A star-studded host committee, Academy Awards® nominees and presenters, along with some of the most powerful industry influencers came together on February 25th, 2017 for the 15th annual 'Night Before' party to benefit MPTF. Funds raised during the now-legendary evening will be used to support MPTF (Motion Picture and Television Fund) in providing social services and financial assistance to the en...

Washington, DC, Feb 25: A U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report assessing the terrorist threat posed by the citizens of the seven countries covered by President Donald Trump's travel ban has expressed doubt on the necessity of the order. The document, as reported by the Washington Post, was prepared at the request of the acting secretary for the Office of Intelligence and Analysis a...

Law Enforcement Leaders to Reduce Crime and Incarceration released a five-part agenda last Monday outlining specific steps the new Administration can take to promote public safety. The group urged President Donald Trump to embrace policies that reduce incarceration rates while strengthening efforts to fight violent crime, after he issued several executive orders on crime in early February. In a...

Editor’s note: The views expressed by guest columnists are not necessarily those of The Costa Rica Star, its advertisers, or its staff.  It’s only common sense to think somebody, somewhere is planning a mass-casualty-shooting, bombing or other attack in the United States. Tick tock, tick tock. If the past is any indicator -- look out America. In this day and age protecting the nation ...

An unexpected tragedy was in store last weekend for Canada’s Manitoba Rugby team who was in Costa Rica competing in the Rainforest 7s competition. On a trip to Costa Rica’s Pacific coast, player Peter Scouras, 33, drowned Monday around noon in the rough surf at Playa Hermosa beach, and Red Cross officials who responded to the accident were unable to resuscitate him, according to local Red Cross...

Miami, Florida, Feb. 21 — The manatee population in Florida waters has jumped to 6,620 specimens, a new record for this species of marine mammal, the Florida Fish & Wildlife Commission (FWC) reported Tuesday. The preliminary tally drawn up by a team of 15 FWC observers amounted to 3,488 live specimens on the east coast of the state and 3,132 in west coast waters, a figure that for the third...

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...

New York, Feb. 20 — Thousands of people took to the streets Monday in New York and other U.S. cities to protest against President Donald Trump and reject his policies on the one-month anniversary of his inauguration. The New York demonstration was staged in front of the luxury hotel bearing Trump's name on Columbus Circle and extended along a number of streets all the way to Central Park. It...

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 Saturday’s rally in Florida starring President Donald Trump was 100-percent unprecedented in the history of the United States of America. Never before has a sitting president harnessed public support through social media like this one....

Hollywood actor and tech investor Ashton Kutcher urged U.S. legislators on Wednesday to drum up government support for the development of new technology to fight online sex trafficking. Kutcher's comments to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee follows heightened scrutiny of classified advertising websites such as Backpage.com for carrying ads that offer children for commercial sex. "Te...

Washington, DC, Feb. 16 — U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday nominated a former member of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to be labor secretary, an announcement that comes a day after his previous nominee withdrew his name from consideration amid controversy. If confirmed by the Senate, Alexander Acosta, a son of Cuban immigrants, would be the first Hispanic in the president's Cabi...

Editor’s note: The views expressed by guest columnists are not necessarily those of The Costa Rica Star, its advertisers, or its staff.  Politics is now looking through the magnifying glass and seeing your president blown out of logical proportion as if you were Alice in Wonderland standing under a mushroom in a place called Mar-A Lago. Last weekend President Donald Trump and First Lad...

Today, Reps. Elijah E. Cummings, John Conyers, Jr., Eliot L. Engel, Bennie G. Thompson, Adam Smith, and Adam Schiff, Ranking Members of the House Committees on Oversight and Government Reform, Judiciary, Foreign Affairs, Homeland Security, Armed Services, and Intelligence, sent a letter to White House Counsel Donald F. McGahn, II raising grave concerns and requesting information about reports that...

Washington, Feb. 14 — U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday eliminated a rule approved during the Barack Obama administration that required energy firms to make public their payments to foreign governments, one of the many Democratic regulations that the Republicans want to ax. Trump signed a bill pushed by Republican congressional leaders repealing a regulation finalized last year by the Securi...

By Wendy Anders A flurry of concern by Costa Ricans, who thought visa requirements to the U.S. might have been changed in the wake of recent federal rulings on the 45th president’s immigration ban, were laid to rest by the U.S. Embassy in San José, Costa Rica. Visa requirements for Costa Ricans wishing to enter the U.S. remain the same, and are spelled out in detail on the U.S. State Departm...

Los Angeles, Feb. 13 — Emergency repair work on the damage to the Oroville dam in Northern California, and the storms that in the coming days could aggravate the situation are keeping the roughly 200,000 people who have been evacuated due to flooding danger on tenterhooks. Authorities Monday held a press conference in Oroville, located about 250 kilometers (155 miles) northeast of San Francisco...

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 Over the weekend anti-President Trump protesters showed up in at least 17 cities across the United States. On Sunday night Hollywood put on yet another display of Trump-bashing during the Grammy Awards for music. The anti-Trump prot...

By Wendy Anders The Minister of Communication Mauricio Herrera recently reported that Costa Rica returned 1,200 Cubans who were found in the country without legal documentation to Panama last year. He added that in January this year 120 additional undocumented Cubans were returned to Panama, and said he wished to make clear to all Cubans that Costa Rica was not open to receiving undocumented...

President Donald Trump tweeted Saturday that the media was wrong to say the cost of his promised wall along the United States' border with Mexico would be steeper than initially projected, promising that his negotiating skills will bring the price down sharply. "I am reading that the great border WALL will cost more than the government originally thought, but I have not gotten involved in the d...

U.S. police have arrested at least 750 people in sex-trafficking sting operations timed to coincide with the Super Bowl, saying the top sporting event is a magnet for illicit sex. More than 100 arrests were made in Houston, Texas where the National Football League championship game took place on Sunday as sports fans flocked to the city for parties and entertainment in the run-up to the event, ...

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 current rage is against President Donald Trump’s executive order to better investigate people attempting to enter the United States of America from seven Muslim-majority counties in the Middle East. At issue is national security,...

American film star George Clooney and his wife are expecting twins in June, a TV talk-show personality said Thursday. The news partially confirms information last month from Lebanon - where Clooney's wife, human rights attorney Amal Clooney was born - indicating the couple was expecting twins in March. "Beyonce is not the only superstar expecting twins. Congratulations are in order for Georg...

Washington, DC, Feb. 9 — Federal appellate judges on Thursday decided unanimously to uphold an injunction issued by a lower court last week blocking President Donald Trump's executive order to temporarily bar residents of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. This is the 45th president's first major legal challenge, and his first major blow, after signing numerous execu...

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados; Feb. 8 -- The Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO), the region's tourism development agency, and Airbnb, whose community marketplace provides access to millions of unique accommodations, today signed a landmark agreement to develop a set of policy principles and recommendations on the sharing economy for Caribbean governments and other stakeholders. Under the agreement, si...

-- With over 2.9 million visitors in 2016, tourism in Costa Rica grew 10 percent over 2015. By Wendy Anders The Costa Rican Tourism Institute (ICT, its Spanish acronym) just released its data on last year’s tourist arrivals to the Central American country, and things are looking good. Costa Rica registered nearly 270 thousand more visitors in 2016 than in 2015, for a notable 10 percent in...

By Wendy Anders Costa Rica’s northern border region with Nicaragua just got a little harder for human traffickers, and a little safer for its potential and current victims. The Rahab Foundation, a Costa Rica non-profit founded in 1997 and dedicated to stopping human trafficking and the human sex trade, set up shop last week in the border town of La Cruz, Guanacaste in northwestern Costa Rica...

Hate to pack? A nude cruise might be for you. The Bare Necessities 2017 Big Nude Boat, equipped to hold up to 3,000 passengers set sail from Tampa Harbor February 5 with four gorgeous stops in the Caribbean. Director of Bare Necessities, Nancy Tiemann, says that on average cruises, “Over 70 per cent of the passengers have been on a Bare Necessities cruise before, which is extremely competiti...

By Wendy Anders Did you know that at least 28 percent of human trafficking involves children? And the U.S. Department of State estimates that more than a million children are exploited each year in the global commercial sex trade. An update on an international effort in Costa Rica to diminish this tragic form of modern slavery was recently provided by the Quebec-based International Bureau...

Secretary General António Guterres urged the United States not to scale back its support for the United Nations, saying that any move to defund or disengage from the world body would pave the way for other nations to fill in the void, according to a report from Dow Jones Newswires made available to EFE on Monday. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Guterres said he hoped to send a messa...

The United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals scheduled a hearing for Tuesday, Feb. 7 to determine the immediate future of the immigration ban implemented by the U.S. president, which has been blocked by a federal judge. Government attorneys presented their arguments on Monday to the San Francisco-based tribunal, which will now decide whether to reinstate the travel ban on all refugees and on ...

Editor’s note: The views expressed by guest columnists are not necessarily those of The Costa Rica Star, its advertisers, or its staff.  After Sunday night’s thrilling Super Bowl game, the Atlanta Falcons and their fans looked like a bunch of stunned Democrats wondering what the heck just happened to their ‘in the bag’ victory. The parallels between the New England Patriots’ come from behind r...

By Wendy Anders A search for a missing young woman from the U.S. in Panama ended Sunday when police found her body on a hiking trail near Bocas del Toro, an archipelago along Panama’s northern Caribbean coast. No information has been forthcoming regarding the possible cause of her death, said local media. Friends and family posted messages on social media late Thursday, February 2 after C...

Vice President Mike Pence said Sunday that the Donald Trump administration is "evaluating" whether or not it will continue to maintain the nuclear agreement with Iran and five great powers, a pact the new president harshly criticized during his election campaign. "Well, we're evaluating that as we speak," Pence told ABC News in a Sunday interview in response to a question about whether the Trump ...

Madrid, Feb 5 — A United States appeals court on Sunday, Feb. 5 rejected a request by U.S. President Donald Trump's administration to reinstate a travel ban on entry to the U.S. for citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries. This means the nationwide halt on the ban continues to be in effect for all the affected countries. The Washington State Attorney General's Office said in a Twitter po...

President Donald Trump on Saturday slammed a federal judge who halted enforcement of his executive order temporarily barring refugees and people from seven mainly Muslim countries from entering the United States, saying it would be overturned. Trump expressed his displeasure in a series of Twitter posts. "The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from ...

The Agriculture Department has removed animal welfare inspection reports, enforcement records and other information about the treatment of animals from its website, citing privacy and other laws.  Tanya Espinosa, a spokeswoman for USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, said the information was removed from the site around 11 a.m. Friday. She would not say if the removal was temporary ...

"Mexico will pay for the wall" "No we won't" "It will cost 8 billion"  "No it will cost 20 billion"  "Make it out of concrete" "No make it out of precast plank"  "It's all too much we need to get the cost down", HURRY! The Pastillon, a German comedy/spoof site that tapped into IKEA’s design methods to help President Trump hit the ground running on his executive order of the border wall. The pe...

A federal judge on Friday issued a temporary restraining order blocking enforcement of President Donald Trump's executive order preventing people from seven mainly Muslim countries from entering the United States. U.S. District Court Senior Judge James L. Robart granted the injunction at the request of Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson, whose office said that the order applies nation...

Editor’s note: The views expressed by guest columnists are not necessarily those of The Costa Rica Star, its advertisers, or its staff.  It’s a great time to be living in Costa Rica - far from the maddening politics dividing the United States of America right now. Although only a 3-hour flight from Houston or Orlando, Costa Rica is a world away from President Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi, R...

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General said it will conduct a review of President Donald Trump's executive order that temporarily bans travel from seven countries made up of mostly Muslim populations. The agency late Wednesday said it would "review DHS' implementation" of Trump's recent executive order "in response to congressional requests and whistleblower and ...