By Wendy Anders Source: Red Cross of Costa Rica After waves of Cuban migrants cruised over the CR-Panama border late last year and earlier this year, and in recent months as the trickle of irregular migrants from Africa, Asia, Haiti and other countries has turned into a sizeable group now parked on the northern border seeking routes northward, Costa Rica’s governmental agencies are taking m...

By Wendy Anders Kristin Van Busum set off on a Fulbright Fellowship after leaving a think-tank job in Boston to help small-scale coffee growers in Nicaragua enter the global coffee market and improve their quality of life, reported USA Today’s network media the IndyStar yesterday. After the project failed due to the complicated dynamics surrounding local coffee production and marketing, Van ...

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...

By Wendy Anders In today's early morning hours off Cabo Blanco at the southernmost tip of the Nicoya Peninsula, the Costa Rican Coast Guard reported the seizure of nearly 2,300 kilos of cocaine. This latest illegal drug capture makes for nearly 10 tons of cocaine seized by police since January, according to office police sources. Twelve ships transporting illegal drugs from Jamaica and Co...

Wikimedia Commons Vinicio Cerezo, who in 1991 became the first Guatemalan head of state in four decades to hand over power to a democratically elected successor, said the Central American nation faces dangerous consequences due to a failure to fully implement the 1996 Peace Accords. "The danger for Guatemala is that our state becomes truly a failed state if we continue on this course," he s...

Photo from one of various Twitter accounts attributed to Caro QuinteroMexican drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, a fugitive from justice since 2013, said in an interview with Proceso magazine that he did not kill U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique Camarena in 1985 and denied that he was trying to grab control of the Sinaloa drug cartel. Caro Quintero, considered one of Mexico's mo...

By Wendy Andershttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cn91WdKhUmE Eyewitness accounts in and around Peñas Blancas on Costa Rica’s northern border with Nicaragua show growing desperation and also health concerns among hundreds of Haitian and African immigrants trying to journey to the U.S. Costa Rica’s national TV Repretel documented a thwarted attempt last Wednesday by a boisterous group of immigra...

Wikimedia CommonsFormer Panamanian dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega was taken Friday to the Legal Medicine Institute for the physical and psychiatric exams ordered by the court hearing the case against him for the death of union leader Heliodoro Portugal back in the 1970s. The defense attorney for Panama's one-time strongman, Ezra Angel, told EFE briefly this Friday that Noriega's examinations ...

Illustrative image. (Flickr Commons)Journalist Pedro Tamayo has been shot dead at his home in the Mexican Gulf coast state of Veracruz, the Aztec nation's deadliest for members of the media, officials said Thursday. Two assailants arrived late Wednesday in a vehicle at the crime reporter's home in the town of Tierra Blanca, fired at him in front of his family and then fled the scene. The 43...

The number of undocumented Cuban migrants arriving in the U.S. has quintupled over the past five years, increasing dramatically after the December 2014 announcement by Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro of a normalization of relations between Washington and Havana. Fewer than 8,000 Cubans reached the U.S. in the 2011 fiscal year, compared with more than 44,000 so far in fiscal 2016, which ...

Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman. Source: Wikimedia Commons Federal officials' decision to post a photograph of drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" (Shorty) Guzman on social media to confirm that the Sinaloa cartel leader had not escaped from prison "shows the lack of credibility of our authorities," defense attorney Jose Refugio Rodriguez said Monday. Government Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio posted an ...

By Wendy Anders The second case of a zika-infected microcephaly baby was confirmed in the Central America nation of El Salvador on Friday, stated Salvadorean health officials at a live press conference. This makes El Salvador the seventh country in the Americas to confirm a zika-linked microcephaly case. “More than 91 percent of zika will not lead to micrcephaly,” stated Violeta Menjívar,...

Supporters of President Maduro rally in Caracas EFE/AGENCIA VENEZOLANA DE NOTICIAS/ Some 25,000 Venezuelans, according to official estimates, crossed the border into Colombia on Sunday to buy food and medicines in the city of Cucuta after the Venezuelan government said it would open border crossings for 12 hours. People began crossing the Simon Bolivar international bridge, which links the ...

Wikimedia Commons Peruvian scientist Marino Morikawa, who "revived" polluted wetlands in 15 days using nanotechnology, now plans to try to clean up Lake Titicaca and the Huacachina lagoon, an oasis in the middle of the desert. El Cascajo, an ecosystem of roughly 50 hectares (123 acres) in Chancay district, located north of Lima, began its recovery in 2010 with two inventions that Morikawa c...

Flickr Commons Police around the globe arrested 79 suspected members of an international child pornography network on Monday. The arrests were made in 18 different countries, including the United States, Spain, and several Latin American countries, following 200 raids in 47 cities as part of Operation No Borders. At least 19 of the arrests were made in Spain, primarily in Madrid. Span...

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...

Nighttime drone footage of the strike. Al-Manar TV Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah has destroyed two positions of the Islamic State (IS) militants in northeastern Lebanon, according to Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV network. According to Al-Manar, the positions were located in the regions of Baalbek and Ras al-Zaytun, and the attack has also killed or wounded jihadists inside the locations. The...

El Educador YouTube Channnel Mexican teachers opposed to an education overhaul partially lifted their blockade of roads in the southern state of Chiapas to allow deliveries of gasoline, state oil company Pemex said Thursday. The number of service stations in Chiapas without fuel has fallen from 90 to 27, Pemex executive Jorge Martinez told Radio Formula. Members of Section 7 of the milit...

By Wendy Anders The BBC confirmed today that a German tourist died yesterday while purportedly posing for a photo of himself leaping off a cliff as he toured the 15th-century Peruvian Incan citadel of Machu Picchu. Oliver Park, 51, said the BBC, “ignored safety signs and warnings from wardens and went into a restricted area close to the edge of a cliff on Wednesday, according to local offici...

EFE file The Venezuelan opposition confirmed Sunday that it is ready to start the process to bring about the referendum to revoke the mandate of President Nicolas Maduro, even if they are deprived of their liberty. The mayor of Caracas, Antonio Ledezma, imprisoned since February 2015, released a message in which he congratulated the Venezuelan people for "the heroic journey made this week,"...

Michael Temer with Dilma Rousseff Brasilia, Jun 21 (EFE).- The speaker of Brazil's lower house of Congress, currently sidelined pending trial on corruption charges, said Tuesday that he will feel "proud" if the case against suspended President Dilma Rousseff ends with her impeachment. "I'm neither a hero nor a villain in the case" against Rousseff, Eduardo Cunha told a press conference. ...

Panama City, Jun 21 (EFE).- Security at the inauguration of the Panama Canal expansion next Sunday will be assured by more than 11,000 agents along with special measures like closing the airspace over the waterway beginning the day before, the authorities announced Tuesday. Eleven heads of state and government, the king emeritus of Spain and delegations of some 50 countries have confirmed their...

Truth-out.org Mexico City, Jun 21 (EFE).- Clashes with security forces have not intimidated Mexican teachers opposed to what they see as unfair education reform and promise to continue their protests, even as the government investigates the clash between teachers and police in the southern part of the country that left at least eight dead. Leaders of the militant CNTE teachers union said th...

Wikimedia Commons Algeciras, Spain, Jun 20 (EFE).- The Spanish Civil Guard in the southern port of Algeciras seized 280 kilos (615 lbs.) of cocaine hidden in a container shipped from Brazil, the security corps reported in a statement. An investigation by Spain's Civil Guard aided by Brazilian police intelligence found the drug hidden in a container transporting a legal cargo of sugar. On...

Wikimedia Commons San Juan, Jun 18 (EFE).- At least 500 activists of Puerto Rico's independence movement demonstrated in Old San Juan this Saturday in anticipation of a visit by the U.N.'s Special Committee on Decolonization, to arrive next Monday in this U.S. commonwealth. Liliana Laboy, a member of the organizing committee of the demonstration, told EFE that the protest this Saturday had ...

By Elisa Vasquez Panama, Jun 15 (EFE).- In Panama, "the first to disrespect nature are the officials appointed to defend it," according to Ligia Arreaga, an environmentalist engaged in activism for a decade on behalf of the rainforest of Darien that spreads across Panama's border with Colombia. The Central American country has "extraordinarily good" laws, what is lacking are decent officials...

Wikimedia Commons Austin, Texas, Jun 13 (EFE).- Hilda Ramirez is a Guatemalan Indian who has spent four months in a church that has provided her with sanctuary in this Texas city in order to prevent U.S. authorities from detaining her and complying with the deportation order issued against her and her 10-year-old son. She has no wish to return to Guatemala, from where she fled north in 2014...

EFE file Caracas, Jun 12 (EFE).- Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles said Sunday that socialist President Nicolas Maduro would be removed from office this year and insisted that government opponents had gathered the quantity of signatures - 1 percent of the voting population - needed for the first phase of the recall referendum process. Maduro "will be recalled this year, period,...

The 2011 World Naked Bike Ride in Brighton, UK.- Wikimedia Commons Mexico City, Jun 11 (EFE).- Hundreds of bicyclists rolled into the streets Saturday, both in Mexico City and in Guadalajara, Jalisco state, to take part in the World Naked Bike Ride. Among the objectives of this 6th edition of the show-all ride was, first, to raise awareness about the environmental advantages of bicycles ove...

Archive San Salvador, Jun 7 (EFE).- The former director of El Salvador's penitentiaries, Nelson Rauda, was sent to prison on Tuesday for allegedly forming part of a network that authorized privileges and perks for imprisoned gang members during a truce with those groups from 2012-2014. Rauda, who had been a fugitive since early May - when authorities arrested 18 people, including top police...

Illustrative image. (Flickr Commons) Caracas, Jun 6 (EFE).- The body of Italian diplomat Mauro Monciatti, an administrative official at Italy's consulate in Caracas, was found at his home in an eastern Caracas neighborhood, fellow diplomat Lorenzo Salinas confirmed to EFE on Monday. Monciatti, 60, died from blunt trauma to the skull, an official with the Cicpc criminal investigative unit, w...

FARC guerrilla unit marching in 1998. Wikimedia Commons Medellin, Colombia, Jun 4 (EFE).- Colombia's hardline ex-president, Alvaro Uribe, launched a nationwide signature-gathering campaign here Saturday against the peace agreements reached by the current government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which he says entail impunity for the guerrillas. Under the initiative...

Photo: Activist Sergio Castillo, Twitter Mexico City, Jun 3 (EFE).- Police reinforced several points of the Mexican capital Friday to prevent hundreds of protesting teachers from following through on a threat to march to the international airport serving this metropolis, EFE confirmed. More than 4,000 police were taking part in the operation launched early Friday to contain the teachers, wh...

Wikimiedia Commons Caracas, Jun 2 (EFE).- The Venezuelan military and police on Thursday used tear gas in Caracas to disperse several groups of protesters who were trying to approach Miraflores Palace, the seat of government, to demonstrate against the scarcity of food and medicine. A large contingent of heavily armed members of the Bolivarian National Guard and the National Police fired te...

An Uber driver in Bogota. Wikimedia Commons San Juan, May 31 (EFE).- Traffic chaos prevailed in San Juan on Tuesday as taxi drivers and truckers protested the arrival in Puerto Rico of Uber, the private ride-hailing service, which links passengers and drivers via a mobile application. On Tuesday morning it was difficult to find taxis on the capital streets, while some tourist excursions had...

Photo by Bill Damon, Flickr Commons Lima, May 30 (EFE).- A group of Peruvian shamans faced off Monday in a duel of rituals to bring an election victory either to Keiko Fujimori or to rival Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in the June 5 presidential runoff. The rituals were celebrated by six shamans, four in favor of Fujimori and two supporting Kuczynski, outside Lima's National Stadium. Empowered b...

Wikimedia Commons Santiago, May 27 (EFE).- Chile has completed the removal of an additional 31,000 land mines along its northern border with Peru, the Defense Ministry said. "The efficacy of the mine-clearance work by the armed forces is apparent in the numbers: out of 181,814 landmines planted in different areas of the national territory, 130,497 have already been destroyed in the existing...

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro, May 27 (EFE).- The gang rape of a 16-year-old girl by more than 30 men in a Rio de Janeiro shantytown has sparked an outcry for justice on social networks and from Brazil's political class, including suspended President Dilma Rousseff and interim head of state Michel Temer. Thousands of Internet users have inundated Twitter with messages expressing indignation...

Illustrative image. (Flickr Commons) By Marti Quintana. Teotihuacan, Mexico, May 26 (EFE).- Lack of trust in the authorities, a perception of abandonment and a fired-up sense of community led hundreds of residents of a central Mexican town to lynch two suspected kidnappers. All was apparently quiet on Wednesday in the central square of Atlatongo, a town of 5,000 in the central state of M...

An anti-GMO activist in San Francisco. Source: Wikimedia Commons Asuncion, May 24 (EFE).- About 100 farmers with peasant organizations on Tuesday left their family farms in Paraguay's interior to attend a fair in downtown Asuncion, where they displayed their native seeds, the basis for their resistance against the advance of genetically modified crops, or GMOs. The seeds of Paraguayan stapl...