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...

By Wendy Anders Costa Rica’s national beach soccer team faced off against Japan in two friendly matches this weekend, said the Costa Rican soccer federation (Fedefut). During Saturday's match at the beach soccer field at Fedefut’s Alajuela soccer complex, the Japanese played a game of great speed with effective offensive action, reported Fedefut. This duel ended with a score of 4-3 in fav...

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...

Ismael Cala Foundation (ICF) and Urbe University announced in Miami the grant of two scholarships to two young Latin Americans to study Social Communication in the United States. The spots will be channeled through four organizations that work in five countries: Mentores Solidarios (Nicaragua), Fundación Carvajal (Colombia), Glasswing Internacional (El Salvador and Honduras) and Passion (Guatem...

Panama, Jan. 20 — The Government of Panama and various social organizations announced Friday the creation of the Legal Timber Network to strengthen measures to prevent illegal logging and timber smuggling. "Seventeen months ago, the Ministry of Environment initiated a national dialogue on timber, whose commitment included the agreements we signed today, and demonstrates that the National Govern...

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...

By Wendy Anders "Orgasm fundamentally roots our capacity for connection: hormonally, emotionally and spiritually," says organizer of a weeklong retreat with practices for couples to achieve deep connections through "orgasmic consciousness", Nicole Daedone. “It’s that feeling of being so completely absorbed in an experience that there is no psychic chatter, no being “stuck in your head”; a fa...

By Wendy Anders The number of women’s marches planned across the U.S. and around the globe for Saturday, January 21, the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration as president of the U.S., are growing exponentially. With 616 ‘sister march’ events organized and counting, and almost 1.5 million participants pledged across the planet, the Women’s March on Washington has spurred a global movement to...

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...

Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany’s outgoing Foreign Minister, dedicated his last official visit to Colombia this month to launch the Colombo-German Institute for Peace, or Capaz, its acronym in Spanish. Colombia’s daily El Espectador interviewed Steinmeier about this institute dedicated to teaching, research and consulting on the important peace process underway in Colombia. Following is an edi...

By Wendy Anders Late Wednesday, the U.S. Embassy in San José, Costa Rica sent out a brief notice that Ambassador Haney will continue in his post. The news flies in the face of a recent announcement by president-elect Donald Trump that every Obama appointee would be immediately replaced as soon as he took office. No further details were forthcoming immediately from the Embassy as to why th...

By Wendy Anders Costa Rica has filed a new case before the International Court of Justice after the discovery of a Nicaraguan military camp allegedly set up in Costa Rican territory, said the Costa Rican Foreign Ministry on Monday. This is the latest in a series of a longstanding dispute between the countries on the location of the border and territorial violations. The international cour...

Rio de Janeiro, Jan. 17 — Brazilian health authorities are on alert after the outbreak of yellow fever, with 47 cases detected in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais and given the risk that it could spread to nearby areas where possible cases are starting to be detected.The Health Ministry confirmed Tuesday that 152 suspected cases of the disease have been detected in 26 municipalities in rural...

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...

By Wendy Anders A 53-year-old German man, preliminarily identified with the last name of Schiloknecot, died yesterday in an accident at the El Tobogán waterfalls 30 kilometers from the northern Costa Rica city of Liberia, in the province of Guanacaste, reported the Spanish daily El Diario Extra. Apparently he and some other foreigner visitors went hiking in the forest near their hotel, which...

By Wendy Anders A recent report by the World Bank shows some startling truths about economic inequality. Three of the world’s least equitable countries are Costa Rica’s neighbors, on the narrow Central American isthmus connecting Mexico with South America. Honduras, is ranked as the 6th most unequal by the World Bank, followed by Colombia, Brazil, Guatemala, and Panama in 10th place. The ...

Madrid, Jan. 16 — Rolls-Royce Holdings PLC said Monday it will pay a total of around 671 million pounds sterling ($810 million) to law enforcement authorities in the United States, United Kingdom and Brazil to settle bribery and corruption charges, according to a report from Dow Jones Newswires. The company, which manufactures jet engines and marine diesel engines, said it had reached deferred ...

By Wendy Anders Amid the lush forests and remote beaches of Corcovado National Park, southern Costa Rica’s biodiversity hotspot, Costa Rican police often find themselves on the front line of the illicit drug trade between South and North America. Early yesterday morning, Costa Rican police patrolling the stunning southern Pacific coast located eleven rectangular packages wrapped in a sack-li...

By Wendy Anders Representatives from nine South American countries met this month to discuss the conservation of marine biodiversity in the open ocean, said the Costa Rican non-profit marine conservation group MarViva Foundation. Almost half the planet is covered by the high, or open seas, the waters found beyond countries’ territorial limits. Despite their abundance, these vast areas hav...

By Wendy Anders Yesterday Costa Rica walloped Belize 3-0 in the second day of Central American Soccer Cup matches at Panama City’s Rommel Fernández stadium, reported Guatemala’s daily Prensa Libre. The goals were scored by José Ortiz (25, 65) on his debut performance with the national team, and Johan Venegas (51). The hot mid-day Panamanian sun didn’t deter Costa Rican coach Oscar Ramírez...

By Wendy Anders The annual Big Mac Index published by The Economist revealed its most recent data on the fast food product Thursday. And, not surprisingly, here in Costa Rica, we pay a relatively high price for McDonald’s emblematic meal. According to the index, a big mac in Costa Rica costs 2,250 colones, which is $4.06 at the current exchange rate of 554.33 colones to the U.S. dollar. ...

Part of President Barack Obama's motivation in ending a practice that gave undocumented Cuban migrants who reached US soil the right to remain appears to have been a desire to discourage Donald Trump from reversing the process of normalization with Cuba. Trump, who takes office Jan. 20, "will notice that the steps we've taken (with Cuba) make sense, they are serving our interests," Obama advise...

By Wendy Anders The Guardian’s recently announced 2017 travel photography competition gives readers the chance to win a fantastic 16-night wildlife holiday for two to Costa Rica with Exodus Travels – and see the photos from the trip published in Guardian Travel, reported the U.K. paper Friday. Guardian Travel’s monthly readers’ photography competition is an opportunity for amateurs and profe...

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...

Santiago, Jan. 14 — An eco-terrorist group on Saturday said it was responsible for a parcel bomb that detonated at the home of the chairman of the board of Chilean state-owned mining giant Codelco, the world's biggest copper producer. In an Internet blog site, the group known as Individualists Tending toward the Wild (ITS-Chile) posted a statement in which it claimed responsibility for Friday's...

The more than 70 Cubans at an inn operated by the Catholic charitable mission Caritas asked Friday for the United States to make an exception for those who had left the island and were already crossing Central America before the "wet foot/dry foot" immigration policy was revoked. "We only ask that they make an exception for those of us who were already on our way, that they let us continue and ...

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...

Montevideo, Jan. 11 — A municipal program in the Uruguayan capital is inviting non-governmental organizations to join a project to help men who have abused their partners to change their behavior, Gender Equality Office director Patricia Gonzalez told EFE. "There's a lot of work done with women on how to end an abusive relationship and how to get out of the situation. But men are just punished an...

Executives from Honeywell’s global distributor for solar technology, Global Solar Trading BV (GST), visited El Salvador recently to meet with Solanda, a local company providing renewable energy technology. The two companies clinched a deal to distribute and expand solar technology in Central America. "El Salvador's energy potential is high, as there are an average of six hours of intensive s...

By Wendy Anders The U.S. Embassy in the western San José district of Pavas is hiring three full-time bodyguards. The position is open from now until January 24. Bodyguards provide armed protective security to the U.S. Department of State to ensure the safety of the U.S. Ambassador to Costa Rica or the Chargé, in the absence of the Chief of Mission. The position requires both regular sched...

Buenos Aires, Jan. 10 — President Mauricio Macri said Tuesday that oil companies and unions reached an agreement to produce natural gas at Vaca Muerta, one of the world's largest shale oil and gas fields, in a deal that will generate $5 billion in investment in Argentina this year alone. "The companies are committed to a virtuous investment process that will be $5 billion" in 2017 and double in s...

By Wendy Anders Costa Rican police made their second discovery this week of undocumented Cuban migrants in the country, this time in a boat in the southern Costa Rican border region. The Costa Rican border police intercepted a motor boat and detained the boat’s captain, a 53-year-old Costa Rican man from Puntarenas province named López, after discovering five Cubans aboard without entry stam...

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...

HYATTSVILLE, Md., Jan. 6, 2017 – A former member of the Guatemalan army, whom witnesses say participated in a massacre there more than three decades ago that claimed over 200 lives, was arrested today by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and charged in immigration court with having assisted or otherwise participated in extrajudicial killings du...

By Wendy Anders Amidst flight delays due to ashfall in Costa Rica in recent days, Air Canada took the cake early this week for disrupting hundreds of passengers' plans due to a problem with the head count on board. Ken Joy posted on Facebook from Toronto, Canada at 11:30 p.m. Monday, Jan. 9 that he had finally made it home. He managed to have some good cheer left after facing over a day’s...

The Jamaica Tourist Board has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with United States-based online company Airbnb Inc. for the promotion of the country’s tourism product, particularly in the area of accommodation. Airbnb is an online marketplace that connects people wanting to rent their homes and spaces with people needing affordable accommodations. Minister of Tourism Hon. Edmund Bartlett ...

By Wendy Anders A Danish citizen was arrested in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica last week on suspicion of committing massive fraud in the country, said police in a press statement. The Lebanese-born Dane, who goes by the name of YK (last name of Khater) is suspected of conning a woman in Quepos, Puntarenas in Costa Rica's Central Pacific region out of 10 million colones (over US$18,000), according...

Guatemala, Jan. 9 — The discovery of three bodies on the slopes of Guatemala's Acatenango Volcano on Monday raised to six the number of hikers who died there, possibly of hypothermia caused by the cold front that has seized the country. The head of the Conred emergency management office, Sergio Cabañas, confirmed that the three lifeless bodies were found Monday on the volcano, located between t...

By Wendy Anders Police in southern Costa Rica Sunday discovered six undocumented Cubans traveling huddled in between gas cylinders in the back of a flat-bed delivery truck. Migrants from Cuba, Haiti, and other countries continue to risk over-land travel to reach the U.S., said the Costa Rican government earlier this month. From April 2016 until January 2017, the government said 18,000 mig...