triad.bizjournals.com From the February 28, 2003 print edition Boris Hartl   The Business Journal

Crowds are thin these days at Liberty Oak, a restaurant that opened in downtown Greensboro a few years ago when interest and activity in a revitalized center city began to gain ground.

Nowadays, Liberty Oak co-owner John Fancourt can finger everything from wintery weather to the slow economy as being at least partly to blame for the slowdown. But another emerging factor, Fancourt says, is the possibility of war with Iraq.

Half a world away from potential battlefields, Triad merchants like Fancourt are among the business owners already feeling tremors from the possibility of conflict in the Persian Gulf.

"War is on everybody's mind, and people are uncertain what effect it will have," Fancourt said.

Economists say the timing of a possible war, coming in the midst of an anemic recovery from a national recession and after three years of bear equity markets, makes the current uncertainties all the more difficult for Triad businesses to absorb.

While some economists, including Don Jud, an economics professor at UNC-Greensboro, portend a quick war could actually help the economy by returning a sense of normalcy and stability, a prolonged conflict will likely push the nation back into recession.

Gas and diesel prices affected

One place the potential war's effect is already being felt is at Triad gas pumps.

The average price for a gallon of gasoline in North Carolina is $1.591, the highest state average in the last 20 years, AAA Carolina officials said. Since the middle of January, the national average of self-service gasoline has jumped from $1.47 to $1.61 a gallon.

Local freight haulers, distributors and logistics companies have been particularly hard hit.

Steve Immel, terminal manager for AAA Cooper Transportation in Greensboro, has seen the national price of diesel fuel, which now averages $1.76 a gallon, force changes in some operating procedures.

"If we have additional fuel costs, we'll pass them onto customers," Immel said. "They will then pass these costs on. It's definitely a chain-link effect."

Chris Caffey, president of a beer distributing company in Greensboro, has 70 vehicles that burn about 20,000 gallons of fuel a month. As the head of I.H. Caffey Distributing Co. Inc., he has seen his company's monthly fuel costs rise 33 percent to $40,000.

The increased fuel costs won't necessitate any work force cutbacks, but the company may delay building expansion plans.

'Dealing with lower margins'

"We cope by dealing with lower margins, and we hope things get better for us," Caffey said.

A portion of the high prices can be attributed to the strike in Venezuela, which is hampering crude-oil distribution to the United States and forcing the use of more crude oil to produce heating oil, said Gary Harris, executive vice president of the North Carolina Petroleum Marketers Association in Raleigh.

A prolonged military campaign or damage to Iraqi oil fields could push oil prices to $35 a barrel or higher, analysts said, thus further increasing production costs.

"The fuel industry is simply unsure of what is going to happen in the future," said David Parsons, the president and CEO of AAA Carolinas. "Are we really going to war with Iraq? What will the parameters of that war be? Will oil supplies be threatened?"

Until those questions are answered, businesses such as AAA Cooper Transportation and I.H. Caffey Distributing Co. will wait to see what develops next.

"With the economy softening, hopefully it will be clear, one way or another, whether we go in or pull back," said Bart Lassiter, head of City Transfer and Storage Co. Inc. in High Point.

Jud, the UNC-Greensboro economics professor, calls the increased gas prices a "big tax" on everyone that is curbing consumer spending. And Fancourt's restaurant is only one example.

A war-time benefit

"Consumers are more hesitant and cautious with their money, and that's true with any (expendable) activity," said Paul Stone, president of the North Carolina Restaurant Association in Raleigh.

People often eat out when they are in a celebratory mood, and these are not good times to do so, he said.

In Winston-Salem, Dino Cortesis is dealing with a 15 percent drop in business at Cloverdale Kitchen. He said war talk and the soft economy have affected his largest customer base — retirees on fixed incomes.

"They've seen their retirement portfolios drop 25 (percent) to 30 percent, and that's affected their spending habits," he said.

The news isn't all bad in the Triad. Textile companies such as Glen Raven Inc., which are supplying the fabric needed to make parachutes, are actually expanding working hours to meet demands.

David Noer, a business professor at Elon University, said textiles, which have been much maligned in the last few years, should see an immediate boost as they supply the military with war-time materiel.

Glen Raven has increased production to seven days a week, four shifts per day at its Burnsville plant, said Gary Zumstein, vice president of sales for the Glen Raven-based company. Glen Raven is producing the yarn for an Asheville-based company to produce the actual cargo parachutes used to drop equipment.

"From a military standpoint, yes, this is good," Zumstein said. "The government has found some money for purchasing that has been tight."

Textile companies are not the only ones supplying the military.

Antenna Mast Solutions Inc., which has an office in Eden, is enjoying a 300 percent increase in business due to war- related efforts.

The company creates portable masts designed to hold a combination of devices, including weather sensors and cameras. The masts are built with carbon alloy designed to allow military personnel to dissemble the masts quickly.

Business is also booming at the Winston-Salem Industries for the Blind. The nonprofit organization has completed an order of about 2,000 mattresses for an aircraft carrier, said Larry Colbourne, director of development.

Industries of the Blind has also completed a Department of Defense order for about 22,000 plastic pouches to hold gas masks. Those work orders should help Industries for the Blind reach about $40 million in sales for 2003, which will then be reinvested into the organization.

Reach Boris Hartl at (336) 370-2917 or bhartl@bizjournals.com.

news.bbc.co.uk Last Updated:  Tuesday, 4 March, 2003, 23:24 GMT

A prospective new oil find in Colombia could reignite a battle over land that indigenous campaigners thought they had won.

The president of Colombia's state-owned oil company, Ecopetrol, announced that exploratory drilling close to the country's north-eastern border with Venezuela has located reserves of approximately 200 million barrels of light crude oil.

The well was abandoned in May 2002 by a US oil company Occidental Petroleum, after almost a decade of legal wrangling and international campaigning to halt the drilling.

The area is the ancestral territory of 5,000 U'wa Indians. They believe oil is the blood of the earth and have previously threatened mass suicide if drilling went ahead.

After Occidental left, Ecopetrol took over exploration.

'High quality'

Colombia produces about 590,000 barrels of oil a day.

But last year Isaac Yanovich, Ecopetrol's president, warned last year that reserves would begin to run out within five years.

But on Monday he said he was hopeful.

US special force have been deployed in the oil rich area

"There's a good chance that this is of very high quality," he told reporters, according to news agency Associated Press.

And while Colombia stood to take 85% of any profits realised through Occidental exploration, "Gibraltar I is a 100% Ecopetrol project, which means the reserves and the production belong exclusively to the nation," he said.

But there remain manifold problems in extracting oil from the region.

In addition to the U'wa Indians' objections to drilling, left-wing guerrillas often bomb oil pipelines and installations as part of their 38-year war against the state.

The US Government recently agreed to provide $98m - including US special forces - to help protect a lucrative oil pipeline in Colombia which has been attacked 200 times in the last two years alone.

www.abs-cbnnews.com By HERBERT V. DOCENA

Docena is a Research Associate of Focus on the Global South, a policy research center dealing with economic and security issues confronting developing countries.

PORTO ALEGRE, BRAZIL - Off we dash to catch a glimpse of the man everybody here calls Lula. Along the way, we run into a throng of people milling around a TV set: Lula’s already at the park addressing thousands and thousands of Brazilians. We’re late. Off we race toward a taxicab and slam the doors shut. “To the park, por favor,” we tell the driver in broken Portuguese.

It’s Lula’s voice booming on the cab’s AM stereo. “Is that Lula?” my companion asks. The driver nods and flashes the thumbs-up.

“Bom?” Is he good?

“Muito bom!” Very good!

The driver pushes hard on the pedal. He swerves maniacally. It’s as though he sensed how much we -- a group of delegates attending the World Social Forum -- want to see Lula in the flesh. “The driver wants to see Lula as badly as we want to,” another companion corrects me. He overtakes furiously.

Lula, of course, is Luis Ignacio “Lula” da Silva, the new President of Brazil, who won a landslide 62 percent of the votes in Brazil’s election last October -- the biggest ever garnered by any presidential candidate in Brazilian political history. His name is on T-shirts that are still selling like pancakes here, months after the election campaign. His face has even replaced that of Che Guevara’s in some of those most sought-after red pins.

We stop beside another taxicab at the intersection. The driver gestures toward his colleague at the other car to ask whether he’s also tuned in. He gives the thumbs-up. He’s listening to Lula too. Then another cab. Another thumbs-up.

“Did you know that one of the first things Lula did when he became President was to tour his ministers in the favelas (slum communities) to tell them, ‘This is how Brazilians really live. Keep that in mind when you fulfill your duties,’” my Indian companion begins sharing our Lula stories.

“Did you know that one of the first things he did when he assumed power was to cancel a contract for jet fighters in order to use the money for schools?”

We listen intently to the live broadcast. Lula’s speech was in Portuguese and we could barely pick out the words. Pais. Problemas. Esperenca. Ah, he was talking about his country. He was discussing problems. And he was talking about hope.

All the other words in between I couldn’t decipher. But the things that couldn’t be translated I could discern: There was a raw sincerity to his words. His voice rang with a promise that even I -- a foreigner, a non-Brazilian -- also wanted to believe in.

“Ole-ole-ole Lula, Lula!” chanted the thousands, punctuating the President’s speech, as though he had just scored the winning goal in the championships of the World Cup.

I thought I had seen this before.

Back home, hundreds of thousands of unwashed and unpowdered Filipinos also gave former President Joseph “Erap” Estrada the kind of devotion that the unwashed and unpowdered of the Brazilians are now giving Lula. Like Lula, Erap’s popularity among the masses was historically unprecedented. And for the true believer, Erap represented what Lula now symbolizes for many Brazilians: the rise of the dispossessed against a long period of oppression.

Lula, however, in hindsight and in comparison, seems to be the real thing. He’s really one of them. As a boy, he almost died from starvation and had to escape a drought in his province via a long and torturous journey to the city. Erap, in contrast, having come from the old rich, has probably never experienced hunger.

Lula has really fought for the masses. A former metal worker, Lula spent most of his adult life as a trade union leader fighting against the Brazilian dictatorship. Erap also devoted most of his life fighting on the side of the poor -- but only in the movies. And in real life, he was very cozy with Ferdinand Marcos the dictator.

The otherwise empty road was suddenly jammed. All routes seemed to lead to the park. In front of us, a man proudly waves Lula’s red party flag from inside his car. Stalled, we decided to join the crowds of people still sauntering toward the park in hordes to catch a glimpse of their President -- even if his speech has already ended. They have not been packed up from their communities and sent there in a bus by their local political operators. There were no goodie bags. They went there on their own, expecting nothing in return.

I have not really seen this before. This was all amusingly new to me.

Where I come from, people have grown to see most politicians with nothing but disdain and contempt. In just 20 years, we have twice become so disgusted with our presidents, Marcos and Estrada, that we kicked them out of office. But here in Brazil, in some of the conferences, just the mere mention of Lula’s name by a speaker was enough to provoke the crowd into a sudden convulsion and a rapturous cheering of “Ole ole Lula!”

In the Philippines, political leaders inspire nothing but suspicion and cynicism; here, Lula seems to inspire real trust and hope. Back home, elections are often a choice among the least devious devil. Here, it appears like there could have been no better choice.

I come from a country where the youth have grown so wary of politics that most of them wouldn’t want to have anything to do with it. But here, Lula’s most ardent followers are the young: they were at Lula’s rally in massive numbers -- shirtless, holding their girlfriend’s or their boyfriend’s hands while listening raptly to Lula’s every word, kissing and embracing each other after applauding him feverishly.

I come from a country where the leader of the most organized segment of the Left is daring enough to call for an overthrow of the State, but not bold enough to come home from a comfortable exile.

Here in Brazil, Lula’s vision is not just bold; he is here, and he has won. The Brazilian Left has achieved what the most organized segment of the Left back home had deemed unimaginable: It had wrested ultimate leadership of the State without having had to kill anyone -- not the reactionary elements, not even former comrades in arms.

It remains to be seen, of course, whether Lula can really steer this State toward its revolutionary aims. But he has already shown that the first and most important step -- to take control of it and to mobilize the masses behind it -- can be done.

And here, perhaps, lies the reason why Lula arouses so much excitement even from the cynical and the hardened. He is an aberration. In today’s order of things, his victory seems so much like just a happy freakish accident, unbelievable but true.

In a world dominated by politicians out to serve the interests of the few and the powerful, in a world marked with political systems that inherently give undue advantage to these kinds of politicians, we have not expected any Lula to prevail. In a continent where the United States has routinely done everything to prevent leaders like Lula from coming to power and from doing anything but its wishes, we have not expected Lula to overcome. In a period when the Establishment has in so many places successfully suppressed the opposition and elites just scramble for power among themselves, when the Left has in so many cases fragmented itself, we have not expected Lula and his party to show the way.

I stood there, along with the Brazilians lining the road, waiting for Lula’s car to pass, hoping that in chanting “Ole ole Lula!” there would be more aberrations, more freaks, to come.

Please send your comments or feedback to newsfeedback@abs-cbn.com

asia.reuters.com Tue March 4, 2003 09:10 AM ET By Todd Benson

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (Reuters) - Rio de Janeiro's famed Carnival parade came to a close at dawn on Tuesday after tons of body glitter and 20 hours of samba dazzled millions of viewers in Brazil and beyond.

Under threat from drug gangs that terrorized Rio last week, the two-day competition between 14 samba schools took place under its heaviest security as 3,000 army troops were called in to back up 30,000 police safeguarding the city.

It was the first time the army had to be deployed to help keep the city safe during the annual bash. It is an anything goes farewell to sin, ushering in the 40 days of Lent before Easter in this predominantly Catholic nation of 170 million people.

But the fears of violence and the military presence did little to spoil the party, which was expected to attract some 400,000 out-of-town visitors, including 4,000 foreigners. It was also broadcast live to millions in Brazil and abroad.

"You don't think you're going to make it, and then you hear all those people screaming and you get another burst of energy and just keep going," said an exhausted Larry Karpen, a 34-year-old music producer from New York City. He spent $125 to don a costume and parade before 70,000 cheering fans in Rio's massive "Sambadrome" stadium.

Decked out in elaborate, shimmering costumes, or as little as possible to avoid breaking the no-nudity rule, thousands of revelers in each samba school parade down a 700-yard (meter) runway backed by a thundering drum section and giant floats.

Each group is made up of about 4,000 people, many of whom have spent months rehearsing, and has 80 minutes to finish the course. They are judged on criteria including music, percussion, costumes, floats, originality and enthusiasm.

This year's themes ranged from Brazil's African roots to its other national pastime, soccer, paying tribute to the country's fifth World Cup title last year. One of the biggest crowd pleasers was the Beija-Flor samba school, which used the event to denounce the poverty and violence so common in Brazil.

Beija-Flor's floats depicted smoky visions of hell, a violent car-jacking, hungry prisoners in squalid jail cells and, at the end, a massive likeness of Brazil's popular new president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Lula has promised to fight hunger and bridge the country's gaping income disparities.

"What we're telling is the story of humanity, and to do that we have to talk about what's going on in Brazil," said Beija-Flor's director, who is known simply as Laila.

Although purists complain that Carnival has become too commercial as companies sponsor schools in exchange for what they say are thinly veiled ads disguised as samba themes, those who participate in the parade swear it is a one-of-a-kind experience.

"It was my first time but it won't be my last. I adored it," gushed Thais Nogueira, a 23-year-old drag queen and "Miss Gay Brazil" who paraded with the Unidos da Tijuca school.

The winning school will be announced on Ash Wednesday, when the festivities across the country officially come to a close.

Some sporadic violence flared in the streets outside the Sambadrome and in the vibrant block parties that take place throughout Rio, which is as well known for its high crime rates as it is its breathtaking scenery.

During the first night of parading, six people were shot and one was killed by police outside the stadium after thieves swept through the area and assaulted passers-by. One American tourist was shot in the leg over the weekend while being mugged, but has since been released from the hospital.

Still, the incidents were nothing close to the coordinated attacks that rocked the city last week, when drug gangs torched buses, threw firebombs at apartment buildings and shot at police posts. Eleven people died in the violence.

"I think people forgot about the violence and focused on samba," said Marcos Antonio, a 37-year-old Rio native.

www.physicstoday.org

Not just cosmetic: L'Oréal and UNESCO are rewarding five women from around the globe for their scientific contributions in crystallography, disordered materials, scaling laws of fluids and complex systems, and electron microscopy of crystals and quasicrystals.

This year's "for women in science" awards by cosmetics giant L'Oréal and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) recognize lifetime achievements by women in condensed matter sciences. The awards are in their fifth year, but this is the first time they've rewarded work in the physical sciences. The awards were also increased fivefold this year, with five women from five continents each receiving $100 000.

"It seems to me that giving due recognition to women scientists can create a useful psychological shock," Nobel laureate Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, who served as president of the awards committee, said in a statement when the winners were selected. Women are "often more perceptive" than men and they "know how to stand by" someone whose morale is flagging, de Gennes said of women in their capacity as research group leaders. "Men are not so good at this." He added that "women know better than men how to preserve the freedom of student researchers. The result is that their students are more mature."

The awards were bestowed at UNESCO's Paris headquarters on 27 February.