in bills ...

Talamanca, Limón. By Wendy Anders Yesterday morning, Costa Rica’s Minister of Public Security Gustavo Mata Vega together with Costa Rican police officials welcomed a humanitarian mission at the Limón International Airport on the country’s Atlantic coast. Helicopters from the US Southern Command based in Panama arrived with a 16-person medical team comprised of doctors, nurses, dentists, ...

By Wendy Anders Quepos Plateau - Source: UC Santa Cruz A man from the United States who was apparently vacationing in the Quepos/Manuel Antonio area in Costa Rica’s Central Pacific region was rushed to the hospital in delicate condition this afternoon after the taxi he was traveling in spun out of control after ramming into a tractor, reported El Diario Extra, Costa Rica’s Spanish daily tab...

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...

SAN JOSÉ, Costa Rica, Oct. 19 — A recent study paints a panoramic picture of a surging global trade in illicit cigarettes that is funding groups from Hezbollah and Hamas to the Central American Los Zetas cartel. Contraband cigarettes in Singapore, Facebook, photo for illustrative purposes. The study, "From Ant Smuggling to an Elephant in the Market,” was conducted by CID Gallup for the Cost...

Press Release/ The tourism activity continues to grow and remains as the most dynamic sector in Costa Rica's economy. This was highlighted by the First Vice-president of the Republic, Helio Fallas, during the inauguration of the Alajuela Touristic Expo: “Something more than a Volcano”, that took place at the City Mall. According to data by the Central Bank the inbound tourism grew by 12.3% in ...

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...

By Wendy Anders Source: United Travelers using a flexible search feature on the United Airlines site came up with a slew of low round-trip fares from different U.S. cities. The low fares were found for dates between Wednesday, October 26 and Tuesday, November 1, 2016. A 10-day advance purchase is required for the tickets, said Airfarewatchdog.com. Some of the low fares found to and fr...

By Wendy Anders Cocaine trafficking, Costa Rica Costa Rica’s drug control police completed the bust of a drug ring based out of southern Costa Rica with nine arrests yesterday in different parts of the country, reported the Public Security Ministry. Three other members of the group were previously arrested, two in 2015 and one last month. Research conducted by the drug police reveals ...

By Wendy Anders At least a dozen flights both entering and leaving Costa Rica around noon today were cancelled due to  Hurricane Matthew, reported Aeris, the managers of the Juan Santamaría International Airport (SJO) in Alajuela, Costa Rica. Several outbound flights on Jet Blue, American Airlines, and Spirit Air heading towards Miami, Orlando and Fort Lauderdale, Florida were cancelled arou...

By Wendy Anders Costa Rican leaders ready for a trade mission next week to enhance trade relations with South Korea. Last year 71 Costa Rican companies exported 62 different products to South Korea, including radio and television parts, green coffee, medical prostheses, bananas, and pineapples, said the Foreign Ministry yesterday. Costa Rican officials will seek to expand market opportuni...

Los Angeles (USA), Sept. 27 — More and more US companies are offering their workers health plans with the option of traveling to a Latin American country for medical treatment, as unveiled today during the "Latin American Health Tourism Summit" held in Los Angeles. “Five percent of US employers are offering their employees medical tourism plans. The growth in two years of these programs has bee...

By Wendy Anders Wikimedia Commons “A computer geek who ran a website for the massive Internet-based Platinum Sports Book was fined $400,000 for his involvement in the illegal gambling scheme,” wrote Sam Pazzano for The Toronto Sun last Tuesday. The London, Ontario native, 59-year-old Gordon Baird, pleaded guilty to bookmaking and contributing to a criminal organization. The organizati...

By Wendy Anders Border police of Panama As undocumented immigrants from various regions continue to permeate Panama and Costa Rica, and present a growing concern from economic, health and social angles, the countries are scurrying to put into place official information-sharing and other essential mechanisms for tackling the pressing problem. This week, foreign ministry representatives fr...

By Wendy Anders Anti-crime efforts in Costa Rica’s southern Caribbean region are getting a boost with recent funds pledged by the U.S. government, said the Ministry of Security in a press statement this weekend. During a visit to the National Guard Substation in Sixaola, canton of Salamanca, in Limón province, Minister of Public Security, Gustavo Mata, as well as several police chiefs, met w...

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 This afternoon, the Washington Post reported from Havana, Cuba that an agreement was reached by the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) leftist rebel group to end the continent’s longest conflict after after 52 years of fighting. After nearly four years of negotiations and a ceasefire announced in June, “'We have finished fighting with w...

By Wendy Anders MSP file photo Monday, the Judicial Investigation Organization (OIJ) arrested seven more members of a marijuana cultivation and distribution network based in Costa Rica’s southern Perez Zeledón region, stated Walter Espinoza, OIJ Director, in a press conference yesterday. The operation was led by five brothers by the last names Vargas Hidalgo who 21 years ago almost to th...

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...

By Wendy Anders The U.S. Pickleball Association (USAPA), based in Surprise, AZ, describes pickleball as “the fastest growing sport in the U.S.” Created in 1965 in Washington State there are currently pickleball play opportunities offered throughout the U.S., and even abroad. Tony Horpel, a California native who settled a few years ago with his wife in San Ramón, Costa Rica, a small mounta...

By Wendy Anders Source: Wikimedia Commons Wednesday police responded to an alert received on their free anonymous report line, 1176, regarding suspicious activity in a house in San Antonio de Escazú, a mountainous suburb west of San José, according to official sources. The Security Ministry’s anti-drug police reported discovering hydroponic marijuana being cultivated by a 60-year-old U.S...

By Wendy Anders Last year, many in Costa Rica were surprised by a governmental decision to ban imports of Mexican avocados. The government alleged the ban was due to a blight that might spread to local crops, according to reports in various local media sources, but inside sources said the allegation was unfounded. For the last two decades, Mexico has provided Costa Rica with the vast majo...

By Wendy Anders AT&T Inc., the Dallas, Texas-based multinational telecommunications conglomerate, was granted a 10-year data transfer and leased line license last week by Costa Rica's telecom regulator Sutel, reported Costa Rica’s Spanish daily La Nación today. This newest operator in Costa Rica’s telecom market will not offer services to individual consumers, rather will “Focus on offer...

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 Source: Flickr PLEASE SEE SALES FOR OCTOBER 4TH HERE Airfarewatchdog.com announced today a one-day 99 percent discount on Spirit Airway round trip flights from several U.S. cities including Atlanta, Boston, and Minneapolis for Tuesday and Wednesday travel between Aug. 23 - Oct. 5, 2016 (Sept. 6 is a blackout date). Book this fare on Spirit.com using promo code 99PCT. ...

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...

By Wendy Anders Wikimedia Commons Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega ousted 28 opposition lawmakers in July in advance of the country’s November elections, and the rocky road towards his probable reelection continues with no opposition candidates in the field. The former Independent Liberal Party (PLI) legislators are expected to appeal to the OAS for support for their removal which occu...

By Wendy Anders Mexican soldiers fighting the Drug War. Wikimedia Commons A recent political analysis of the region raises questions about the continuation of a militarized approach to illegal drug trafficking in an era where the decades long US sponsored “war on drugs” has been repeatedly called a failure. From 2004-2014 the United States provided $768 million in police and military aid...

Thousands of Cuban migrants remain in shelters across Costa Rica. (CIDH/Twitter) By Wendy Anders After months of behind the scenes meetings and dialogue, the eight Central American Integration System (SICA, in Spanish) members met last week on Roatán Island, Honduras and welcomed Costa Rica back. At the June 28-30 meeting, leaders agreed to a forward-looking agenda that convinced Costa R...

(Photo: EFE via El Mundo) Colombian police Sunday said they had seized eight tons of cocaine from the country’s most active criminal syndicate, the Usuga clan. In a statement, police said they found the drugs hidden on a banana plantation near the border with Panama, in Colombia’s northwest Uraba region. "The biggest seizure of drugs in history. A hit against criminals," Colombian Presid...