Highlights from STAR: probing the early medium in heavy ion collisions

We present highlights of recent results from the STAR Collaboration at RHIC, focusing on the properties of the early medium created in heavy ion collisions. We emphasize the strangeness production including the observation of a hypernucleus (the hypertriton), the observation of reaction-plane-dependent angular correlation of charged particles searching for local strong parity violation effects in heavy ion collisions, and the evaluation of the medium viscosity from measurements of elliptic flow. We discuss STAR's plan for the “Critical Point Search” program at RHIC.