For a third time in recent weeks, police have found a clandestine site with evidence that points to drugs and arms trafficking. Residents reported seeing a green helicopter flying low in the area. No arrests were made on Friday.
Dynamite, longline fishing and disease were the top suspects Thursday, but now scientists have found an unusual stain in the water they believe could be red tide. Experts ruled out the theory that radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi disaster in Japan could be to blame.
Peñas Blancas, on the border of Costa Rica and Nicaragua, accounts for a fifth of the total drug seizures in Costa Rica this year. In the latest bust, Costa Rican cops seized 430 kilos of cocaine from a passenger bus headed to Guatemala.
A new campaign hopes to pressure a move by President Laura Chinchilla to fire the board of directors of the Costa Rican Fisheries Institute, which is loaded with fishing industry insiders.
The population of the nearly extinct Eastern Pacific green sea turtle will likely be severely affected by the recent mass deaths, according to biologists. Longline fishing and a mass dynamiting are suspected killers.
In its latest progress report on Afghanistan to the U.S. Congress, the Pentagon warned that the 2013 poppy harvest was expected to be "considerably" bigger than the 2012 yield as a result of warmer temperatures early in the season, the drawdown of NATO troops and the high price of poppies.