San José, Costa Rica -   Tuesday 28 September 2004

1.234 Daily Average Visits in August! Up 10%

Updated every day by 8:00AM Central Standard Time

The Dalai Lama helps to hold a ceremonial scarf while President Abel Pacheco plants a symbolic flowerpot for goodwill and peace, Monday. The political and spiritual leader of Tibet is visiting Costa Rica to meet with local government and religious officials. Click for larger image!

insidenicaragua A new weekly feature published on Sundays, featuring a summary  of current news and events in Nicaragua.

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.

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.

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.

Pediatrician On A Mission in Costa Rica
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.

Did You Know?
Costa Rica is a democratic republic, as stated by the 1949 Constitution, which guarantees all citizens and foreigners equality before the law, the right to own property, the right of petition and assembly, freedom of speech, and the right to habeas corpus, among others.

Nicaraguan president losing popular support
More and more Nicaraguans disapprove of the performance of the government of President Enrique Bolanos, whose support rate has slipped to 14.7 percent, a latest opinion poll showed on Monday.

Brazilian minister: no Mercosur-EU FTA before Oct. 31
Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said Monday that differences over agriculture and other issues had made it impossible for negotiations to be completed over a free trade agreement between the European Union (EU) and the Common Market of the South (Mercosur) by Oct. 31, the original target date.

Chilean foreign minister recalls consul to Bolivia
Chilean Foreign Minister Soledad Alvear recalled the country's consul to Bolivia on Monday after the diplomat made remarks on possible revision of border treaties in view of Bolivia's demand for access to the sea.  

International News from the New York Times
 

DNA Bar Coding Uncovers Secrets of Costa Rican Butterfly In one of the first uses of DNA bar coding, a new technique for cataloging the planet's species, researchers have uncovered an unexpected richness in the complexity of nature. A long-known butterfly has turned out to be not a single species but 10 different species that live in overlapping territories without interbreeding. The butterfly, a skipper called Astraptes fulgerator, was first described in 1775 and ranges from Texas to northern Argentina. It has long been considered a single species. But Dr. Daniel Janzen, an ecologist at the University of Pennsylvania, began to have doubts.

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