President-elect Luis Guillermo Solis, whose landslide victory crushed Costa Rica's traditional two-party system, faced huge expectations Monday as he set about putting in place a new government that reflects his promise of change.

With a record of more than 1.3 million votes, or 78 percent of the ballots cast in Sunday's run-off election, the 55-year-old became the first third-party candidate in more than half a century to win the top post.

Opposition candidate Luis Solis easily won Sunday's presidential runoff in Costa Rica, an expected result given that his only rival had stopped campaigning a month earlier because he was so far behind in the polls.

What gave Solis, a center-leftist, cause to celebrate was a solid voter turnout in an election considered a foregone conclusion. Experts had warned that a low turnout would undermine the legitimacy of his government. In the run-up to the vote, he had appealed to Costa Ricans to cast ballots and set a goal of getting more than 1 million votes.

Voting was under way in Costa Rica on Sunday, where historian and former diplomat Luis Guillermo Solis faced no opposition in the country's presidential run-off election.

His lone rival in the race, Johnny Araya, dropped out last month after polls showed he would be soundly defeated, giving Solis a glide path towards victory in the election to lead this country of some five million people.

Opposition candidate Luis Guillermo Solis is such a shoo-in for Costa Rica's presidential run-off election Sunday that his only rival for the job threw in the towel a month ago.

With an unbeatable lead in the polls, Solis is now campaigning to make sure the 3.1 million voters in Latin America's oldest democracy don't stay home.

A 6.0 magnitude earthquake struck in the Pacific off northwestern Costa Rica on Thursday, but officials said there were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

The United States Geological Survey in Washington said the quake occurred about 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of the town of Sandoval.

Dutch officials pulled armed police from secondary schools in the western city of Leiden on Wednesday as they lowered the level of an alert over an online threat to carry out a school shooting.

The threat to "shoot my Dutch teacher and as many students as I can" made on a U.S.-based website over the weekend led to all secondary schools in the university city being closed on Monday and police being deployed.

Health officials in Costa Rica said an outbreak of dengue fever has sickened 7,000 people, with many cases occurring in some of this Central American country's most popular tourist areas.

The incidence of illness represents a three-fold increase over this time a year ago, according to Maria Villalta, medical director of national Social Security office, which has been tracking the outbreak.

Health officials in Costa Rica said an outbreak of dengue fever has sickened 7,000 people, with many cases occurring in some of this Central American country's most popular tourist areas.

The incidence of illness represents a three-fold increase over this time a year ago, according to Maria Villalta, medical director of national Social Security office, which has been tracking the outbreak.

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has struck down a Costa Rican ban on in-vitro fertilization, saying that its guarantee of protection for every fertilized embryo violated the reproductive freedom of infertile couples.

Reproductive rights groups said the decision late Thursday could have far-ranging implications for laws in many Latin American countries that ban all forms of abortion and some types of contraception. The decision explicitly states that not all embryos and fetuses are guaranteed complete protection, which the groups say will let them challenge laws that ban measures such as emergency contraception and abortion in cases of rape and danger to the mother's health.

A 7.4-magnitude earthquake rocked southwestern Guatemala on Wednesday, killing 48 people and injuring another 150 while more were missing as homes crumbled.

The earthquake also rattled nerves in neighboring Mexico and El Salvador, sparking a tsunami alert on the Salvadoran coast and evacuations from offices, homes and schools as far north as Mexico City.