Scandals and More Scandals!
The biggest scandal to date is the multimillion dollar credit loan from Finland to the Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social (CCSS) by way of the Corporación Fischel, dudded the Fischel-Caja scandal, that has seen the ugly side of Costa Rican public functionaries and politicians.

While the investigation into the diversion of some US$8.000.000 was that paid to the Corporación Fischel, who in turn paid commissions to public functionaries, including former Costa Rican president Rafael Angel Calderón.

To date, three persons are in jail in preventive detention waiting out the investigation: Walter Reiche Fischel, president of the Corporación Fischel and company lawyer, Randall Vargas and Eliseo Vargas, former president of the CCSS. Complete Story

Dalai Lama's Message of Peace
Costa Rica supports the values of peaceful conflict resolution, spiritual renewal and harmonious coexistence preached by the Dalai Lama, President Abel Pacheco told Tibet's spiritual leader.

"We Costa Ricans feel honoured and touched by your presence," Pacheco said during a lunch the two shared yesterday - the second day of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner's visit to Costa Rica.

Present at the luncheon was former Costa Rican president and 1987 Nobel Peace Prize winner Oscar Arias, and religious leaders.

This is the second time the spiritual leader of the Tibetan Buddhist's has visited Costa Rica where he will hold talks and workshops for four days.

The Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, 72, was born in 1935 in a farming village, and at the age of 2 was pronounced the reincarnation of the previous Lama.

On Sunday, about 300 people lined the street outside the Teatro Nacional to catch a glimpse of His Holiness as he passed by.

His Holiness was inside the theater to give his talk on "Inner Peace, Outer Peace", exceeding the theater's capacity of 1.000 people.

Earlier, His Holiness received Oscar Arias and his family in private audience, spending some 30 minutes with them.

In addition, His Holiness also met Costa Rica's cultural minister and under secretary of culture.

Costa Rica shares a very special ideological vision with Tibet.

Just as Tibet gave up warfare as a national policy centuries ago, Costa Rica today is the only nation on the planet that is totally demilitarized, thanks to the vision and initiatives of its former president Oscar Arias.

American Defrauded of US$5 Million
Robert Jack Gardner, an American citizen, has brought charges of fraud against Costa Rican lawyer, Noé Kawer Dymantztein, for an amount of US$5.000.000 dollars.

The charges were presented before the Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ), where a San José judge order the raid of the office and home of the lawyer.

The raid permitted authorities to confiscated documents and an order against the Dymantztein from leaving Costa Rica.

Gardner, a resident of Michigan, had been involved in the lucrative money lending business in Costa Rica and had transferred funds to Dymantztein since 1997.

Pediatrician On A Mission in Costa Rica
From The Birmingham News
Sandy Frazier, a pediatrician by training, likes being a doctor.

She has a good job, likes her staff and her patients. She started University of Alabama at Birmingham's (UAB) addiction-recovery center in 1994. She's an assistant professor in the psychiatry department.

It's a good life, she says, but not the one God called her to. She's leaving the University of Alabama at Birmingham as of Thursday, and by the end of the year will be living out of a church in Costa Rica, backpacking into the jungle with medical supplies to treat people living in remote villages. And she plans to stay there for the rest of her life, except for trips back to the United States for several months each year to speak at churches, raise funds and visit friends and her relatives in Mississippi.

"When I was six or seven, I told my mama I wanted to go to a foreign country and help people," Frazier said. "I forgot and became a doctor."

Frazier went to Uganda on a medical mission trip in 1998. Then a missionary friend who has been in Costa Rica for 12 years invited her there, to the town of Bribri near the Panama border. She went for a week in June and realized that was what she wanted to do for the rest of her life.

"I was overwhelmed with the opportunities there to minister to people," she said. "I felt a peace I can't describe."

Frazier spoke at Christ Charismatic Episcopal Church in Fairfield on Sunday, explaining her decision. She has attended that church since 1995.

"Her focus has always been to help people who have needs," said Pastor Terry Gensemer.

Frazier hopes to convince UAB medical students to visit and help treat Costa Ricans for the experience of practicing tropical medicine without access to modern technology such as lab work or magnetic resonance imaging that many U.S. doctors take for granted.

As a missionary for Agua Viva Ministries, she won't have a salary. She has money saved up, but she'll have to become accustomed to sleeping in a bunk bed and not having a telephone. She'll be able to communicate by e-mail on her laptop computer. Her diet on her last trip to Costa Rica included canned tuna, peanut butter and bananas cooked over an open fire.

Frazier said she isn't worried about the perceived decline in her standard of living. "It will pay in many other ways besides financially," she said. "I will probably get more blessing from it than the people I'm trying to help."