Wikimedia Commons Brussels, Dec 30 (EFE).- Brussels Mayor Yvan Mayeur decided Wednesday to cancel all fireworks displays and other public festivities planned for New Year's Eve, local media reported. The mayor made the decision after it became known on Tuesday that Belgian security forces had foiled - by arresting the presumed terrorists - a possible attack on "several emblematic sites" pla...

A Republican Member of the United States Congress visited Costa Rica and toured the shelters provided to stranded Cuban migrants during the holidays. Representative Kay Granger attended a meeting with President Luis Guillermo Solis, Chancellor Manuel Gonzalez, and U.S. Ambassador Fitzgerald Haney before touring the shelters located in the Guanacaste province. At the meeting, which was part of a...

New York, Dec 24 (EFE).- The temperature in New York soared to more than 70 F (21 C) on Thursday, the warmest Christmas Eve on record in the Big Apple, and is expected to climb even higher later in the day, U.S. media reported. The previous mark was set in 1996, when the mercury rose to 63 F (17 C), according to American broadcast TV network NBC. Record-high temperatures also are expected on...

NY Times screenshot New York, Dec 21 (EFE).- The United States should put an end to immigration policies that make it easier for Cubans to leave their island and come to live in this country, The New York Times said in an editorial. For the newspaper, these regulations amount to "a Cold War relic that is hindering the normalization of relations between Washington and Havana." "Congress s...

Source: US Homeland Security Washington, Dec 16 (EFE).- U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Wednesday added another terrorist alert level to the system created in 2011, which consists of two scales and never has been implemented due to the lack of credible threats. At a press conference, Johnson presented the new intermediate level after announcing several days ago that there wo...

By Emilio J. Lopez Miami, Dec 8 (EFE).- Cuban immigration to the United States grew by almost 80 percent in 2015 out of fear that the thaw in relations between Washington and Havana might at any time put an end to the advantages Cubans currently enjoy the minute they set foot on U.S. territory. Since Barack Obama and Raul Castro announced to the world on Dec. 17, 2014, their determination to...

ISIS fighters in Iraq. Source: Wikimedia Commons Cairo, Dec 5 (EFE).- The Islamic State said in an online bulletin Saturday that two of its supporters carried out this week's attack in the Southern California city of San Bernardino that left 14 dead. The extremist group said in a broadcast on its Al-Bayan radio station that "two supporters of the Islamic State" attacked the Inland Regional ...

Wikimedia Commons Washington, Nov 30 (EFE).- The U.S. government on Monday announced changes in its visa policy, known as the Visa Waiver Program, or VWP, which benefits citizens from 38 countries, due to the recent Paris attacks and the "ongoing threat" represented by foreign terrorists. In a communique, the White House set forth the changes that will be introduced into the VWP program, wh...

ISIS fighters in Iraq. Source: Wikimedia Commons NEW YORK, Nov. 19, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- In an interview with NBC News, Giovanni Gambino, son of a key figure in the Gambino crime syndicate, describes the historical reality that led to the birth of the Sicilian Mafia – and how its modern elements are at work today protecting New York City neighborhoods from Middle Eastern terrorists. In the wak...

Wikimedia Commons Toronto, Nov 23 (EFE).- The Canadian government's plan to accept 25,000 Syrian refugees in the coming weeks is to be open only to women, children and families, The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported Monday. Single males are excluded based on security concerns, according to the CBC network. Details of the plan will be revealed Sunday by Prime Minister Justin Trud...

Wikimedia Commons Washington, Nov 19 (EFE).- More Mexicans are returning to their homeland than are emigrating to the United States, with a net outflow from this country of 140,000 between 2009 and 2014, according to a report released on Thursday. The report, prepared by the Pew Research Center, says that more Mexican immigrants have returned to Mexico from the U.S. than have migrated here ...

Supporters of President Maduro rally in Caracas EFE/AGENCIA VENEZOLANA DE NOTICIAS/ Caracas, Nov 19 (EFE).- The Venezuelan government on Thursday delivered a protest note to the United States after the publication of documents showing that the National Security Agency spied on employees of Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA. The note was delivered to the charge d'affaires at the U.S. Embass...

Prime Minister Trudeau and President Peña Nieto By Helen Cook Manila, Nov 18 (EFE).- Philippine social-networking sites have been awash with praise for Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who have caused a stir here among a segment of the female population since arriving for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. Only minutes after they...

Wikimedia Commons Washington, Nov 17 (EFE).- The United States last week received the first Central American children whose asylum requests were approved as part of a program launched almost a year ago, a State Department spokesman told EFE on Tuesday. "Six minors from El Salvador arrived last Thursday. They are the only ones to have arrived so far," Rubani Trimiew, spokesman for the Bureau...

Wikimedia Commons Washington, Nov 6 (EFE).- U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson announced Friday that new airport security measures are being introduced as a result of the ongoing investigation into the Russian airliner tragedy last week on Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. President Barack Obama cited Thursday the possibility that an explosive device on board the aircraft caused the crash ...

Source: Pixabay Commons Washington, Oct 30 (EFE).- United States authorities arrested 29 individuals accused of forcing Mexican and Central American women into prostitution in the southeastern part of the country after helping them cross the border illegally into the U.S., officials said. U.S. agents were able to identify 15 possible victims, including a young woman who was still an underag...

Wikimedia Commons Miami, Oct 25 (EFE).- More than 200 black bears were killed in the first day of an authorized hunt in Florida, a state where hunting the animals had been banned for 21 years, officials said Sunday. A total of 207 bears were killed on Saturday, the first day of the seven-day season, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, or FWC, said. Hunters killed nearl...

Source: Liberal Party of Canada Canadian voters elected a new Prime Minister (PM) on Monday, October 19th. PM elect Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party represent the new political majority in Canada with 184 legislative seats, which is equivalent to 54 percent of the Parliament. The election brought an end to the PM Stephen Harper era, which lasted 10 years of political dominance for the C...

Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton. EFE file Washington, Oct 16 (EFE).- The Democratic front-runner in next year's U.S. presidential election, Hillary Clinton, backed the Obama administration's decision to normalize ties with Cuba, but she expressed concern over the human rights situation on the Communist-ruled island. In an interview with EFE Thursday in San Antonio, Clinton said the r...

Source: FEDEFUTBOL CR The current Women’s Football Champion of the World is the United States, and the most recent match by Team USA against the National Women’s Football Team of Costa Rica proves why. Playing before a crowd of more than 44,000 at the Heinz Field in Pittsburgh, the National Team of Costa Rica (Las Ticas) were blanked out by a barrage of eight goals against zero.   T...

File photo of retired Cuban leader Fidel Castro. EFE/File Havana, Aug 13 (EFE).- The United States owes Cuba millions of dollars for the harm caused by its economic embargo on the island, Fidel Castro wrote in an article published Thursday, the day before Secretary of State John Kerry is due in Havana to raise the Stars and Stripes over the restored U.S. Embassy. "Cuba is owed compensation ...

Wikimedia Commons Los Angeles, Aug 1 (EFE).- Spanish actor Antonio Banderas will play the lead character in the TV series "Havana Quartet," based on the Mario Conde police procedural thrillers created by Cuban journalist Leonardo Padura, the Starz channel's CEO Chris Albrecht announced. Banderas and Cuba's "Magic City" author Eduardo Machado are executive producers of the series, while Mach...

Washington, Jul 27 (EFE).- The United States removed Cuba from the list of countries whose governments do not fully comply with the minimum standards for combating human trafficking and "do not make significant efforts to do so." The U.S. State Department published Monday its annual report on human trafficking around the world in 2014, in which it identified the countries not taking the necessa...

Source: Wikimedia Commons Mexico City, Jul 22 (EFE).- More than 97,000 Kemp's ridley sea turtles were born in recent days at the Playa Rancho Nuevo wildlife sanctuary in the northeastern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, the National Protected Natural Areas Commission, or Conanp, said. The hatchlings emerged from more than 2,000 nests in the wildlife reserve under monitoring by Conanp specialist...

Wikimedia Commons New York, Jul 18 (EFE).- Mexico is a corrupt country that should be subject to a U.S. "boycott," Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump said in an interview to be broadcast Sunday by a New York radio station. Trump, whose remarks were published on Saturday by several media outlets, cited Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" (Shorty) Guzman's escape from the Altipl...

US NSA Headquarters. Source: Wikimedia Commons Sao Paulo, Jul 4 (EFE).- Whistle-blower Web site WikiLeaks on Saturday published the names of more than 29 members of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff's administration who were spied on by the U.S. National Security Agency at the start of her first term in office, which began in January 2011. The release of the list of phone numbers linked to...

Confederate flag flies in Columbia, South Carolina. Flickr Commons Washington, Jun 27 (EFE).- A female African American activist was arrested Saturday after taking down the Confederate battle flag from the State Capitol in South Carolina as part of the protests against the massacre last weekend of nine black worshippers at a church in Charleston by a young white supremacist. The young woman...

Washington, Jun 26 (EFE).- The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday in favor of legalizing gay marriage across the country, a historic decision that annuls the power of states to ban same-sex unions. The high court's decision makes same-sex marriage a constitutional right in the United States, and consequently requires the 13 states still prohibiting it to allow people of the same sex to marry legal...

Source: Volaris Costa Rica is currently the subject of an invasion by budget airlines, which are fighting each other for market share in the lucrative segment of flights between North and Central American destinations. As recently reported by The Costa Rica Star: Data compiled by the Directorate of Civil Aviation in Costa Rica indicates that low-cost airlines transported 9.2 percent of 4.2 mi...

Unidentified U.S. federal agent during the seizure of Elián González from his uncle's residence on April 22, 2000. Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography. Photograph taken by Alan Diaz of the Associated Press. Wikimedia Commons Fair Use.  Miami, May 18 (EFE).- Young Cuban student Elian Gonzalez, who as a child was rescued at sea in 1999 by two U.S. fishermen, said in an interview Monday ...

Credit: Flickr Commons; Thomas Pompenigg Seattle, Mar 30 (EFE).- The United States grants citizenship to any person born in its territory, a constitutional provision that in recent years has promoted the creation and expansion of a new business: maternity tourism. With a neatly organized network of agencies and hotels, maternity tourism targets pregnant women, most of them Chinese, who want...

EFE file New York, Mar 17 (EFE).- Venezuela on Tuesday took out a full-page ad in The New York Times to ask the U.S. government to immediately cease its "hostile actions" against Caracas and to retract the executive order declaring the South American nation to be a threat to its national security. Entitled "Venezuela is not a threat," the ad takes the form of a letter directed at the Americ...

Source: Wikimedia Commons The Associated Press (AP) reported on Tuesday the U.S. Secret Service is conducting drone exercises over Washington, D.C. to defend against unmanned aerial vehicles being flown over the area. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approved the Secret Service to conduct these flying exercises. The exercises are to be over parts of D.C. airspace which is normally ...

Mr. DeNiro with his wife, Ms. Grace Hightower. Source: Wikimedia Commons San Juan, Mar 9 (EFE).- A $250 million plan by actor Robert De Niro and investor James Packer to turn Barbud a's K-Club hotel into a luxury resort has created controversy on the island. De Niro and Packer want to renovate the K-Club, which was once visited by the late Princess Diana, Antigua and Barbuda's consulate in ...

EFE New York, Feb 25 (EFE).- The FBI on Wednesday arrested three New York residents who allegedly were planning to join the jihadist Islamic State and commit terrorist acts in the United States, officials with the agency and the Justice Department said. Abdurasul Hasanovich Juraboev and Abror Habibov, both citizens of Uzbekistan, and Akhror Saidakhmetov, a citizen of Kazakhstan, are facing ...

A typical abandoned home in Detroit. The National Stadium in La Sabana, hundreds of patrol cars and the National Police Academy: These are some of the most significant donations given to Costa Rica by the People's Republic of China (PRC). Costa Rica is hardly the only country in the region to receive major aid from China; the Costa Rica Star has previously reported on the work of the PRC in th...

This article is a press release from the US Embassy in Costa Rica, if you would like The Costa Rica Star to publish your announcements, please contact us. The Embassy of the United States in Costa Rica welcomes last night’s strong statement of support from the Government of Costa Rica regarding the Framework Agreement for the Elimination of Syria’s Chemical Weapons. Costa Rica, recognized ...

The Costa Rica Star recently reported on how Costa Rica views the conflict in Syria. Not surprisingly, former Costa Rican President Oscar Arias has a somewhat different view of U.S. President Barack Obama's acceptance of a Russian proposal to act as negotiator in the poison gas elimination in Syria. Arias gave the Spanish press an earful Friday. Arias claims it was not just Russia and China ...

U.S. President Barack Obama and former Costa Rican President Oscar Arias have much in common. Both are winners of the Nobel Peace Prize and, as such have been critical of war as foreign policy and as a solution for problems. So why is Arias taking Obama to task without mincing words? Arias reacted on Facebook Thursday to President Obama’s speech promising armed retaliation against the Syrian re...

We walk from the train station toward a Guatemalan restaurant where we decide to have breakfast. It’s 11 a.m. on a summer day in August, a little late to be eating the first meal of the day, but Sandra, Miguel and Robert requested the day off of work to be with us, and they decided that before opening the doors to their private life, we should get to know each other briefly. The restaurant is c...