Wikimedia Commons Mexico City, Dec 26 (EFE).- Two suspected criminals were killed in a clash with marines in the northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa, authorities said Saturday. The marines came under attack Friday by suspected members of an organized crime gang while on patrol in the municipality of Badiraguato, the Navy Secretariat said in a bulletin, adding that a navy helicopter that w...

Source: Red Cross of Costa Rica Paso Canoas, Panama, Dec 25 (EFE).- Some 800 Cubans spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day on the streets or in shelters at the Panamanian-Costa Rican border, not at their final destination as they had hoped. "I thought I'd spend Christmas in the United States with my family," said Sarai Santos, who spent the night of Dec. 24 with friends from her hometown of ...

Wikimedia Commons By Julia Talarn Rabascall Santiago, Dec 23 (EFE).- The quest to pry into the secrets of some of the most radiation-resistant organisms on Earth led Chilean scientist Jenny Blamey to the Union Glacier, just 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the South Pole. These microorganisms, classified as extremophiles, can survive in environments with constant sub-freezing temperatures...

"Dwyane Wade" by Keith Allison from Baltimore, USA - Dwyane Wade. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons Miami, Dec 25 (EFE; odds by IDSca.com).- Power forward Chris Bosh scored 30 points to lead the Miami Heat to a 94-88 overtime victory here Friday over the New Orleans Pelicans in the first of five NBA games scheduled for Christmas Day. Bosh, who scored seven of his points in o...

Wikimedia Commons Washington, Dec 22 (EFE).- The comments of Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump have earned him the "2015 Lie of the Year" award presented by PolitiFact, a Web site that fact-checks the truth of politicians' statements. The Web site, a division of the daily Tampa Bay Times, studied 77 statements made by the controversial real estate magnate since he declared his pr...

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...

Flickr Commons By Yeny Garcia Havana, Dec 24 (EFE).- At the close of a year marked by the reestablishment of relations with Washington, Cubans are celebrating the Christmas holidays without big parties but the private restaurants known as "paladares" are causing family traditions to evolve and many people are trying out their culinary offerings. Since 1997, when Christmas was reinstated ...

Source: Erica Hagan Memorial Fund Santiago, Dec 23 (EFE).- A court in the southern Chilean city of Temuco on Wednesday acquitted due to lack of evidence the only suspect in the murder of U.S. psychologist Erica Hagan, who was killed in early September 2014, court sources reported. Domingo Cofre Ferrada, 45, a security guard at the Bautista College in Temuco, where the 22-year-old victim liv...

Panama Canal Panama City, Dec 23 (EFE).- The inauguration of the Panama Canal expansion will be delayed for six months if the ACP, the public entity administering the interocean waterway, does not make more flexible its bureaucratic and payment procedures, Giuseppe Quarta, the director of GUPC, the consortium that is handling the project, said Wednesday. "We ... (can) deliver the project" b...

"Yutu" by Chinese National Space Administration/China Central Television Madrid, Dec 23 (EFE).- China's Yutu robot, which landed on the moon in 2013 as part of the unmanned Chang'e-3 mission, has found a different type of basaltic rock on the Earth's satellite, a study published in the journal Nature Communications said. Chang'e-3, the first probe to reach the lunar surface since the Apollo...

Wikimedia Commons Philadelphia, Dec 23 (EFE; odds by IDSca.com).- Spanish center Marc Gasol led the way for the Memphis Grizzlies in their 104-90 victory over the hapless Philadelphia 76ers, who once again failed to snap their second double-digit losing streak of the season. Gasol made seven of his 15 field-goal attempts and all five of his free throws to finish with 19 points Tuesday night...

Pixabay Commons Rio de Janeiro, Dec 22 (EFE).- A 33-year-old man was attacked by a shark, which tore off his hand and part of his arm, while he was swimming a few meters (yards) offshore at a beach on the Brazilian island of Fernando de Noronha, medical personnel reported on Tuesday. The victim, whose name was withheld, was transported on Tuesday morning to a hospital in the mainland city o...

Wikimedia Commons By Carol Blair Vaughn Santa’s going to have more help delivering packages this year than just Rudolph’s very shiny nose. The universe is giving us all a gift that we don’t even need to unwrap: a full moon on Christmas Eve. This phenomena is called the Yule Moon, or the Full Cold Moon, and it’s the first time since 1977 that this has happened, 38 years ago. NASA predicts...

Unidentified hacker. Wikimedia Commons New York, Dec 21 (EFE).- Iranian hackers in 2013 gained access to the control system of a small dam near New York City, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday. Citing several officials and experts, the daily detailed aspects of the hack-job, which was not publicized by the authorities but was handled at the highest level. According to the report, t...

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...

Wikimedia Commons Paris, Dec 20 (EFE).- The device whose discovery forced an Air France plane to make an emergency landing in Kenya was not a bomb, the carrier's CEO, Frederic Gagey, said Sunday. The suspected bomb found in one of the restrooms on the plane, which was flying from Mauritius to Paris, was made from cardboard and had some kind of timer. The object appeared to be a bomb but ...

Located in the Manuel Antonio National Park, The Sloth Institute Costa Rica (TSI)’s vision is to expand scientific knowledge and education about the sloth to enhance their well-being and assure their conservation here and on this planet. Following is a holiday reflection by Sloth Institute staff about their noble work this year. You can read the original here. By Seda Sejud No matter wher...

Jack Donnelly By Jack Donnelly If you don’t want to see a bull bleeding and dying in front of you, don’t worry: in Costa Rica the bulls win! Costa Rican style bullfighting, toros a la tica, is nothing like the gory spectacles that take place in Mexico and Spain. Here the bulls are well cared for and almost never injured. Tico (Costa Rican) friends of mine joke about the bulls’ contracts cal...

Wikimedia Commons La Paz, Dec 18 (EFE).- The government of the western Bolivian province of Oruro issued a declaration of natural disaster Saturday after learning that Lake Poopo, the second largest in the country after Titicaca and which once covered more than 4,600 sq. kilometers (1,780 sq. miles), has almost dried up. Oruro Gov. Victor Hugo Vasquez enacted a law that declared it a natura...

San Jose, Dec 19 (EFE).- Costa Rica's government said it would stop issuing transit visas to Cubans after failing to reach an agreement with its neighbors to allow these migrants to continue on through Central America toward the United States. "We can't keep receiving migrants indefinitely ... Please don't come to Costa Rica. We don't want to deport you. Don't come because you can't go through,...

Desyfin office in Grecia LUXEMBOURG, December 17, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Sustainability | Finance | Real Economies SICAV - SIF (SFRE, pronounced Sapphire) has made its first investments totalling just under USD 10 million in Banco Vision (Paraguay) and Financiera Desyfin (Costa Rica), in line with its strategy of advancing social, environmental and economic development by providing capital to ba...

Flickr Commons Los Angeles, Dec 18 (EFE).- Puerto Rican actress Roselyn Sanchez, who will co-host Sunday's Miss Universe pageant in Las Vegas, told EFE in an interview that Hispanics have the power to prevent Donald Trump from being elected president. "I refuse to believe it. I don't think it's possible," Sanchez said Thursday when asked whether the business magnate and Republican candidate...

Panama Canal Panama City, Dec 18 (EFE).- The inauguration of an expanded Panama Canal, previously scheduled for April, will be postponed due to cracks detected in the new set of locks that are the centerpiece of the $5.25 billion overhaul, the interoceanic waterway's chief administrator said Friday. Panama Canal Authority, or ACP, head Jorge Quijano said the agency was still planning for th...

Source: Nomadic-by-Nature.com By Mike McCaffrey In early June, before the rains bloat the rivers and the roads wash away, when the flame red flowers of the malinche tree fall in halos around their trunks — the olive ridley sea turtles crawl ashore at Ostional beach under the cover of night.  In the mornings, the Guanacaste cowboys create tornadoes of dust with their cattle, but in the after...

Source: Flickr Commons Acapulco, Mexico, Dec 17 (EFE).- After previously denying media reports about the discovery of nearly a score of bodies, the governor of the southern Mexican state of Guerrero said Thursday that a federal prosecutor had informed him that a large number of human remains had been found. "Indeed, the (federal) Attorney General's Office is investigating the discovery of t...

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...

Wikimedia Commons San Jose, Dec 16 (EFE; additional context by The Costa Rica Star).- The Nicaraguan government said Wednesday that it acknowledges and will abide by the decision of the International Court of Justice at The Hague putting an end to two border disputes with Costa Rica, decisions that recognize Costa Rican sovereignty over Isla Portillos. The goverment hailed the ruling by the...

Costa Rica with its exceptional selection of fine hotels means that many of these properties have some exciting and sometimes very different swimming pools! After all many Costa Rica swimming pools make up the perfect place to relax under the tropical sun, and what better way to sooth your muscles after an exciting day of adventure than to slip into a warm thermal swimming pool that’s naturally he...

Wikimedia Commons The U.S. Embassy in San Jose reminds U.S. citizens that the holiday season in Costa Rica traditionally correlates with an increase in the frequency of property crimes.  Home invasions, robberies, burglaries, and thefts occur with greater regularity during the period between the end of October and the start of the new year.  The holiday season also tends to correlate with an i...

Wikimedia Commons Bogota, Dec 15 (EFE).- The Colombian Culture Ministry officially refused to give U.S.-based treasure hunters Sea Search Armada access to the coordinates of the site where the wreck of the Spanish galleon San Jose was found on Nov. 27. In a letter signed by Minister Mariana Garces and made public on Tuesday, Colombia ruled out the possibility suggested by SSA of receiving a...

ISS. Source: Wikimedia Commons Washington, Dec 15 (EFE).- Russia's Soyuz TMA-19M space capsule docked successfully with the International Space Station on Tuesday, bringing three astronauts to the orbiting platform. The spacecraft was launched at 1103 GMT from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and docked with the ISS exactly 6 1/2 hours later, NASA said on its Web page. On board the ...

Wikimedia Commons A petition on the UK government's website, calling for US Presidential hopeful Donald Trump to be barred from entering the country, has now passed a half-million signatories becoming the most-popular petition ever posted on the site. The signatories include a majority of UK MPs. The petition was originally submitted late November by campaigner Suzanne Kelly from Aberdeen, ...

Serena Williams. Source: Wikimedia Commons New York, Dec 14 (EFE).- U.S. tennis icon Serena Williams was selected Monday by Sports Illustrated to be its Sportsperson of the Year. During 2015, Williams won three Grand Slam titles, had an individual 53-3 record on the court, took home her seventh WTA Player of the Year award and she is also the first U.S. woman in 32 years to be selected by S...

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro, Dec 13 (EFE).- Thousands of people participated in protests Sunday in more than 100 cities across Brazil, demanding an end to the administration of President Dilma Rousseff, who faces impeachment in the lower house of Congress. One of the biggest protests took place in Brasilia, the country's capital, where about 5,000 people, according to police estimates, ga...

Wikimedia Commons By Anny Castro Tegucigalpa, Dec 14 (EFE).- Science, technology and awareness are required to control a plague of southern pine beetles, known as "gorgojos," that has spread over hundreds of thousands of hectares of Honduran woods and threatens plantations, experts said in Tegucigalpa. To contain the spread of the beetles (Dendoctronus frontalis), more rigorous controls ...

Paris, Dec 12 (EFE; additional reporting by The Costa Rica Star).- Representatives at a U.N. climate summit outside Paris on Saturday approved the first-ever universal agreement to combat global warming, a deal that commits nearly 200 developed and developing nations to jointly transition to a low-carbon economy. At 7:26 p.m. local time, the president of the COP21 climate conference, French For...

Preferred weapon of guerrillas and drug cartels. San Jose, Dec 12 (EFE).- Costa Rica is seeing off 2015 as the most violent year in its history with at least 528 homicides to date, one more than the previous record established in 2010, according to figures released by the country's OIJ law enforcement agency. OIJ data indicate that 527 homicides were recorded in 2010, but since then the cou...

Taliban operating in Afghanistan. Wikimedia Commons Kabul, Dec 12 (EFE).- Ten people, including two Spanish police officers, died in a Taliban attack on a Spanish Embassy compound in the Afghan capital and an ensuing gun battle, a nearly 12-hour incident that ended early Saturday and represented a new show of force by the insurgents. Both the Spanish and Afghan governments confirmed Saturda...

Source: MBF Healthcare Partners Miami, Dec 10 (EFE).- Cuban-American billionaire Mike Fernandez, the biggest campaign donor to Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush, has launched a campaign against magnate Donald Trump, whom he says is a "narcissist" who must be stopped. "The problem with Donald Trump is that so much about him is unstable - his positions, his rhetoric - and I am afraid t...

Photo by Arthur Caranta, Flickr Commons Washington, Dec 11 (EFE).- A group of scientists has developed a software program that imitates the way humans learn new concepts, an "important step" in the field of artificial intelligence, a study published in the Science journal said. What the scientists are trying to do, according to Joshua Tenenbaum, one of the researchers and a professor at the...