www.vheadline.com Posted: Tuesday, March 04, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

With hunger strikes in La Planta, Los Teques, El Rodeo, Yare prisons and the General Penitentiary, the spotlight has been turned once again on the state of Venezuela’s prisons after a period of "benign neglect."

During a visit to El Paraiso detention center, Interior & Justice (MIJ) Minister General (ret.) Lucas Rincon Romero heard inmates complain about the delay in processing their cases … “the majority of prisoners here have the same problem and some have been here as long as 2,3 and 4 years without being sentenced.”

The Minister has promised to discuss the matter with judges to find out the reason for the delays and attempt some emergency work to deal with outstanding cases.

Answering charges that prisoners aren’t getting adequate food rations, Rincon Romero admits that suppliers haven’t been paid on time and has asked prisoners on hunger strike to be patient.

www.vheadline.com Posted: Tuesday, March 04, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

Comptroller General Clodosbaldo Russian admits that he has ordered an investigation into the role of the top 7 dismissed Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) executives and managers organized in what has been described as the “shadow PDVSA” or "Gente de Petroleo" in Spanish.

Russian claims that the rebels must assume responsibility for the damages they allegedly caused to Venezuela’s prime industry and “patrimony.”

“The PDVSA stoppage was political and aimed at ousting President Chavez Frias and calling elections.”

Urging the seven to turn up at the 50th control court and face the music, Russian says the Comptroller General’s first task is to investigate patrimonial damage caused by not being able to sell oil and sabotage on PDVSA installations.

“Who is responsible for damaging 80 kilometers of pipeline after petrol solidified? Or the money that went into repairing computer equipment, just to mention two examples?”

www.seacoastonline.com

By Christine Gillette cgillette@seacoastonline.com

PORTSMOUTH - Prolonged cold weather and uncertainty in oil-producing nations are pushing up heating costs for consumers this winter.

"Demand is up considerably," said Joe Broyles, an energy program manager for the Governor’s Office on Energy and Community Service.

Driving demand for oil and other energy sources for heating is the number of days on which homes and businesses are likely to need to turn the heat on, up 23 percent this winter from last year, Broyles said.

"That, I think, caught a lot of people by surprise, so suppliers may not have contracted for as much oil as they need, and the same for consumers," he said. "That’s driven the price up a lot on the wholesale market and (suppliers) don’t have a lot of choice but to pass that on to consumers."

While demand is up, supply is down for some energy sources like oil because of a large-scale strike in the oil industry in Venezuela and worries about war with Iraq, Broyles said.

At Buxton Oil in Epping, oil prices per gallon have gone from $1 to $1.10 last winter to $1.69, said owner Donna Buxton.

"It’s been a very long, very cold winter. People’s consumption is up this year, and with an impending war with Iraq and the Venezuela situation, it’s challenging and it’s made prices go up," she said.

Buxton allowed customers to lock in oil last summer at 99 cents to $1.19 a gallon. But because of cold temperatures, many customers have exceeded the amount of oil they locked in at the lower amount, and that’s forced Buxton Oil to buy more on the open market now at the higher price.

When that runs out, or for customers who didn’t lock in, there’s often frustration with having to pay the market rate, said Buxton.

Buxton Oil works with fuel assistance providers, such as Rockingham County Community Action, which distributes funds to eligible families.

"We’re definitely seeing more demand," said Steve Geller, executive director of the agency. "Things normally start slowing down, or would have started slowing down by this time in the winter, but with the cold weather, that’s not happening."

Already this winter, fuel assistance has been provided to more than 2,600 Rockingham County households - up 200 from last year - with nearly 70 scheduled to come in to apply in the next two weeks, even as the calendar nears the official start of spring.

"A combination of the colder weather requiring more people to use more oil and demand raising prices is really wiping people’s budgets out," Geller said.

Even people who are getting fuel assistance - anywhere from $150 to $1,000 for the winter, depending on income - are using their allowance quickly.

Geller said had President Bush not agreed in January to release additional federal funds for fuel assistance, Rockingham County would have run out by the end of that month.

Applications for fuel assistance are up this year, despite a lowering of the eligibility standards from 225 percent of the federal poverty level to 175 percent.

Reducing the eligibility, Geller said, has meant turning away 411 applicants since the start of 2003, including senior citizens on fixed incomes and working poor families, the largest growing segment of the agency’s clients.

Geller said even with the increase in federal funds, all but about $40,000 of the total $1.64 million allotted for the season is already committed to current clients, and with people still seeking help, could be exhausted.

Prices for sources of heat besides oil, like natural gas, are also higher than last year, but less dramatically because supply is plentiful, according to a local provider.

Rates for this winter are up 7.6 percent from last winter, and were approved last year by the Public Utilities Commission, said Don DiNunno, manager of communications for Northern Utilities, a supplier of natural gas on the Seacoast.

On average, he said, the typical residential customer uses 932 therms of natural gas to heat their house from November to April. Last year, that cost $975, and this year, $1,049 for a difference of $74.

DiNunno said he expected natural gas usage is up this year because of the cold weather, but could not say how much.

"You can assume people are consuming 20 percent or more natural gas," Broyles said, based on this winter’s weather.

About 14 percent of New Hampshire homes heat with natural gas, according to the energy office, compared with 53 percent with oil, 5 percent with electricity and .3 percent with coal. Ten percent of households use wood to supply some of their heat.

Propane, the energy source for about 10 percent of New Hampshire’s heating customers, is not regulated by PUC, so its prices can have bigger fluctuations than natural gas, according to Broyles.

Right now, propane costs about 7 cents more per therm, or 88 cents total, than last year, he said. Electricity is about 12 cents a kilowatt hour, compared with an average of 9.21 last winter.

The best way to cut heating costs, Broyles said, is to cut energy consumption.

"Ultimately, the least expensive energy is the energy you don’t consume," he said, adding that it’s a myth that leaving heat turned up all day, even when you’re not home, is cheaper than turning the heat up later. "It’s cheaper not to spend the energy in the first place."

cbs.marketwatch.com

By Dr. Irwin Kellner, CBS MarketWatch.com Last Update: 10:05 AM ET March 4, 2003

NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- This could well prove a pivotal month for investors as they try to figure out what's hot and what's not.

From business, there'll be hints about how first-quarter earnings are doing, what with March as the last month of the quarter. Most firms will soon have a pretty good idea whether they are going to make their numbers or not.

It's one thing to know this internally, of course, and it's another to communicate it to investors. In this Sarbanes-Oxley era, many firms are reluctant to provide the precise financial updates they used to.

Where companies do speak out, they will be more likely to forecast earnings per share in fairly broad ranges, rather than just the penny or two that they used to.

Still, considering how earnings have been under pressure for the better part of the past three years, investors will be happy to see any sign -- no matter how small -- that the worst is over.

Even then, it's going to be a tough sell to get people back into stocks. Besides the fact that the market is mired in what would be its fourth down year in a row, most stocks remain overvalued.

The Standard & Poor's 500 Index today trades at close to 30 times its earnings for the trailing 12 months -- about twice its long-run average.

Only when you compare the S&P 500's dividend yield with the yield on the 10-year Treasury ($TNX: news, chart, profile) does the market even begin to look reasonably valued. But it's certainly not a screaming buy even on this basis; that's why first-quarter earnings will be so important.

Away from the market, another development likely to come to a head this month -- with important implications for investors -- is the situation in Iraq. One way or another, we should know within the next few weeks whether or not the United States will go to war, and if so, with a broad-based international coalition or not. See our Countdown to War.

With each passing day, we're rapidly passing through the best conditions for mounting an attack. The new moon has already occurred and pretty soon the average desert temperature will rise rapidly, making it difficult for our troops to do battle while wearing protective gear.

Bubbles, bubbles everywhere

Then there are the bubbles. If you thought the drop in stock prices and the breaking of the investment bubble (see my column of Feb. 25) meant that all bubbles were popped, you are wrong.

For one thing, there's the double bubble of debt (see my column of Feb. 18). Both consumer and corporate debts are at record levels, susceptible to any rise in interest rates.

Speaking of which, there also appears to be a bond bubble. Because interest rates are so low, bond prices are very high.

This could reverse rapidly, with prices poised to fall at the first sign of inflation and/or under pressure of increased supply from both the private as well as the public sector. See the latest Bond Report.

Any rise in rates would, in turn, threaten to pop another bubble -- the one in home prices.

Notwithstanding assertions by several Federal Reserve officials, the fact remains that housing prices have gone up much faster than family incomes for a number of years. See the full story on Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan's comments on housing.

Finally, there's the oil bubble. Oil prices have shot up because of concerns over Iraq, Venezuela, and the unusually cold winter. Read the latest on Futures Movers.

All three price bubbles -- bonds, homes and oil -- could be history by the end of this month.

Dr. Irwin Kellner, chief economist for CBS.MarketWatch.com, is the Weller professor of economics at Hofstra University and chief economist for North Fork Bank.

www.manilatimes.net Wednesday, March 5, 2003 By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, (IPS)—Increasing disillusionment in Latin America with democracy, market-centered economies and constructive ties to the United States should prompt Washington to pay much closer attention to the continent, says a new report by the Inter-American Dialogue (IAD), a Washington-based think tank.

Only on the trade front has the administration of President George W. Bush acted to promote stronger relations with Latin America, particularly since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, according to the 41-page report, ‘The Troubled Americas’, released Friday.

But in other areas, US policy has been characterized by ‘’a very high degree of neglect,’’ says Peter Hakim, the Dialoúgue’s president. ‘’It used to be said that the US only pays attention to Latin America when there’s a crisis, but now there’s a crisis in half a dozen countries, and we’re still seeing neglect.”

“We applaud the (President George W.) Bush administration’s leadership in advancing US-Latin American trade ties,” says the new report’s introduction by Hakim, US co-chair Peter Bell, and Latin American co-chair and former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who was also on hand for the report’s release.

“We express concern, however, that Washington is not as decisively engaged with other hemispheric challenges - at a time that America needs US cooperation and support to deal with a set of particularly difficult problems.”

Continued neglect of crises like those in Argentina, Venezuela, Haiti and most recently Bolivia, will inevitably undermine Washington’s trade agenda in the region, added Hakim.

For his part, Cardoso, who handed over power after eight years in office to his successor, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, just last month, stressed that the entire hemisphere must address how consútraints on the budgets and abilities of Latin American governments to tackle serious problems in their countries is undermining or damaging new democraúcies throughout the region.

While democratic institutions in the continent are today ‘’much stronger than 10 or 20 years ago,’’ they are also being tested by their inability to better the lives of their people, he said. “As income statistics make clear, the majority of citizens (in Latin America) are no better off today than they were one or two decades back,’’ adds the report, the latest in a series of assessments published every two years by the Dialogue.

Cardoso also warned that the international situation, particularly the behavior of the United States, is likely to have a major impact on the health of democratic institutions and the rule of law in Latin America.

The 20-year-old Dialogue consists of 100 prominent figures in politics, government, academia, business, media, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) divided equally between the United States and Canada on one hand, and Latin America and the Caribbean on the other.

The latest report offers some bright news, noting overall progress in political and economic reform in the region over the past 20 years. Three ‘’powerful ideas’’, the report says, have gained widespread support over the period. These include the notion that democracy and elections are the only acceptable way to gain and exercise political power; that the region’s economies should be re-organized along market lines and opened to international trade and investment; and the view that Latin American nations needed to build constructive relationships with Washington in order to succeed economically.

“These ideas continue to hold sway in nearly every country of the region,’’ the report concluded, ‘’but their credibility has diminished because of Latin America’s economic and political shortfalls in recent years, coupled with a disappointing lack of commitment from Washington’’.

While scepticism about each of these notions has grown steadily - the Dialogue first began warning about the trend six years ago - ‘’no one has come up with better or more powerful alternatives to replace these ideas. The central challenge is still to make them work in practice’’.

The reports points to Mexico and Chile as bright spots for having avoided social and political unrest, while Costa Rica, Chile, Uruguay, and Brazil have all become ‘’vibrant democracies’’ with strong parties and active civil societies.

In addition, Bush’s success in gaining fast-track trade negotiating authority from Congress has also given new impetus for rapidly growing ties between the United States and Latin America. ‘’The successful negotiation of a strong (Free Trade Area of the Americas) would be a giant step forward for inter-American relations,’’ the report says, noting however that a final FTAA agreement by the 2005 target date ‘’will not be easy’’.

But major challenges also loom. ‘’Argentina’s economic and political turmoil is a collective problem for every nation of the hemisphere,’’ it says, urging Washington ‘’not (to) wait on the sidelines for the new Argentina government to struggle on its own’’.

Ongoing political crises in Venezuela and Haiti, in which the Organization of American States (OAS) has tried to mediate, should also be considered ‘’shared problems for the entire hemisphere’’, while Colombia’s national security problems are ‘’far and away the most dangerous in the hemisphere’’, and President Alvaro Uribe’s military build-up not only may put the country’s ‘’economy in peril’’, but also raise ‘’the prospects for a wider and dirtier war’’ that may create more refugees and disruption and make peace negotiations more difficult.

Perhaps the key country, according to the report, will be Cardoso’s Brazil and the ability of Lula to transform his ‘’enormous political support and good will’’ to make good on his campaign promises to reactivate economic growth, attack poverty, hunger and race discrimination and push the social agenda faster and harder than his predecessors.

“If Lula succeeds, even modestly, not only would the prospects of economic recovery improve throughout Latin America, but the region’s otherwise dispirited politics would also receive a substantial boost” the report concludes.

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