Refugees

Vice Minister of the Interior Carmen Muñoz met with members of Costa Rica’s Muslim community, including Syrians, after a small demonstration took place outside Casa Presidencial on Tuesday urging the government to accept Syrians fleeing the civil war.

Germany said it was reinstating border controls on Sunday as Europe's top economy admitted it was stretched to the limit trying to cope with a record influx of refugees. Also on Sunday, Germany's rail service halted train services with Austria for 12 hours. The announcements came as tragedy struck again off the coast of Greece, with 34 more migrants -- among them babies and children -- drowning when their overcrowded wooden boat capsized in high winds.

Refugees are often described as a "burden" for the countries they settle in. But research that has looked at the effect of refugees around the world suggests that, in the long run, this view is often wrong.

Brazil will welcome Syrian refugees with "open arms," President Dilma Rousseff said Monday, amid a tidal wave of people fleeing the war-torn country.

In a Europe bitterly divided over how to handle its largest wave of migrants since World War II, it is, this time, the Germans who are coming to the rescue.

Nearly 340,000 refugees and migrants illegally crossed the border into Europe from January to July 2015, according to the EU's border agency Frontex, compared to 280,000 for the whole of 2014.

"Europe needs to stop being moved and start moving," Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said, calling again for a fairer distribution of migrants among the European Union's 28 members.

Those reaching Europe represent a small percentage of the 4 million Syrians who have fled into Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq, making Syria the biggest single source of refugees in the world and the worst humanitarian emergency in more than four decades.