Mexico City, Jan. 3 — The Mexican government expressed disappointment following Tuesday's announcement by the Ford Motor Co. that it was abandoning plans for a $1.6 billion assembly plant in Mexico. Mexico will see to it that Ford reimburses the San Luis Potosi state government for any expenditures of public money made in furtherance of the project, the Economy Secretariat said in a statement. ...

Los Angeles, Jan. 4 — Singer Janet Jackson, 50, has given birth to her first child, a boy named Eissa Al Mana, her publicist announced. "Janet Jackson and husband Wissam Al Mana are thrilled to welcome their son Eissa Al Mana into the world," a representative for the singer said in a statement published late Tuesday in People magazine. "Janet had a stress-free healthy delivery and is resting c...

Hollywood legend Robert De Niro is fighting to restore the once luxurious K Club on the island of Barbuda in the Eastern Caribbean, reports U.K.’s The Telegraph. The small island of under 2,000 inhabitants was a favorite spot for Diana, Princess of Wales, where vacationed with young Princes William and Harry in the winter. The K Club, Diana’s home base on the island suffered a reversal of fo...

Panama City, Jan. 2 — President Juan Carlos Varela highlighted on Monday a decline in Panama's murder rate since he took office 2 1/2 years ago, while acknowledging that his government needs to do more in the area of public safety. "Our public safety plan is yielding good results," Varela said in the annual state of the nation address to the National Assembly. "In 30 months of this administrati...

Santiago, Dec. 29 — Seamen and non-commissioned officers serving aboard a navy frigate are facing court martial for planting hidden cameras in the quarters of their female shipmates and sharing the images online, the Chilean military said Thursday. Five men are accused of installing the cameras and sharing the images via WhatsApp and other social networks, while the other three are charged with...

January 2: Colombian rebels may be preparing to lay down their guns, but the nation faces a deeper challenge to heal itself: treating mental illnesses stemming from the trauma of a half-century war. The 260,000 people killed and 60,000 missing in the civil conflict are quantified in official statistics—but uncounted millions still suffer the psychological scars. Maria—a pseudonym which the w...

Today, we celebrate another big win for elephant conservation with China’s game-changing decision to end domestic ivory trade by 2017. The new regulations come as part of the government’s efforts to reduce demand for elephant ivory and help end the global elephant poaching crisis. "China’s announcement is a game changer for elephant conservation," said Carter Roberts, president and CEO of WWF. ...

Lima, Dec. 30 — This capital's La Pampilla beach has become the first in Peru and in Latin America with night-time lighting, an improvement the municipal government says aims to encourage the country's world-class surfers to extend their activity past sunset. Starting this week, 1,000-watt LED lights atop four posts 18 meters (59 ft) high will illuminate the shoreline in the Lima district of Mira...

Bangkok Desk, Dec. 29 — Fifteen people have been detained in Australia in connection with the seizure of 1.1 tons of cocaine in an international operation against a drug smuggling ring, police officials said Thursday. A total of 500 kilograms were seized on Dec. 25 in the southern Australian state of New South Wales, and over 600 kilograms bound for Australia were intercepted in March in Tahiti, ...

Caracas, Dec 28 (EFE).- Venezuela will end 2016 with a homicide rate of 91.8 for every 100,000 people, second only to El Salvador, the independent human rights group, Venezuelan Violence Observatory (OVV), said Wednesday. The projected total number of violent deaths is 28,479, compared with 27,875 in 2015, OVV director Roberto Briceño Leon said. Though the year-on-year increase is relatively...

Beijing, Dec. 28 — Fast-food restaurant chain McDonald's is considering selling its China franchise either to the Chinese state-owned financial conglomerate CITIC or the American investment fund Carlyle, official newspaper China Daily reported Wednesday. McDonald's operates more than 2,200 establishments in China and Hong Kong, valued at around $2 billion, according to the newspaper, which provid...

The nature of a woman's orgasm has been a source of debate for over a century. Since the Victorian era, the pendulum has swung from the vagina to the clitoris, and to some extent back again. Today, the debate is stuck over whether an orgasm can be produced through vaginal stimulation alone, or if arousal of the external clitoris is always necessary. A new review by Concordia research...

Buenos Aires, Dec. 27 — Argentina's air transport unions, from flight attendants and pilots to cargo personnel, gathered Tuesday in this capital to protest against the government, which has organized hearings to study the entry of new airlines into the market, including budget carriers. Carrying flags and signs and beating drums, about 1,000 people from various unions demonstrated starting earl...

The U.S. Senate Special on Aging found hikes as high as 5,000 percent in prices of some prescription drugs. The panel's 2016 investigation looked at four pharmaceutical companies and public hearings on sudden price spikes in decades-old medications, and the pricing imposed by drug industry entrepreneur Martin Shkreli and other healthcare industry executives. The high prices are making vital ...

AUGSBURG, Germany, Dec. 25 -- Authorities took four hours to successfully defuse a 2-ton bomb from World War II after more than 54,000 people from Augsburg were evacuated on Christmas day. Hundreds of police and firefighters were involved in the nation's biggest evacuation since the Second World War, according to German broadcaster Deutsche Welle. Bomb specialists from the Bavarian city of Würz...

Gaza City, Palestine, Dec 24 — The Islamist movements Hamas and Islamic Jihad welcomed on Saturday the resolution adopted by the United Nations Security Council against Jewish settlements and considered it a "change" in the policy of the international community. Hamas welcomes this resolution and welcomes the positive changes in international stances supporting Palestinian rights in international...

VATICAN CITY, Dec. 24 -- Pope Francis on Christmas Eve encouraged Catholics to turn away from consumerism and embrace the "smallness" of Baby Jesus. During his homily at the annual Midnight Mass in a packed St. Peter's Square, Francis said the humble story of Jesus' birth in a manger remains a guiding principle of Catholicism. "The Gospel reveals a paradox: it speaks of the emperor, the gove...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dCiRHw4awE...

Anne Marie Miller was born in San Jose, Costa Rica, she later moved to Ecuador at the age of 15. At a very young age, she began to experiment with many creative outlets. She was in acting, dancing and singing classes for years, and has a blue belt in Karate-Do. Her many extracurricular activities and itch for writing, made her the first student in her high school to ever attend NYU. Source:...

Dense jungle, abundant wildlife, dream waterfalls, beautiful beaches. Costa Rica has all of them, especially the beaches. Source: craerea.com...

As the debate in Washington, DC rages over the de-funding of Planned Parenthood, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences are gathering data about the effects on women’s lives of abortion and the consequences of being unable to access that care. The experiences of women who have an unwanted pregnancy and seek an abort...

Faced with a more than 10  percent decline in exports this year, Panamanian authorities traveled to exchange information with Costa Rica's Foreign Trade Promoter (Procomer) to learn from Costa Rica's recent success exporting more than 100 products to different markets. Panama's official delegation included Deputy Minister Nestor Gonzalez, Exports Director Leyda Gonzalez, and directors of the Pa...

Panama City, Dec. 20 — The opposition Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) said Tuesday that Dec. 20 should be a "day of national mourning" to mark the U.S. invasion of Panama, which began on Dec. 20, 1989. U.S. military invasion of Panama on Dec. 20, 1989; source Newsroom Panama. "The death of an undetermined number of Panamanians, the destruction of property representing thousands of mill...

Christopher Farmer and Peta Frampton left the coast of Belize on June 26, 1978, aboard a boat named the Justin B. Photo for illustrative purposes. The young British couple in their mid-20s had decided to spend a year traveling abroad. They traveled to Australia and then went to the Americas. They toured Guadalajara, Mexico, and later wound up in Belize City, where they met an American named...

MIAMI, USA -- A New York City resident pleaded guilty on Monday, December 12 in connection with a sophisticated Caribbean cell-phone fraud scheme that involved compromising cell-phone customers’ accounts and “cloning” their phones to make fraudulent international calls. The United States Department of Justice. Farintong Calderon, 37, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire ...

Guerima, Colombia, Dec. 17 — The "drug triangle," formed by the Colombian villages of Guerima, Chupave and Puerto Principe, was famous for its coca leaf production under drug lord Carlos Lehder and later under the FARC. A rural peasant, photo for illustrative purposes. Now, as peace becomes a reality, people here are trying to replace that tarnished past with perfectly legal cacao crops. G...

Washington, Dec. 19 — Donald Trump yesterday received more than the 270 Electoral College votes he needed to confirm his victory in the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election. The Electoral College's vote, comprised of 538 electors corresponding to all the members of Congress, is usually a mere formality to validate the number of electoral votes received in the November balloting by the winning pres...

Sydney, Australia, Dec. 16 — The saturation of the dolphin-watching market in several Asian countries is endangering the population of the marine mammals, according to an international study released on Friday. The research focused on seven popular areas of dolphin watching in Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines between 2008 and 2014, and in almost all cases the market w...

The Anteater is an animal that is found mainly in Central and South America, where they choose tropical forests and the grasslands. The most commonly seen of Costa Rica’s three anteater species is the tree-dwelling lesser anteater. They can be seen in Santa Rosa national Park and several other National parks also. The giant anteater is restricted to the areas of Osa Peninsula. The cat sized silky ...

https://vimeo.com/185940028...

Quito, Dec. 14 — The Ecuadorian government on Wednesday signed a contract with Canada's Lundin Gold company to exploit a gold and silver deposit in the southeastern Amazon province of Zamora Chinchipe. Mining Minister Javier Cordova signed the deal to extract the precious metals as part of the Fruta del Norte project in the Yantzatza region. With an investment of $1 billion, the Canadian fir...

Washington, Dec. 14 —  The district attorney in the case against U.S. actor and comedian Bill Cosby accused him on Wednesday of "a lifetime of sexual assault" on women in a pre-trial hearing. Kevin Steele, the district attorney for Pennsylvania's Montgomery County, where this week another round of pre-trial hearings is under way, hopes to convince the judge that the 13 women who have accused Co...

Los Angeles, Dec. 14 — Yahoo Inc. said Wednesday that an "unauthorized third party" gained access to personal information from more than 1 billion e-mail accounts. This is a good time for Yahoo users to change their password, if they haven't in a while; source Facebook. "The investigation indicates that the stolen information did not include passwords in clear text, payment card data, or ba...

Nekupe Sporting Resort and Retreat, a luxury countryside resort, has opened on a 1,300 acre (526 hectare) nature reserve in southwest Nicaragua, not far from the Costa Rica border. One of Nicaragua's many volcanoes. Boasting an intimate eight-room property, a luxury spa facility and a number of outdoor pursuits, the resort, located around 30 minutes north of the historic colonial town of Gr...

Geneva, Dec. 13 — Malaria has retreated in almost all of Latin America. Mosquito nets are key in preventing malaria transmission. Costa Rica is listed as free of malaria transmission by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and it, along with several other countries will be certified malaria-free by the World Health Organization (WHO) in coming years. The exceptions to thi...

Natalia Carvajal, 25-year-old is a talented TV presenter, actress and model from Costa Rica, who this year was crowned Miss Eco Universo 2016 in Egypt, Natalia now becomes a representative of environmental education and ecotourism worldwide....

The Christmas and New Year holiday season tend to bring a rise in depression and suicides. A researcher in Florida hopes those at risk will use a free app that has shown promise of reducing suicide risk, and has other insights for others in the mental health field. Florida State University researcher Joseph Franklin made a startling discovery during an exhaustive examination of hundreds of suic...

Punta Arenas, Chile, Dec. 12 — Researchers are doing the science needed to help the planet survive "south of south," officials said Monday at the inauguration of the Scientific Circulation and Innovation Hackathon in the Chilean city of Punta Arenas, a forum that has attracted young entrepreneurs from seven South American countries. A whale watching excursion in Chile's far south, source Fac...

Guatemala yesterday welcomed into its market the U.S. application found in more than 70 countries and 480 cities. Among those who joined in congratulating the arrival of Uber to Guatemala was the United States Commercial Service. An Uber driver in Bogota. Wikimedia Commons "This country has all the potential to receive Uber, and we are sure that Guatemalans will find the benefit of a new al...

Panama's aviation rating has plunged since 2005 with failures  in procedures and regulations, reported the online English news media in Panama, Newsroom Panama, yesterday. Panama's flag. The disturbing report comes from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) which audited the country in 2015. On inspection, the Panamanian air system earned a score of 36.4 points out of a hu...