Costa Rica News

The Dirección General de Migración y Extranjería (immigration service) will not be charging the us$100 fine for living illegally in the country for at least another six months, explained the director, Mario Zamora. The delay, Zamora said, is allowing illegal immigrant a grace period to legalize their situation. The fine for overstaying a stay in Costa Rica is called for in article 33 of the Ley No. 8764 went into effect on March 1, 2010. However, according to Zamora, who will be leaving the immigration service in two weeks, time is needed for the immigration service to draft regulations regarding

U. N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has appointed Christiana Figueres of Costa Rica as executive secretary of the U. N. Framework Convention on Climate Change to succeed Yvo de Boer. Ms. Figueres is an international leader on strategies to address global climate change and brings to this position a passion for the issue, deep knowledge of the stakeholders and valuable hands-on experience with the public sector, non-profit sector and private sector, the U.N. said in a release. Ms. Figueres has been involved in climate change negotiations since 1995, and served as a negotiator of both the U. N. Framework Convention

Laura Chinchilla was inaugurated as president of Costa Rica last week, the first female president for the country and the fifth female president in Latin America. Chinchilla takes over from Nobel Prize winner Oscar Arias, whom she served as vice president during his term in office. As his acknowledged protégé, she vowed to carry on with policies instituted by Arias that increased foreign trade, including opening the country to trade with China and instituting a trade pact with the U.S. These policies helped sustain the Costa Rican economy through the recent global recession. Chinchilla is also expected to continue the

Costa Ricas new president has taken a stand for renewable energy, and has stated that she wants 100 percent of the country’s consumable energy to come from renewable energy sources. It was reported in recent news articles that Laura Chinchilla, the newly inaugurated Costa Rican president, wants to develop a dynamic cluster of clean energy and power sources. According to Chinchillas statement at the European Union, Latin American and Caribbean Business Summit (Cumbre Empresarial Unión Europea-America Latina y Caribe), this would allow Costa Rica to become the first country in the world to be able to produce the energy it

Costa Rican fishermen will create Central America's largest “responsible fishing area” near the Osa Peninsula, in the southwestern part of the country. The Costa Rican Fisheries Institute (Incopesca) said Friday that it will collaborate with the Costa Rican Federation of Fishing Tourism (FECOPT) and seven other fishing organizations in an attempt to make the Golfo Dulce, the gulf on the eastern side of the Osa Peninsula, the largest responsible fishing area in Central America. The zone will cover 750 square kilometers. The statement comes on the heels of 10 months of investigation in the region aimed at improving fishing practices.

Community relations is a big part of keeping wildlife and human residents on good terms when the wildlife is perceived as harmful or even dangerous, the way big predators like jaguars are. The program run by Yaguará in the Osa Peninsula area relies on two facets, education projects to convince local people that large predators are not bad or dangerous and need protection and direct compensation for livestock losses. Aida Bustamante meets with groups of people anywhere they accumulate and records more than 450 chats in the area. She talks to locals at schools, community meetings, and arranges activities for

The security ministry is continuing to develop its anticrime program from the bottom up. Fuerza Pública officials call it barrios organizados or seguridad comunitario. Saturday about 500 men and women graduated from the program in Desamparados. The program is something short of a local patrol. The organized communities number nearly 2,000 all over the country, and they can best be equated to a neighborhood watch, alert neighbors who make telephone calls if something is amiss. The program has been going on for years, and areas that have taken the training are marked by yellow signs at their borders. There are

p>Brand’s ‘On Location’ YouTube Channel Honored in Real Estate Website Category   PARSIPPANY, N.J., (July 7, 2010) – The International Academy of the Visual Arts has named Coldwell Banker On Location, the brand’s YouTube channel, a recipient of this year’s Communicator Awards for Creative Excellence in the real estate website category. The category honors the best site for the sale or rental of residential or commercial property. “We were the first national real estate brand to add streaming video to our website. Today, our agents across the globe have posted more than 15,000 videos to our On Location channel,” said

Costa Rica's first female president, Laura Chinchilla, officially launched the National Daycare Network today with a pledge of ¢ 890 million ($1.8 million) to the poorest communities in ten areas of the country. The money is expected to bring care to 400 children under five years of age, enabling their mothers or fathers to pursue jobs outside the home. The effort is much more than just a push to open more day care centers, Chinchilla said at a press conference on Monday. The idea of the network is to reach children at a critical stage in their development so that

Adventure racers from different countries will travel to Costa Rica next week for the first edition of the Costa Rica Adventure Race. The starting time is Monday at 7 a.m. Teams will begin in Sarapiquí. The four-person teams, both men and women, will race across 550 km of forest, beach, rivers, mountains and through rural communities, guided only by maps and a compass. That is about 340 miles. After they start in Sarapiquí they will pass through La Fortuna, Monteverde to Guanacaste, said the Instituto Costarricense de Turismo. There are 18 teams signed up as of Thursday. They come from