With nearly 1 million kids going back to school in Costa Rica on Wednesday, the government has set up a new initiative to try and reduce the number of traffic related accidents involving minors on Costa Rica's road. In order to get the message across to kids that they need to look both ways and only cross at safe places, they have provided thousands of reflective badges for the children's school bags, which will make them more visible to the traffic, and remind them to be safer on the roads.

The initiative has also provided 4,000 reflective vests to be warn by the crossing guards, so that they feel safer stepping out in to the roads, to help the students cross at busy points. All in all this is hoped to reduce the number of accidents, make kids more aware of how to stay safe on the roads, and to help make parents feel more at ease when their kids leave in the mornings to go to school. Lets all hope it works, and we see less kids in the hospitals of Costa Rica over the coming months and years!!

This week, Pope Benedict XVI, stated that he is concerned by the level of poverty in Costa Rica, and that something needs to be done sooner rather than later to combat it and help the country move forward and leave poverty in its past.

He went on to say that domestic violence, migrants from neighboring countries, and a lack of public safety were major catalysts in the growth of poverty, and the government need to address this. The pope said that all of these issues were of personal concern to him, as well as the Catholic Church.

President Arias then hit back at the Pope, saying that he disagreed that poverty was increasing, and said that he believed that it had not increased much, if at all since 1994. However he did agree, that Costa Rica does need to combat its poverty state, and that his government has plans in place to reduce poverty in Costa Rica by 4% by the year 2010. He also plans to try and reduce the rate of school kids dropping out at the age of 16, through the program called Avancemos (lets get ahead!)

So it looks as if the future could well be much brighter for Costa Rica, as long as the plans that are said to be in place are, in fact, put into practice, and operate as they have been predicted that they will.