Costa Rica

Rescue helicopters ferried stranded tourists from a picturesque volcanic area in Costa Rica where a strong earthquake killed about 14 people. Two people were buried when Thursday's magnitude 6.1 quake triggered landslides near the La Paz waterfall at Vara Blanca, on the flanks of the Poas Volcano, officials said. A dozen people were killed in nearby areas. "There are landslides on all the roads," said Guillermo Schwartz, a tourist. The Red Cross struggled to give an exact death count as rescue workers combed jungle paths and emergency officials checked with tour operators.

A fatal car accident in Virginia early Tuesday might impact U.S. hopes of achieving anything significant at soccer's 2010 World Cup in South Africa. American forward Charlie Davies, among the team's most promising players in the past year, was severely injured in the 3:15 a.m. crash on the George Washington Memorial Parkway near Washington. Another passenger, Ashley J. Roberta, 22, of Phoenix, Md., was killed in the crash. Police said the driver, whom they did not identify, apparently lost control of the vehicle, which hit a guard rail and split in half.

Honduras' ousted president and the officials who exiled him have agreed to try to resolve their conflict through a U.S.-endorsed mediator, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced Tuesday. Signaling an expanding U.S. effort, Clinton said the two sides had agreed to talks supervised by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, who was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1987 for his efforts to broker peace accords in Central America.

During most of the 20th century, Central America didn't just seem exotic; it also appeared downright dangerous, and certainly not a place to host a seaside card game with other retirees from the U.S.

"If you don't have anything to do," says the graffiti scratched into the cellblock wall, "don't come here to do it." That would have been excellent advice from 1883 to 1989, when this penitentiary on San Lucas Island was synonymous with cruelty and isolation. Inmates labored in the tropical sun, breaking rocks and harvesting salt from the sea, dragging their leg irons and dreaming of escape. I've wanted to come here for years.

A tour group of U.S. senior citizens killed a Costa Rican mugger by breaking his neck after he pulled a gun, a local police official said Thursday. The cruise ship passengers told police they jumped on Wagner Segura, 20, to defend themselves when he pointed a .38-caliber revolver at them Wednesday near the Caribbean port of Limon, regional police director Luis Hernandez said. One of the dozen tourists, a retired Marine about 70 years old, reportedly put Segura in a headlock.

A free-trade pact once thought to be slam-dunk is now up for grabs in Costa Rica, where President Oscar Arias on Friday announced that his government would hold a national referendum on the controversial measure. Arias, a supporter of the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement, known as DR-CAFTA, called the pending vote "a triumph" for democratic procedure that would let Costa Ricans determine whether to participate in the pact, to which the U.S. is a party.