straitstimes.asia1.com.sg

BOGOTA - A bomb ripped through an underground carpark at a shopping mall in Cucuta, near Colombia's north-eastern border with Venezuela, killing at least seven people and injuring 68 others.

The blast on Wednesday ignited cars parked nearby and triggered an avalanche of concrete as shoppers tried to flee. Advertisement

It was the first major bomb attack since December in the city, which has been gripped by guerilla warfare for decades.

'We heard a very strong explosion and then flames burst out. Then there was a fire and some parts of the building caved in,' said one survivor.

Police blamed the leftist National Liberation Army but offered no evidence.

The Cuban-inspired group, known by its Spanish initials ELN, is one of several outlawed armies involved in Colombia's drug-fuelled guerilla conflict.

Police Colonel Oscar Gambo said the blast was caused by 'a small bomb placed on top of a vehicle's petrol tank, which spread the fire to other cars'.

Cucuta mayor Manuel Guillermo Mora said seven bodies had been found and 68 people were injured.

More bodies are expected to be found under the rubble.

The guerillas have been moving their attacks steadily to urban centres over the past several years. -- Reuters

straitstimes.asia1.com.sg By Kelvin Wong

THE next time you request takeaway from your favourite mee pok stall, do not be surprised if you have to pay more than the usual 20 cent surcharge for the plastic container.

In an unexpected twist, plastics have become the latest victim of global oil price hikes in recent months arising from fears of an impending war in Iraq and political unrest in Venezuela.

According to the Singapore Plastic Industry Association (Spia), the prices of petrochemicals - essential raw materials for plastics - have surged by about 25 to 30 per cent in the last five months.

Plastic resins, which are broadly classified as petrochemicals, are themselves obtained from the refinement of crude oil.

'The prices of petrochemical products are very much related to crude oil prices,' Spia president Ronald Lim told The Straits Times yesterday.

'With the sharp increase in raw material prices, some manufacturers are having to absorb this extra cost and are hurting as a result,' he added.

The price of crude oil hit a two-year high last Thursday at US$39.99 a barrel.

Prices have been climbing steadily since mid-November last year when they hovered around US$25 a barrel.

The prices of plastic resins - which are used to make everyday household plastic items such as trash bags - have also moved in tandem.

For example, the price of PVC (polyvinyl chloride), which is used for trunkings that conceal electrical wires, rose from US$550 (S$955) per tonne in October last year to US$710 per tonne last month, Spia data showed.

The price of high density polyethylene, a plastic resin used in ordinary shopping bags rose from US$570 in October last year to US$760 per tonne this month.

Similarly, the price of polypropylene - commonly used in products such as food bottles and automobile battery casings - surged from US$660 to US$860 per tonne over the same period.

Would this translate into higher prices of plastic end-products?

Said Mr Lim: 'If prices of plastic resins continue to rise, then plastic products are likely to follow.'

Plastic manufacturers contacted yesterday agreed that the price hikes have hit them hard.

'We have been trying to absorb the increases so far but from this month onwards, we would probably have to raise our prices,' said Mr Toh Cheng Wan, managing director of Chuan Durn Plastic Industries.

The company manufactures shopping and trash bags, as well as plastic sheets for packaging.

sg.biz.yahoo.com Friday March 7, 5:22 AM Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--U.S. stocks retreated among concerns about the economy and with the shadow of Iraq still hanging over the market.

Select from the most reliable agencies  Worries about corporate results continued to weigh on investors, who were faced with poor retail-sales reports and an earnings warning from Raytheon. Shares of Raytheon fell 5.5%.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 101.61, or 1.31%, to end at 7673.99. The Nasdaq Composite Index fell 11.48, or 0.87%, to 1302.92. The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index dropped 7.75, or 0.93%, to 822.10.

Retail-sales figures for the month of February weren't encouraging, as stores were hampered by the big blizzard that hit the East Coast last month. Shares of Sears Roebuck fell 3.5%, while shares of May Department Stores dropped 2.2%.

Regarding the overall market environment, "after all is said and done, what this is all about is the economy and earnings," said Hugh Johnson, chief investment strategist at First Albany in Albany, N.Y. "And the outlook for the economy and earnings is deteriorating. Oil prices remain so high, and as a result the outlook for the economy is getting gloomier."

A worse-than-expected report on weekly jobless claims also spooked investors, suggesting that employment conditions are weakening, Johnson added. But the economic picture remains muddy, as data on productivity and factory orders painted a more positive picture.

The strategist noted that all the attention that has been given to the Iraqi situation may be masking other problems for the market. "The buzz on Wall Street is that if Iraq gets put behind us the stock market . . . will do well," he said.

But even if the Iraqi standoff is resolved, "there is still North Korea and terrorism, there is still Venezuela," Johnson said.

www.arrl.org

NEWINGTON, CT, Mar 6, 2003--With World Radiocommunication Conference 2003 (WRC-03) set to start in just about three months in Geneva, support is growing for two favorable proposals to create a 300-kHz worldwide 40-meter allocation. ARRL and the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) seek a return to the 300-kHz allocation that existed worldwide prior to World War II but that now exists only in the Americas. Delegates to WRC-03 will attempt to address--and possibly eliminate--the overlap on 40 meters between amateurs in the Americas (Region 2) and broadcasters elsewhere (Regions 1 and 3).

"There is encouraging news," says ARRL CEO David Sumner, K1ZZ, in his "It Seems to Us . . ." editorial set to appear in April QST. He reports that, thanks to the efforts of IARU volunteers and others, more than 30 countries now have gone on record to support either one or the other of two favorable 40-meter realignment formulas. Sumner said more support is needed, but he called the interim head count "a good start."

Most popular among the half dozen realignment schemes outlined by participants at last November's WRC-03 Conference Preparatory Meeting is so-called Method B. This approach calls for a three-stage transition that would begin by allowing Region 1 and 3 amateurs on 7100-7200 kHz on a secondary basis starting in 2005 and end with all ITU regions gaining access to 7000-7300 kHz by the end of 2009--with the top 100 kHz shared with fixed and mobile stations in Regions 1 and 3. Broadcasters would shift upward to 7300-7550 kHz worldwide.

For US and other Region 2 stations, such a change would mean an end to deafening nighttime phone band QRM from broadcasters and the necessity to operate split-frequency to work stations in Regions 1 and 3 on SSB.

Sumner says Method B is now a European Common Proposal with initial support from 17 CEPT administrations--Austria, Denmark, Czech Republic, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Hungary, Estonia, Belgium, Slovak Republic, Netherlands, Switzerland, Ireland, Lithuania, Finland, Poland and Bulgaria. At least three other countries in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific have also expressed support for Method B, he said.

The IARU team now is working to gain the support of additional administrations in Regions 1 and 3 either for Method B or for the similar Method A, Sumner reports. Otherwise identical to Method B, Method A does not include any sharing with fixed and mobile services.

In the Americas, a dozen ITU Region 2 countries last month agreed to support an Inter-American Proposal that's virtually the same as the so-called Method D. Proposed by Canada, Method D would provide 300 kHz worldwide for amateurs by shifting broadcasters in Regions 1 and 3 upward by 200 kHz. Region 2's broadcasting allocation would remain unchanged. In supporting this plan, Canada has been joined by Argentina, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Paraguay, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Colombia, Honduras, and Peru. IARU Region 2 is now working to expand the list of Region 2 countries supporting that plan.

The US so far has taken no position on the 40-meter realignment issue, although it has long supported a 300-kHz worldwide, exclusive allocation for Amateur Radio. At World Administrative Radio Conferences in 1979 and 1992 the US proposed to realign the amateur and broadcasting allocations to provide for a "harmonized" allocation. The FCC WRC-03 Advisory Committee has recommended that Method A be a US proposal, but the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has not yet agreed.

"Acting on behalf of the federal government users of the radio spectrum, the NTIA has been advocating 'no proposal' from the US, a position that the ARRL is working hard to overcome," Sumner points out. "A small number of federal agencies claim to be concerned that their backup circuits on HF would be affected by an upward shift of broadcasters."

Sumner also calls it "unfortunate" that some broadcasters persist in efforts to link the 7 MHz WRC-03 agenda item with another that deals with the adequacy of broadcasting spectrum between 4 and 10 MHz. Sumner said the broadcasting spectrum item is "a separate issue with an entirely different genesis." He also points out that major international broadcasters continue their shift away from HF. As evidence, he cites a recent announcement by Deutsche Welle that it will drop HF broadcasting to North America, Australia, and New Zealand at month's end.

reuters.com Thu March 6, 2003 05:00 PM ET By Pascal Fletcher

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan business leaders attacked the government on Thursday for taking so long to implement currency controls, while a 45-day drought of dollars squeezed private firms already fighting to survive after a two-month opposition strike.

Access to U.S. greenbacks has been suspended since the government of leftist President Hugo Chavez halted forex trading from Jan. 22 to stem capital flight and check a slide in the bolivar currency triggered by the crippling general strike.

Despite official promises that the new centralized control mechanism for allocating dollars -- at a fixed rate to the bolivar -- would be in place by Wednesday this week, the new state currency board CADIVI has still not introduced the system.

Importers and exporters were still impatiently waiting for CADIVI to publish a list of authorized products deemed essential for the nation that would allow them to receive dollars from the Central Bank for their operations.

"We are very worried because we've just come out of a civic strike which had already restricted inventories, and now we're experiencing a foreign exchange freeze that has lasted 45 days," Albis Munoz, acting president of Venezuela's biggest private business association Fedecamaras, told Reuters.

She questioned the ability of the new government currency board, which is headed by retired army captain Edgar Hernandez, a known Chavez loyalist who took part in a botched 1992 coup bid led by the former paratrooper turned president.

"The people who are handling this clearly don't have the technical capacity to do it," Munoz said.

"The government is like a child with a new, very powerful toy," said Jose Gregorio Pineda, chief economist at the Venezuelan-American Chamber of Commerce in Caracas.

The dollar drought amounts to a double blow for private businesses, many of which sacrificed lucrative Christmas and New Year sales to join the Fedecamaras-led strike that tried to force Chavez to step down and hold early elections.

The work stoppage, which fizzled out in early February, failed to budge the populist president, who has ruled since 1998.

But it slashed oil production in the world's No. 5 petroleum exporter, pushing the economy deeper into recession and forcing the government to introduce stringent currency and price controls.

The new currency regime set a fixed exchange rate of 1,596/1,600 bolivars to the dollar, after the bolivar had lost about half its value against the U.S. dollar in the past year.

POLITICAL VENDETTA

Chavez and Hernandez have made clear that under the tight forex curbs the nation's dollars will be primarily used for obtaining essential goods like food and medicine or for vital inputs for industries and services.

They have made clear foreign exchange will not be made available for "luxuries," such as imported cheeses or whiskeys or high-cost personal travel. Even fast-food franchises like McDonald's, which are very popular in Venezuela, are not expected to be on the initial dollar authorization list.

Private businessmen, especially those who took part in the December and January opposition strike, fear the currency controls will be used by Chavez in a political vendetta against them. He has vowed not a single dollar will be given to foes he regularly pillories as "terrorists" and "coup mongers."

"This is not just an economic crisis, but a political one, too," Munoz said. Fedecamaras president Carlos Fernandez, one of the leaders of the recent anti-government strike, is currently under house arrest facing rebellion charges.

Pineda said concern over the controls and the way they were being implemented also extended to foreign companies.

"A lot of businessmen in Venezuela are a pretty hardened bunch. They've worked in places like Nigeria, but even they are frightened by what these forex controls will mean," he said.

"The delay in implementing has just made matters worse. It creates even more uncertainty apart from the political problems and dealing with the recession," he added.

Munoz, echoing views expressed by private economists, predicted the curbs would create shortages, spawn a flourishing black market in dollars and stimulate inflation, which jumped 5.5 percent in February, the highest monthly rise in nearly seven years. Annualized inflation rose to 38.7 percent.

The government is drawing up legislation to penalize those who violate the controls. Local media published parts of the draft law, which foresees jail terms of up to 14 years for offenders. Business chief Munoz described this as too severe and said it would not prevent illegal currency deals.

"If the country's political crisis is not resolved, our survival is on the line," she said.

Long-running negotiations between the government and the opposition, brokered by the Organization of American States, have so far failed to produce an agreement on early elections.