new.stockwatch.com 2003-03-14 03:58 ET - News Release

VANCOUVER, March 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Vannessa Ventures Ltd. (VVV: TSX, OTC-BB: VNVNF, Berlin: VVT - WKN 914781) is pleased to announce that its wholly owned subsidiary, Industrias Infinito, has received the long- awaited reply from the Costa Rican government on the filing of its Environmental Impact Study. The reply clarifies the concerns SETENA (the Costa Rican government's environmental agency) has and permits the Company to file a response and continue the permitting process towards final approval for the development of the Crucitas Mine.

The EIS was reviewed by SETENA's technical group and has subsequently been reviewed by a commission of representatives of various Government agencies who resolved that the study in its current form could not be approved.

The Company will therefore immediately (a) deal with deficiencies in the study material related to the references and guidelines given to the Company by SETENA at the time the study was requested, and (b) appeal the introduction of new topics, which the company feels are expanding the scope of the study and which were neither included in the initial references nor are they directly related to the environmental concerns regarding the operation of a mine.

The filing of the revisions and explanations of indicated deficiencies will be undertaken over the next three days, and will include an appeal that the new topics, which were introduced now and which were not included in the terms of references given to the Company last year, be withdrawn at this time.

In Venezuela, a comprehensive update on the Las Cristinas legal issues is currently being prepared and will be distributed to our shareholders shortly.

While it was our intention to let the court action take its course, we have been consistently forced to rectify statements made by Crystallex International Corp. which can only be interpreted as blatantly self-serving. The statements either contain the facts veiled in misleading language or omit the facts altogether and present false information.

A good example is Crystallex's statement in its letter to investors dated March 11, 2003 (Item No. 4) in which it states that MINCA formally withdrew its action against CVG regarding the cancellation of the MINCA mining contract. Responsible due diligence by Crystallex would have ascertained that the MINCA versus CVG case regarding the mining contract's cancellation is still active and advancing. The case that has been withdrawn was for "Abuse of Power" by the CVG against MINCA, of which CVG is a shareholder, and the damage incurred by MINCA as a result of the abuse. The reason for the withdrawal is that current ongoing investigations have provided MINCA with substantially more evidence and the case is being re-filed on the basis of this additional information.

"MANFRED PESCHKE" Manfred Peschke, President VANNESSA VENTURES LTD.

The TSX Venture Exchange has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.

Vannessa Ventures Ltd.

CONTACT: Vannessa Ventures Ltd., 1710-1040 West Georgia Street, Vancouver, B.C., Canada, V6E 4H1, Tel: (604) 689-8927, Fax: (604) 689-8907, E-mail: info@vannessa.com, Website: www.vannessa.com

www.heraldnet.com Published: Friday, March 14, 2003 By Bryan Corliss Herald Writer

EVERETT -- Local hospitality businesses should stress training and security to meet the changes in tourism after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, an expert on tourism said Thursday.

They also should be more aware of how world events can affect their business, focus on short-term planning and work more closely with other segments of the community, said Peter Tarlow, a sociologist who specializes in tourism and economic development.

"In hard times, win loyalty by going forward, not cutting back," Tarlow told the Snohomish County Tourism Bureau during its quarterly forum. "Those people who cut on service and security, I think, will be out of business."

Tourism in the 21st century is changing, Tarlow said. The fast-growing segments are baby boomer grandparents traveling with their grandchildren, and women traveling alone on business.

Those people have unique needs, he said. Hotels need to come up with security plans to address the concerns of single women. That can mean improved lighting and locks, and providing escorts to help late-arriving women to their rooms.

Baby boomers can be demanding travelers, he added. Hotel staffers need to be trained in how to handle their complaints.

And tourism has changed after Sept. 11, Tarlow said. "Anyone who thinks that terrorism is not about tourism is living in never-never land," he said. "Almost every (airline) is either in bankruptcy or on the verge," and hotel and restaurant business remains down.

World events affect tourism, Tarlow said. If Saddam Hussein blows up Iraq's oil fields, and strikes continue to disrupt petroleum production in Venezuela, and if the U.S. goes to war in North Korea, "you have a very different season."

And what happens to a community if a Fourth of July festival is canceled by a federal security alert? he continued. Tarlow urged tourism planners to be flexible in their thinking and to focus on the coming months, not years.

"A year is too far out," he said.

Tourist groups also should work to ingrain the idea that customer service is important across the community, not just in hotels, Tarlow said. Tourism is a $3 billion industry worldwide, and everyone who might come into contact with a visitor -- from police to convenience store clerks -- must play a role in it.

"You can't live in isolation," he said. "We have to, in the 21st century, start working together."

Reporter Bryan Corliss: 425-339-3454 or corliss@heraldnet.com.

www.expressindia.com H.S. Rao (Press Trust of India)

London, March 14: Founder-Director of the Bangalore-based Asian Elephant Research and Conservation Centre Professor Raman Sukumar has won the Whitley Golden award, the most prestigious international award in the field of environment conservation, for his work in saving endangered Asian elephants.

Sukumar received the award popularly known as the "Green Oscar" along with a cash prize of 50,000 pounds from Princess Anne at the Royal Geographical Society in London on Thursday night.

This is the fourth year in succession that an Indian has bagged the award. Last year, a Pune scientist, Dr Anand Karve won the award for developing a technique to produce clean fuel from sugarcane waste.

In 2001, Vivek Menon, Chief of the Wildlife Trust of India, was chosen for the award for his fight against poaching of elephants. In 2000, Gargi Banerji, a botanist, won the golden award for work in conserving medicinal plants in Himachal Pradesh.

After receiving the award, Sukumar said he planned to spend the cash prize to provide support to local farmers to mitigate the impact of elephants on their lands as well as to help his field research team which acts as a "watchdog"—identifying threats such as poaching for ivory and monitoring the health of the elephant population.

The Asian Elephant Research and Conservation Centre, founded by Sukumar works closely with the government's project elephant. His area of operation is the Nilgiris in Tamil Nadu where there are 8,000 elephants in the wild, the largest concentration in the world.

He said it offered the best opportunity of ensuring the long-term survival of the species.

Sukumar said his work dealt with three main problems—destruction and fragmentation of the elephant's habitat as a result of development projects; conflict between elephants and humans; and reduction of the herds by poaching.

To provide a safe habitat to the pachyderms, Sukumar carried out surveys and sought to establish protected corridors, so that elephant herds could move from one area to another. To prevent conflict, he experimented with forms of fencing and sought to get the co-operation of villagers in schemes to keep the animals away from crops and human habitation. He coordinated with the wild life authorities to combat poaching.

Others who received cash awards of 25,000 pounds each included Jon Paul Rodriguez of Venezuela for his work on saving yellow-shouldered parrot in Venezuela, Victor Vera of Paraguay for his conservation work in the Paraguayan Atlantic forest, John Waithaka of Kenya for developing community-based eco-tourism business, Gregor Maclennan of Peru, for helping local people in the Peruvian rainforests and Dale Lewis of Zambia, for converting poachers into skilful farmers.

At the award ceremony, Edward Whitley, the founder of the Whitley awards, described Sukumar as "a truly exceptional person, who most probably knows more about elephants than anyone else in the world and has devoted his professional life to their survival."

abc.net.au Friday, 14 March  2003

A long dry period punctuated by three intense droughts probably played a major role in the mysterious collapse of Mayan civilisation in Mexico, according to a new study. The severe droughts, each lasting between three and nine years, may have the been the final straws for a civilisation already on the verge of collapse, says a report published today in the journal Science. "Between about 750 and 950 AD, the Maya experienced a demographic disaster as profound as any other in human history," said the report, by an international research team led by Dr Gerald Haug of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich. The Mayan were so successful that at their so-called Classic Maya peak, around 750 AD, the civilisation supported a population of between three and 13 million people, the researchers said. But then it progressively collapsed and by the early 9th century, many of its cities and towns had been permanently abandoned. The study details new evidence that the three droughts occurred around 810, 860, and 910 AD - corresponding to the three phases of Mayan collapse suggested by archaeological evidence. The researchers also found that a more subtle but long-term drying trend was ongoing during the collapse. The droughts may have been what specifically "pushed Mayan society over the edge," they said. The findings are based on an analysis of long-term climate records as revealed in pristine undisturbed sediments from the Cariaco Basin, off northern Venezuela. The distinctly layered sediments, washed out from land by rivers, show up as pairs of light and dark bands that correspond to annual wet and dry seasons. Within them, the team identified yearly variations in titanium levels, which reflect the amount of rainfall each year. They correlate well with palaeoclimate data obtained elsewhere from sources such as ice cores and tree rings. Until now, however, climate records from the time had not been precise enough to test the relationship between drought and the Maya's downfall during the 9th and 10th centuries, the report said. The Mayans began cultivating maize in the region about 2000 BC, using dryland farming techniques that depended on fallowing to rest the soil and needed relatively little labour. Like other Native Americans, they went on to develop sophisticated ways of intensively cultivating fertile soils associated with seasonal and permanent wetlands, on which multiple crops could be grown year after year. Living in the Yucatan lowlands of Mexico and depending mainly on an inconsistent rainfall cycle, the Maya developed labour-intense networks of raised fields as well as canals, reservoirs and other systems for storing and gravity-powered distribution of rainwater. The Mayans had abandoned their major cities once before - between about 150 and 250 AD - an incident that may also be due to drought. But their population constantly recovered, cities were reoccupied and their culture blossomed. "The control of artificial water reservoirs by Maya rulers may also have played a role in both the florescence and the collapse of Maya civilisation," the researchers wrote. Other scientists have suggested that drought may have undermined the institution of Mayan ruling class when existing ceremonies and technologies failed to provide sufficient water. The Mayans were an ancient people whose high civilisation flourished in what is today Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala. They created monuments as impressive as those in ancient Egypt, were proficient in mathematics and astronomy and invented a unique written language.

Bob Beale - ABC Science Online

More Info? Sun cycle may have affected the Maya, News in Science 23 May 2001 El Nino cycles ancient and peaking, News in Science 20 Nov 2002

www.iol.co.za March 14 2003 at 06:04AM

Baghdad - For months, this city's residents have tried to maintain the appearance of normality while the threat of war grew closer.

But the city seems to have finally dropped its business-as-usual pretence, succumbing to the reality that a United States attack could come soon.

Embassies are closing. The United Nations is pulling out expatriate staff. Residents are hoarding food, water and fuel, buying generators, drilling neighbourhood wells and cleaning out basements to use as bomb shelters.

Throughout the city, workers are building sandbagged positions and digging trenches.

'We must defend our nation because right is on our side'Members of the ruling Ba'ath Party are organising neighbourhood resistance cells. The dinar, Iraq's currency, is slumping and food prices - especially for canned food and bottled water - are soaring.

As recently as a few weeks ago, many Baghdad residents had at least publicly adopted a fairly laid-back attitude toward the threat of war, reflecting the experience of having lived through two wars and periodic US strikes over two decades.

Now store owners have begun moving their merchandise to warehouses. Others are not replenishing their stocks. Some residents are honing their evacuation plans, making arrangements with relatives in what they see as the relatively safe countryside.

Families can be seen moving out from central Baghdad's apartment blocks, loading trucks with suitcases and boxes.

On Wednesday, 35 high school students filled burlap sacks with soil and piled them into a defence position opposite the Al-Rashidiyah Bridge over the Tigris River.

'My wife Mariam prayed all night and I could not sleep until daylight, when I felt safe'"This is a sensitive area and it must be defended," said Ahmed Yassin, 16. "We must defend our nation because right is on our side."

Baghdadis whisper rumours that authorities are preventing people from leaving the city, but motorists reported on Wednesday that traffic in and out of the city was normal, with routine identity checks at roadblocks.

Only the wealthy can afford to leave the country for Jordan or Syria. Most of the city's five million people must face the grim prospect of war. Their fears are accentuated by nightmarish memories of a similar situation 12 years ago.

Muwafaq Fadil, a 54-year-old taxi driver, said his son Simon, then four, was so afraid during the six-week bombing campaign in the 1991 Gulf War that he hid under the sofa every night. His daughter Mariam, 6, fell unconscious when the bombing grew intense.

"My wife Mariam prayed all night and I could not sleep until daylight, when I felt safe," Fadil said. "I wish we could go abroad, but I don't have money."

Fadil said that for the past few weeks, his son has been unable to concentrate and suffers from stomach aches. Fadil blames this on the prospect of war.

The war jitters are also being felt in Baghdad's limited nightlife. Fewer patrons show up at restaurants.

Many of Baghdad's estimated 60 embassies - including those of Portugal, Spain, Thailand and Japan - have pulled out their staff. A rapidly shrinking number of others remain, including most countries vocally opposing a war: France, Germany, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela and most Arab countries.

Grace Princesa Escalante, the Philippines' top diplomat in Iraq, remains as well. She has enjoyed a reputation for giving the best parties in Baghdad since she arrived two years ago. They have become a symbol of normality in a city where such symbols are increasingly in short supply.

But she may have given her last party this week - and even that didn't prevent war talk from dominating the conversation. It wasn't until she switched on the karaoke machine that the pace picked up.

Guests sang a rendition of the Eagles' 1970s hit Hotel California, replacing the chorus with "Hotel Al Rasheed", the name of Baghdad's most famous hotel. The evening's finale was another apropos 1970's classic: Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive. - Sapa-AP

• This article was originally published on page 6 of The Cape Times on 14 March 2003