Guatemala's leader made the embassy announcement on Christmas Eve, three days after two-thirds of UN member states – Costa Rica among them – denounced Trump's decision to have the United States recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mentioned Costa Rica in a response to a reporter's question during a joint press conference that Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump held at the White House.
Shira Banki, 16, was among six people stabbed at the Jerusalem march on Thursday by a suspect identified as an ultra-Orthodox Jew released from prison only weeks earlier for a similar attack.
SAN JUAN DEL SUR, Nicaragua – It was quite easy to spot the rebbetzin, or the rabbi’s wife, within my first few minutes of a hot February afternoon in the Nicaraguan beach town of San Juan del Sur. Looking as if she belonged more in Brooklyn, with her modest, long dress and pushing a baby in a carriage, she bought a fruit juice in a definitively New York-accented Spanish.
The Foreign Ministry’s Dec. 17 announcement came the same day U.S. President Barack Obama stunned the world with his declaration that Washington and Havana would restore diplomatic ties after more than half a century of hostilities.
TEL AVIV, Israel – From the frenetic, traffic-choked streets of Tel Aviv to the lonely northern mountain town of Qiryat Shemona – only a few miles from the Lebanese and Syrian borders – some 300 Costa Ricans have built a home away from home in Israel, lured here by family ties, high-tech jobs and a lifelong dream of living in the Jewish state.
TEL AVIV, Israel – Costa Rica abolished its army in 1948, the same year Israel declared independence. Sixty-six years later, Costa Rica remains one of the few countries without a standing military, while Israel – whose invasion of Gaza this summer following repeated Hamas rocket attacks drew angry reactions from across Latin America – ranks as one of the world’s most militarized societies.
