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• But the U.S. Supreme Court has laid a legal minefield that Arizona now must navigate when the critical provision takes effect. The clause, one of the few significant ones that the high court left standing in a June ruling, requires all Arizona police officers to check the immigration status of people they stop while enforcing other laws and suspect are in the country illegally.
• While preserving that requirement, however, the Supreme Court explicitly left the door open to arguments that the law leads to civil rights violations. Attorneys would need actual victims to make that case.
• Civil rights activists are preparing to scour the state for such victims. Lydia Guzman, who runs Respect/Respeto, a Phoenix group that tracks racial profiling, said volunteers at the organization's call center have already been told to listen for new complaints when the requirement goes into effect.
• "We're watching and we're looking for cases," she said.
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• CANGREJAL, Costa Rica (AP) -- The bulletins were terrifying: a powerful earthquake had struck off the coast of this Central American country, spawning a tsunami warning and bringing fears of widespread catastrophe.
• But Costa Rica suffered remarkably little damage from Wednesday's magnitude-7.6 quake -- a few blocked highways, some collapsed houses and one death, of a heart attack caused by fright. Officials credited the relatively deep location of the quake and building codes that Costa Rican officials call as strict as those in California and Japan.
• The quake was 25 miles (41 kilometers) below the surface. Tremors that occur deep underground tend to be less damaging, but their shaking can be felt over a wider area.
• "If it was a shallower event, it would be a significantly higher hazard," said seismologist Daniel McNamara of the U.S. Geological Survey.
• The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake was centered about 38 miles (60 kilometers) from the town of Liberia and 87 miles (140 kilometers) west of the capital, San Jose.
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