"There are no winners here," President Barack Obama said Thursday at the White House.

Roma and Luda Gimelfarb have visited Costa Rica annually for the past four years to search for their son, David, who disappeared in 2009. This year, they were met with a $250,000 extortion attempt by would-be kidnappers claiming to have David.

President Barack Obama accused conservatives in the House of Representatives of waging an "ideological crusade" by making government funding conditional on gutting his health reform law.

Costa Rica tied Jamaica on Tuesday night. An hour later the Ticos booked their ticket to Brazil, thanks to the U.S. knocking off Mexico and Honduras tying Panama.

Environment Minister René Castro wants to set all of his country's wild animals free.

The Washington Post travel desk staff tackles a few common questions about vacationing, including one on Costa Rica.

When the Taliban was toppled nearly 12 years ago in Afghanistan, a small number of biologists saw an opportunity on the margins of the war effort. The country's far reaches had barely been examined and were thought to contain some of the world's least understood species. But studying them would require complex, and sometimes tense, negotiations with some of the world's most isolated people.

Animal rights activists are celebrating the Environment Ministry's decision to close Costa Rica's two public zoos next May. However, zoo administrators are not going out without a fight and plan to take the case to court.

John Herrera co-founded the LCCU, the first fully bilingual financial institution in the state of North Carolina, to provide immigrants from Latin America with bank accounts and other financial services.

Opponents of the multinational biotech giant will hold a global protest on Saturday, with 400 cities participating.