Diners at McDonalds along the main drag in San Rafael de Escazú, an upscale district west of San José, were in for more than they bargained for when they went out for a bite last night. At around 9:40 p.m., two armed men entered the locale and robbed all customers and cash registers at gun point, reported police. No one was physically harmed in the hold up, but customers and workers were lef...

Costa Rican Vice Minister of Foreign Trade, Jhon Fonseca, concluded a third round of negotiations on a recent trip to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) centered on attracting investments for the country's planned "megaport" on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. At the site of the Moín, Limón port, an expanded facility with improved capacity and logistics aims to be able to receive over two and a h...

The man who reinvented popular media in the U.S. to include nudity and sexuality, Hugh Hefner, who launched Playboy Magazine in 1953, died at his home in Los Angeles, California today at age 91. His passing was announced by Playboy Enterprises at 8:13 Pacific Time via Twitter, saying he died of natural causes at home surrounded by family. The magazine, and later Hefner's Playboy Clubs, which...

A United States citizen was taken into police custody late this afternoon, Wednesday, September 27, near the southern mountain town of Pérez Zeledón. The detention occurred shortly after police at around 4 p.m unearthed the body of a woman who is preliminarily presumed to be the man's wife. The body was found partially buried about 500 meters from their rural home, according to a press conferen...

Traffic police and municipal governments in 16 of Costa Rica's counties are joining forces to bolster monitoring at specific areas with high car accident rates, such as Jaco beach said the Ministry of Public Works and Transport this week. The effort comes as the calendar approaches the end of the year, a time when car accidents historically spike in Costa Rica. "We want to focus on areas that ...

That annoying paper you are always given to fill out while trying to sleep on your flight or bus back to Costa Rica may be a thing of the past. The Costa Rican General Directorate of Migration and Foreigners announced a pilot test of a digital system that will take the place of the paper forms travelers have had to fill out by hand when exiting or entering the country. For the average travel...

Experts alert that from August-December, when Costa Rica's crocodiles are breeding, there is often an uptick in attacks on humans. This is due to the fact that when males compete with other males for a mate, weaker males are often displaced from their usual habitats in and around river mouths and make forays into other areas such as oceans, beaches, canals, and mangroves. Sunday, September 2...

A group of residents in the small Central Pacific port town of Quepos, bordering the popular tourist destination Manuel Antonio National Park, have come together to seek to increase safety on the streets. The initiative, "Quepos Seguro, Quepos Libre" (A Safe and Free Quepos), held a kick-off meeting Monday afternoon at the site of the weekly local farmer's market. Their Facebook page already ha...

Costa Rica's 300-odd electric vehicle (EV) drivers have some welcome news with new charging stations coming to rural areas. Two stations to join the grid will be located in the mountains south of San José along the Interamerican Highway: one in San Marcos de Tarrazú and the other in the vicinity of the Los Santos Wind Farm. The recharge points are being built by the National Consortium of El...

Article 121 of the Costa Rican Penal Code states that "abortion practiced with the consent of a woman by a doctor or an authorized obstetrician is not punishable if it has been done in order to avoid danger to the life or health of the mother." However, in recent years women in Costa Rica with high-risk pregnancies that threaten their health have found it difficult and at times impossible to us...

Costa Rican President Luis Guillermos Solís called emergency officials and local government leaders for an urgent meeting today, Tuesday, September 26, at 6:30 a.m. to evaluate the extensive impact recent heavy rains have had throughout the country. The rains have caused damages to homes, road closures, and mud slides in at least half of the counties throughout the country. Between September...

The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) recognized Dr. Stella Bolaños Varela of Costa Rica Monday, September 25, for her outstanding career and longstanding commitment to the quality and management of health services in Costa Rica, by presenting her with the 2017 PAHO Award for Health Services Management and Leadership Services. The award recognizes Bolaños Varela's outstanding contribution...

The eastern San José suburb of Curridabat is the planned site of a 25-story innovative residential tower to be undertaken by Civitar Desarrolladores, together with Constructora Volio & Trejos and Grupo Pijao. Civitas Desarrolladores has built several recent unique towers in Costa Rica, many in conjunction with Constructora Volio & Trejos, including iFreses, Ü Nunciatura, and Nunciatura ...

The Costa Rican Railways Institute (Instituto Costarricense de Ferrocarrile, INCOFER) and the Ministry of Public Works and Transport (MOPT) have made available to the public a mobile phone application called  "Incofer Móvil" with alerts on changes in train service and delays. The app also includes train schedules on the urban routes that connect Belén, Heredia, Alajuela and Cartago with San Jos...

The group of rheumatologists at the public San Juan de Dios Hospital in San José, Costa Rica opened an arthritis clinic, in order to treat patients in the early stages of the disease. People who present possible symptoms of arthritis are scheduled for medical appointments on Thursday mornings at the clinic for early detection screenings. From January to date, about 300 people have gone throu...

At last week's United Nations 72nd General Assembly, recommendations from the Global High-Level Panel on Water and Peace were presented, said Costa Rica's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Costa Rica joined the panel when it was established in 2015, and played an important role in developing mechanisms and best practices for promoting cooperation regarding water supplies and sources. Costa Rican ...

President of the Criminal Cassation Board and Coordinator of the Gender Commission, Costa Rican Judge Doris Arias Madrigal participated last week in the launch of the social medica campaign "Métele un gol al machismo," promoted by the Justice and Gender Foundation of the United Nations Latin American Institute for Crime Prevention and Treatment of Offenders. The campaign translates to "Score a ...

The Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI Vatican Foundation has organized an international congress in Costa Rica from November 29 to December 1, 2017 in which Pope Francis' "Laudato Si" and speeches on the environment by Benedict XVI will be the main themes, reported Papal news sources. Pope Francis' encyclical "Laudato Si" is being used to create a tool to measure and rank countries' efforts in human ...

Gilberto Ventura Ceballos was arrested today in Jacó by Costa Rica's Judicial Investigation Agency (OIJ) and the Directorate of Intelligence and National Security (DIS) officials. The Dominican national, who has a knack for evading arrest, is wanted in Panama for the murder of five people in 2010 and 2011. The young man has been on the run since December 2016 when he escaped from La Joyita pris...

With criminal proceedings underway on a human organ trafficking case involving the trial of four Costa Rican doctors and their alleged accomplices, many interesting details are coming to light. Intersecting forces of greed, corruption and international black markets are being identified and dissected as evidence is presented in this first of a kind trial in Costa Rica. More details will be fort...

Police assault data for Costa Rica's counties continue to rank San José as being the most violent, and Escazú fell three places in the judiciary police's ranking of the country's regions by number of assaults, according to data released this week by the OIJ, the country's investigation bureau. Hojancha and Nandayure, Guanacaste registered no assaults this year so far, and have historically had ...

Municipalities in the Central and South Pacific regions of Costa Rica have shortened the time it takes to have a business permit granted, said government representatives of the Alcanzando Escala program (which translates to Achieving Scale). In order to improve the business climate in the Central and South Pacific region of the country, municipal procedures that previously lasted 33 days can no...

The new iPhone 8 will go on sale in Costa Rica at select Gollo stores Monday, September 25. Five Gollo stores - their large ones - will offer the new iPhones which come with 5.45 inch screens and 64 GB of memory. The plus size - with a larger 6.25 inch screen - will not be available for sale in Costa Rica until a later date, said the company. Purchases can also be made through Gollo's online...

Police in Costa Rica have been busy both on land and at sea intercepting drugs. Since January the police force has racked up over 14.5 tons in drug seizures, some of which was destined for local consumption, and much of which was in transit from South America to points beyond Costa Rica. The country's drug control police (PCD, in Spanish) reports that so far this year, 89 narco criminal stru...

In case you missed it, right here in Costa Rica is one of the world's five "blue zones" - geographic regions with an unusually high longevity. The Nicoya Peninsula communities of Hojancha, Nandayure, Santa Cruz, Carrillo and Nicoya in Guanacaste province make up the area in Latin America with the highest longevity. World experts are seeking to learn more about the secrets behind the Nicoyan ...

At around 10:30 this morning, police closed the Pequeño Mundo in San Rafael de Escazú for several hours while they apparently searched for possible counterfeit items, according to police reports. All 11 branches of the large outlet type store will be searched by judiciary investigative police officials (known in Spanish as the OIJ), continued reports. The store, which is reminiscent of Kmart...

You can now carry out face-to-face interactions with Spirit Airlines representatives in downtown San José, Costa Rica, thanks to an alliance with a Costa Rican travel agency. The office is located near the city's main thoroughfare, Paseo Colón, north of the Centro Colón building. The budget airline said that because Costa Rica is one of their main points of operation in Central America, the ...

A documentary by Costa Rican filmmaker and producer, Miguel Gómez, aims to highlight the perils of irregular migration by focusing on the Mesoamerican corridor. From January - July of this year, the United Nations Migration Agency (IOM) registered 230 deaths of such migrants attempting to cross from Mexico into the United States. By recounting the true story of members of a Costa Rican regga...

Travel Excellence is the first company in Costa Rica to be certified for gender equality in the workplace (a program initialed SIGIG in Costa Rica). The Technical Standards Institute of Costa Rica (Inteco) issued a national gender equality standard in December 2013 with input from the National Institute of Women (INAMU) which sets out the requirements for an organization to achieve gender equal...

A luxury boutique hotel nestled in the hills of Quepos, bordering the Manuel Antonio National Park on Costa Rica's lush Pacific coast, has swept the region's awards again this year. The Gaia Hotel and Reserve was considered the best boutique hotel in the Mexico-Central America region in this year's World Travel Awards ceremony, for the 8th time! In 2015, Gaia was recognized by Condé Naste as...

The CCSS, which are the initials for Costa Rica's public healthcare system, the Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social, is launching an innovative breast cancer prevention program targeting healthy women aged 45 - 69, said the institution this week. By 2020, and with an investment of over 9 billion colones (over US$15 million), the CCSS hopes to have all women in Costa Rica in that age range inclu...

Electrification of the transportation sector is a crucial component of tackling global climate change. This is the topic of the Third Annual Latin America Clean Transport Forum in San José, Costa Rica organized by the Washington, DC think-tank The Inter American Dialogue. The event will be held Wednesday, Sept. 20 with registration beginning at 8:30 a.m., and the keynote address starting at 9 a...

"So, you like milk, baby ... why don't you drink some of mine when I squirt it in your face." This comment from a man in a car passing by is how a University of Costa Rica student started her week as she hurried by foot while munching on some cereal to stave off her hunger before a morning class. The incident was described by the student, Madeline "Madi" Soto, on her Facebook page. Madeline ...

If your travel in or out of Costa Rica today takes you via Panama's Tocumen International Airport you may be grounded or delayed. An electrical problem inside our southern neighbor's airport caused flight disruptions this morning, September 18, and has now been remedied, said Tocumen airport officials this morning. Copa Airlines was heavily affected by the problem as many of its flights to o...

-- Between 2013 to July 2017, 36,081 irregular migrants entered Costa Rica through Paso Canoas on the Panamanian border, according to immigration officials. Towards the end of 2015 and into 2016, Costa Rica faced a surge in irregular migrants for which it was not prepared, said the government press office today, and that forced institutions and communities to respond to the emergency. First th...

A 65-year-old man from outside Rochester, New York, United States, died Saturday, September 16 while rappelling down from a restaurant at a Costa Rican rainforest ecolodge. John Anderson, a respected member of the northwestern New York real estate and banking community, was reported as having traveled to Costa Rica to celebrate his 65th birthday. His visit to the Pacuare Lodge, an upscale ad...

Heavy downpours this past Saturday, September 16 created flooding and mudslides on several parts of Costa Rica's Highway 27, a toll road linking the capital city of San Jose with popular points in the Central Pacific region including Los Suenos, Jacó, Manuel Antonio, Dominical, and areas on the southern Nicoya Peninsula such as Tambor beach. A cascade of water dumping water and mud onto the hig...

"Life is too short to be sitting in traffic jams," is the slogan of Costa Rica's Car-Free Day event which is part of World Car Free Day celebrated every September 22 in a growing number of cities and countries throughout the world. Costa Rican event organizers encourage those who will participate by leaving their car in the garage for the day on Friday to use the hashtag #RetoSinCarro, which me...

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Friday China is ready to make concerted efforts with Costa Rica to forge a closer, more extensive and deeper strategic partnership to better benefit the two peoples, and make greater contributions to regional peace and stability. Led by exchanges between the two heads of state, China-Costa Rica ties have seen steady development and fruitful results sinc...

The United States Secretary of State Rex Tillerson sent a message on the occasion of September 15, Costa Rican Independence Day, announced the U.S. Embassy in San José, Costa Rica. The statement reads as follows: "On behalf of the United States Government, we congratulate Costa Ricans on the 196th anniversary of independent living. The deep and strong relationship of our countries is eviden...