President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced the creation of a commission to seek solutions to the increase in deaths from addiction to heroin and opiates, a situation he called a "total epidemic" and one of the "biggest problems" that the US has at present. "This is a total epidemic and I think it's probably, almost un-talked about compared to the severity that we're witnessing," said Trump a...

Costa Rica is hosting the XVI Tuxtla Mechanism Summit with the participation of Presidents and high ranked delegations of Colombia, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Dominican Republic and of course Costa Rica; these countries are part of the the Mesoamerican group since 1996, when it was known as Puebla-Panama Plan. Mexico’s President, Enrique Peña Nieto wi...

The World Trade Organization (WTO) stated today that Mexico had requested consultations with Costa Rica as, allegedly, this country unlawfully imposed a restriction on Mexican avocado imports. The measures that Mexico considers restrictive are the checks, inspections, and approval procedures for the importation of the fruit. Mexico also stated that Costa Rica had failed to apply or recognize...

Mexico City, Mar 7 — "Damaris," with lush black hair and inquisitive dark eyes, is a single mom who for the past four years has been a sex worker in Mexico City, fighting day by day against discrimination and police harassment. "We ask people not to judge us," she said. "Police persecution is horrible. They say you're a whore and almost treat you like an animal. They tell you 'If you want to n...

With a 154.6 percent increase in asylum petitions in 2016, Mexico has gone from being a transit country to a possible destination for refugees, a trend that figures to continue and even accelerate under the policies of the current president of the United States. After receiving just 3,424 asylum requests in 2015, that number jumped to 8,781 in 2016, according to figures from the Mexican Commissio...

A regional proposal by the Costa Rican Judiciary’s Restorative Justice Program was chosen from more than eighty projects submitted to an international competition organized by the European Union. The program proposes a regional approach to restorative justice, and will receive support from the European Union for its implementation, said European Union Ambassador Pelayo Castro Zuzuarregui. Costa...

The Donald Trump administration on Tuesday established new directives to strengthen U.S. immigration control, unveiling an aggressive plan that includes accelerating deportation procedures for undocumented migrants and hiring 15,000 new agents. "The surge of illegal immigration at the southern border has overwhelmed federal agencies and resources and has created a significant national security vu...

Specially trained dolphins and a marine sanctuary are to be used in a bid to save the critically endangered vaquita, a rare porpoise endemic to Mexican waters whose numbers are believed to have fallen to less than three dozen. The goal is to capture some vaquitas and place them in a temporary sanctuary until it is safe for them to return to the northern part of the Gulf of California, said Lore...

US President Donald Trump said Friday that he had a "very good" telephone conversation with Mexican counterpart Enrique Peña Nieto amid a diplomatic spat over Washington's plans for a border wall. During a joint press conference with visiting UK Prime Minister Theresa May, Trump confirmed that he and the Mexican president spoke for nearly an hour. "It was a very, very friendly call," Trump s...

The president of the United States intends to impose a 20 percent tax on imports from Mexico to cover the cost of a wall spanning the nations' border, the White House spokesman told reporters on board Air Force One, Donald Trump has already made up his mind about the tax, Sean Spicer said. The tax, however, cannot be immediately levied because of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)...

President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed several executive orders affecting immigration, including one that assigns federal funds for the construction of a wall on the border separating the United States and Mexico. "We've been talking about this from the beginning," Trump said during the signing ceremony, which took place at the Department of Homeland Security. The border wall was one of the ...

Mexico City, Jan. 23 — Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto announced that his government will negotiate new trade pacts with signatory nations of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the ambitious treaty that the United States withdrew from on Monday. "Given the difficulty of making the TPP a reality, Mexico will immediately initiate talks that will create new bilateral trade agreements with the treat...

Newly elected U.S. President Donald Trump will focus this week on trade, immigration and national security, issues about which he may sign executive orders in the coming days, chief of staff Reince Priebus said Sunday. In an interview with Fox News, Priebus said that there will be "movement" in those three areas during his first week in office. Trump on Friday, just hours after being inaugur...

Reputed drug lord Joaquin "el Chapo" Guzman pleaded not guilty in federal court here Friday to charges of running the powerful Mexico-based Sinaloa cartel. "El Chapo" (Shorty) Guzman, who was assisted by an interpreter during the arraignment and is being held without bail at a jail in New York after being extradited to the United States from Mexico on Thursday, listened as the 17-count indictme...

The vaquita is a very small porpoise that lives solely in the Gulf of California, Mexico. The species is critically endangered primarily as a result of entanglement in fishing nets. Strong measures are needed to stop harmful fishing practices in its habitat or the species stands little chance of survival, says the World Wildlife Fund on their website. An ambitious, emergency plan to help save t...

Mexico City, Jan 18 (EFE).- A Mexican activist honored in 2005 with the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for his work in the northern state of Chihuahua was murdered last weekend, a source in the state Attorney General's Office told EFE Wednesday. Isidro Baldenegro was fatally shot around 4:00 p.m. Sunday, but it took authorities several days to reach the crime scene in the remote indige...

Grupo Televisa, S.A.B. and Univision Holdings, Inc. announced a strengthened and expanded relationship between the two companies by unifying both of their content development and production efforts. Both companies will benefit from a single, integrated focus on the Hispanic audience in the United States and the domestic Mexican audience, as well as from potential cost synergies from aligned con...

Mexico City, Jan. 14 — A fish endemic to Mexico's Gulf of California has been the target of poaching for decades because its swim bladder is highly coveted in China, where it is believed to possess aphrodisiac and medicinal properties. Illegal fishing of the critically endangered totoaba furthermore threatens to drive another unique marine species to extinction, such as the vaquita, a type of p...

As Juan walked to school one morning a year ago in El Salvador, two men on a motorbike sped by and fatally shot a boy on the street in front of him. The shooter took a good look at Juan's face. As a witness to a gang murder, Juan was now in the firing line. "They said I had to be part of their gang," said Juan, 15, who declined to give his real name for security reasons. Juan's mother, Te...

Mexico City, Jan. 10 — Investigators have not determined why a U.S. citizen, who was arrested and later deported, shot the U.S. vice consul in Guadalajara, the capital of the western Mexican state of Jalisco, last week, Mexico's Foreign Relations Secretary Luis Videgaray said Tuesday. "I have no information that allows me to speculate on the motive for this person's actions," Videgaray said in an...

Food and nutrition security are not improving in Latin American - some 34 million people continue to suffer from malnutrition, 47.7 percent of children under age 5 suffer from anemia and 49.8 percent, approximately 1.3 million, have chronic malnutrition. The figures "have not varied ostensibly in the region, they remain the same and are very worrying," the World Food Program (WFP) regional dire...

President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday threatened to impose a "big border tax" on General Motors Co <GM.N> for making some of its Chevrolet Cruze compact cars in Mexico, an arrangement the largest U.S. automaker defended as part of its strategy to serve global customers, not sell them in the United States. Trump's comments marked his latest broadside aimed at an American company over job...

Mexico City, Jan. 3 — The Mexican government expressed disappointment following Tuesday's announcement by the Ford Motor Co. that it was abandoning plans for a $1.6 billion assembly plant in Mexico. Mexico will see to it that Ford reimburses the San Luis Potosi state government for any expenditures of public money made in furtherance of the project, the Economy Secretariat said in a statement. ...

Mexicans overwhelmingly say they oppose the wall U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has promised to build along their northern border. But in Mexico's Ciudad Juarez, where extensive fencing was erected by the United States to secure the border between 2007 and 2010, residents have a more nuanced view of what a wall can mean. They say the Juarez fence has both caused and relieved problems in the ...

By Wendy Anders Time to act if you want to nab some low fares on Southwest air which flies daily from several U.S. cities into the northern Liberia, Costa Rica airport or the San José capital airport. A 21-day advance purchase is necessary, says the airline on their site, and these low fares are available for purchase only until January 26, 2017, 11:59 p.m. in the respective time zone of the...

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 The Mexican-American border wall remains a high priority for President-elect Donald Trump. He continues to talk about it, but without specifics, and he still maintains that Mexico will pay for it in one way or another. What would it...

Bangkok Desk, Dec. 29 — Fifteen people have been detained in Australia in connection with the seizure of 1.1 tons of cocaine in an international operation against a drug smuggling ring, police officials said Thursday. A total of 500 kilograms were seized on Dec. 25 in the southern Australian state of New South Wales, and over 600 kilograms bound for Australia were intercepted in March in Tahiti, ...

Denisse Velasco has been suffering from acute anxiety since spring, when she narrowly escaped being abducted from a busy street in Guadalajara, Mexico. She was waiting at a bus stop one morning when a man jumped out of a taxi and tried to force her inside. Velasco suspects it was a drug trafficker intent on kidnapping her for ransom. "The same thing could happen again in any moment," Velasco...

An unnamed company described in a sweeping probe of corruption in soccer's world governing body FIFA matches the description of a close affiliate of Grupo Televisa, the largest broadcaster in Latin America,according to a Reuters review of U.S. and Swiss government documents. In court papers filed on Tuesday, U.S. prosecutors said an affiliate of a major broadcasting company headquartered in La...

The creation of protected areas and parks in Central America aimed at conserving tropical forests has pushed indigenous people off the land they have nurtured for generations, researchers said on Friday. Protected areas are more effective when the rights of indigenous people living on the land are formally recognized, said the report released on the sidelines of a U.N. conservation conference i...

Addis Ababa, Dec. 1 — The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) declared on Thursday the Mexican charrería, a traditional horseback practice in communities dedicated to the breeding and grazing cattle, as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Mexico's charreria, source Facebook. The decision was made by the Intergovernmental Committee during its annual...

By Wendy Anders Photo for illustrative purposes. Gay men prepare for pornography photo shoot, courtesy of Wikipedia. "Government bodies should function equally for all, not only for women," said Miguel Moctezuma Longoria, Ph.D., professor of development studies at the Autonomous University of Zacatecas (UAZ), reported NTR Zacatecas, a digital paper in north-central Mexico. Speaking on In...

Mexico City, Nov. 16 — Monarch butterfly hibernation sanctuaries, located in the states of Mexico and Michoacán, will open their doors for tourism from Nov. 23, 2016 until March 31, 2017, the Mexican Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP) announced yesterday. The monarch butterfly, characterized by its large distinctive orange, black and white patterned wings, migrates every fall up to ...

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...

By Wendy Anders Indigenous peoples have disadvantages vis-a-vis governments and companies in consultations on projects that affect their communities, reported TeleSur TV this week. The United Nation Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Victoria Tauli, on Wednesday recommended the Mexican government regulate and supervise the activities of mining companies that affect unprote...

The Costa Rican police dismantled a gang of drug traffickers with links in Mexico and Guatemala, a spokesman for the Ministry of Public Security (MSP) said yesterday. ARCHIVE/FILE: Some 1,700 tons of cocaine is expected to pass through Costa Rican territory in 2016. (Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Public Security) "At the moment there have been 14 detained, after making 24 raids, and it ...

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...

Cancun, Mexico, Oct 15 — Mexico has signed a memorandum of understanding with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras that lays the groundwork for a joint plan to support migrant workers, Mexico's Labor and Social Welfare Secretariat said. Suger cane workers. Under the Temporary Migrant Labor Program, workers from the three Central American countries will be authorized to work in Mexico for a p...

Tegucigalpa, Oct 14 — Amnesty International presented a report last Friday in Honduras that puts much of the blame for the worsening refugee crisis in Central America on the governments of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. Honduras home owners are vulnerable to gang extortion, photo for illustration. "Although countries like Mexico and the U.S.A. are utterly failing to protect Central Am...

Thomson Reuters Foundation/by Anastasia Moloney - Gang violence has become so deadly in parts of Central America that many people are living in what is a war zone, Amnesty International said on Friday, adding that some migrants who have fled danger are killed within weeks of being deported home. Every year violence at the hands of gang members drives tens of thousands of people, including child...