Mexico City, Sep 11 (EFE).- Thousands of people took to the streets in 120 cities across Mexico this weekend to protest President Enrique Peña Nieto's plan to amend the constitution to recognize same-sex marriages. The National Front for the Family organized marches Saturday in 29 Mexican states to express opposition to the same-sex marriage proposal unveiled by President Peña Nieto in May and ba...

Part II in a series on 2018 Winter Olympic hopeful, Andre Moreno Hamm. By Wendy Anders It’s not the way most colllege students start their year in the U.S., but bi-national Andre Moreno Hamm, Costa Rica’s Winter Olympic hopeful slopestyle skier, isn’t your usual student. And right now, his studies at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah are on hold while he's in South America for a sk...

MIAMI, Sept. 7  -- At least two people have died due to Tropical Storm Newton, which is spreading heavy rains into Arizona and New Mexico on Wednesday after making landfall as a hurricane in Mexico's mainland. A shrimp boat capsized in the Gulf of California amid rough seas. At least two people died and three others were missing. BBC News reported that officials said the five people ignored war...

By Wendy Anders Tuesday just after midnight, residents near the Los Horcones Bar in Chachagua, San Ramón on the way to La Fortuna, Arenal heard a loud boom, reported La Nación, Costa Rica’s main Spanish daily. Etilma Ballestero, a neighbor of the bar, said after hearing the boom she “rushed into the street, and there we saw the flames on the roofs of the cabins, and we immediately called 9-1...

Quito, Ecuador A quick response can save your life if you are bitten by a poisonous snake. But in some remote areas of Ecuador people are 6 - 7 hours away from medical care, and that wait for snakebite victims is often fatal. In this tropical, Andean country, which imports snake anti-venom from Costa Rica and Colombia, an estimated 9,000 - 10,000 people are bitten by snakes per year, and...

By Wendy Anders Monday, the public prosecutor for La Fortuna de San Carlos, Natalia Álvarez, described the miserable living conditions of 13 foreign women who were held in dingy, dirty rooms at the back of bars for forced prostitution, reported La Nación, Costa Rica’s main daily newspaper today. In order to leave the sites, the women were forced to pay CRC10,000 and had a set return time, sa...

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...

Costa Rica has referred to its concerns about Nicaragua's recent purchase of military weapons. Managua, Sep 4 (EFE).- Nicaragua's army celebrated its 37th anniversary with the traditional military parade. President Daniel Ortega praised the Central American country's armed forces during the celebration on Saturday, touting the military's work in security, crime fighting and humanitarian missio...

Buenos Aires, Sep 2 (EFE).- Crime and violence plus the economy have become over the past year the biggest concerns for Latin Americans, who also see domestic violence as what most damages their societies, according to a Latinobarometro survey released Friday in Buenos Aires. On the average, crime is the most important problem for 22 percent of Latin Americans, topped only by the sum of those wor...

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 Last night at 7:00 pm, during a routine police stop on Route 27 near the exit for Multiplaza Escazú, police detained a white cargo pick-up truck driven by a 29-year-old Colombian national by the last name Betancourt, stated the Security Ministry in a press release this afternoon. Police flagged the pick-up truck when they noticed the driver seemed nervous as he approached the...

Puebla, Mexico.- The mummified body found in June 2015 on Pico de Orizaba, Mexico's highest mountain, is currently on display in a museum in the central city of Ciudad Serdan. Wikimedia Commons The identity of the mummy is not known, but the man was approximately 50, and may have died and been mummified more than 15 years ago, according to forensic testing performed over the past year. T...

By Wendy Anders Marketwire reported today that Toronto, Canada-based Bravo Multinational Incorporated earlier this year partially acquired the Centro de Entretenimiento y Diversion Mombacho S.A., located in Managua, Nicaragua. Bravo to date has purchased 150 of a total contracted 500 slot and video poker gaming machines to be operated and managed under a long-term national license throug...

Brasilia, Aug 31.- Brazil's Senate voted 61-20 on Wednesday to remove President Dilma Rousseff from office over budget irregularities. Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff smiles as she attends a meeting with jurists at Planalto Palace in Brasilia, Brazil, March 22, 2016. REUTERS/Adriano Machado The decision means that Michel Temer, who became interim president May 12, will serve the remaind...

Santa Clara, Cuba, Aug 31.- The first regularly scheduled commercial flight between the United States and Cuba since 1961 landed today, Wednesday, August 31, at this central city's Abel Santamaria airport at 10:57 a.m. local time (1457 GMT). U.S. President Barack Obama and Cuba's President Raul Castro shake hands during their first meeting on the second day of Obama's visit to Cuba, in Havan...

NIcaraguan forces. File photo By Patricia Pernas for EFE Governments in Central America, one of the world's most violent regions, are expanding the role of their militaries in civilian affairs and increasing their weaponry, thus posing a threat to democracy, an expert told EFE. "This strengthening of the armed forces does not come in response to national security problems," Alberto Mora,...

FARC guerrilla unit marching in 1998. Wikimedia Commons By Christian Escobar Mora for Agencia EFE Tacueyo is among the villages most affected by the armed conflict between the FARC and the government, so its indigenous inhabitants are enthusiastic about the new cease-fire but at the same time believe that not all the members of that guerrilla group will obey the orders of their leaders. ...

Michael Temer with Dilma Rousseff By Manuel Pérez Bella for EFE Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is facing her most difficult moment yet in a long and storied political career: she now stands suspended from office, alone, surrounded by hostile forces and retaining scarce support from her once-loyal social base. The constant erosion suffered by her party's congressmembers has been refle...

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...

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega (C) listens during an official meeting with Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (R) and then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (L) during an official state visit by the Nicaraguan president to Iran in 2007. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif began his first Latin American visit Monday in Havana, where he met with Foreign Minister Bruno Rodrigu...

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...

FARC guerrilla unit marching in 1998. Wikimedia Commons The names of the more than 8 million victims of Colombia's decades-long armed conflict will be inscribed on trees in an expanse of the southeastern province of Vaupes to be known as the "Forest of Peace. Supported by the Colombian government, the Forest is an initiative of the NGO Saving the Amazon. The group began planning the proj...

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...

Wikimedia Commons "You can't get it more cheaply" calls a Caracas woman selling flour at the open-air market in Petare, the largest shantytown in Latin America, where hundreds of vendors offer basic products that are generally scarce here at prices often more than 20 times higher than those fixed by the government. Stringent price controls have prevailed in Venezuela since 2003 but, neverth...

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...

"El chapo Guzmán" por Fabrizio León Diez - Obra do próprio. Licenciado sob CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons A son of Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" (Shorty) Guzman is among six people kidnapped at a restaurant in this Pacific resort city, Jalisco state Attorney General Eduardo Almaguer said Tuesday. An examination of items found in the cars of the victims, sitting abandoned in the ...

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. ...

Arequipa. Wikimedia Commons A magnitude-5.3 earthquake left four people dead, 68 injured and 1,253 families homeless in a rural area of Caylloma province in southern Peru's Arequipa region, to which the authorities have sent humanitarian aid in helicopters and by land. The fatalities were an 80-year-old woman, another age 70 and her granddaughter, a minor, as well as United States citizen E...

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...

MS-13 tattoo (El Salvador) - Wikimedia Commons The governments of the Northern Triangle of Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras) will create a tri-national force to combat organized crime, with a special target on gangs, following an agreement signed Saturday in the Salvadoran capital by defense and security authorities. The proposal, called "Elite Security Group" was sugges...

Illustrative image. (Flickr Commons) A 16-year-old boy was killed by gunmen inside a church in the Mexican Pacific resort city of Acapulco, but the motive for the killing has not been determined, state prosecutors said Wednesday. The boy was gunned down Tuesday inside the Parroquia del Niño Jesus in Acapulco's Juan R. Escudero district after being chased by several armed men, the Guerrero s...

PublicDomainPictures.net Hurricane Earl has so far caused 45 deaths in the Mexican states of Veracruz and Puebla, making it the country's deadliest storm in three years as tropical storm Javier is expected to target Mexico's Baja California Sur on Tuesday, the authorities informed today. The national Civil Protection coordinator of the Ministry of the Interior, Luis Felipe Puente, said at a...

The radioactive material reported stolen earlier this weekend in northern Mexico has been recovered, national emergency management chief Luis Felipe Puente said. "The radioactive source has been found and the protocol for its recovery has been implemented," Puente said in a Twitter post. Emergency management officials issued an alert Friday following the theft of the radioactive material, sa...

Flickr Commons By Hector Pereira A litter of five puppies has to go home from a veterinarian's office without getting the necessary vaccinations, because now pets in Venezuela suffer from the same shortage of medicines as people do as a result of the country's economic crisis. Briceida Niño, a mom in Caracas, took her five pups to one of the veterinarian centers assigned to the "Nevado M...

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...