<a href=www.sfgate.com>URL Tuesday, March 25, 2003
(03-25) 14:26 PST WASHINGTON (AP) --

President Bush on Tuesday named Marsha E. Barnes, a career diplomat with the State Department, as U.S. ambassador to the Caribbean nation of Suriname.

Barnes, of Maryland, is currently assessor for the Board of Examiners at the State Department. She has served in posts in Bonn, Germany, and Moscow.

Bush also on Tuesday nominated career diplomat John Maisto as U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States.

Maisto has served on the National Security Council as director of Latin American affairs for two years.

He previously has served as ambassador to Venezuela and to Nicaragua.

Subject to Senate confirmation, Maisto will replace Ambassador Roger Noriega at the OAS. Noriega was nominated Monday to be assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs.

<a href=news.ft.com>By Kevin Done, Aerospace Correspondent Published: March 25 2003 22:06 | Last Updated: March 25 2003 22:06

British Airways and Lufthansa, two of the top three European airlines, are cutting capacity in particular on North American routes in response to falling demand for air travel triggered by the war in Iraq.

In further retrenchment in the European airline industry Swiss, Switzerland's national carrier, said that it was halving its firm order for 60 regional jets from Embraer, the Brazilian aircraft maker, to only 30 with first deliveries pushed back to next year. It is also seeking to delay the delivery of five Airbus A340-300s from 2004 to a later date.

BA is expected to announce on Wednesday a capacity reduction of close to five per cent initially until the end of April with a cut in daily frequencies to New York, to both JFK and Newark airports, and to Chicago.

It is expected to reinstate a daily service to Tel Aviv, however, after suspending its former twice daily service to Israel last week on the eve of the start of hostilities in Iraq. The move will leave Kuwait, as the only one of BA's Middle East destinations to which service remains suspended.

Lufthansa, the German flag carrier, said that it was cutting capacity on intercontinental routes mainly to North and South America and to Asia and would take seven aircraft out of service from its long-haul fleet.

The group said there had been a "sharp fall" in passenger bookings particularly on routes to America and Asia.

In response it is cutting one daily frequency from Frankfurt to each of New York, Boston and Los Angeles while individual flights will be scrapped to Phoenix and Dallas and smaller aircraft used to Philadelphia.

Frequencies to Caracas, Venezuela, will be halved from six to three a week, while capacity is being cut to Nagoya and Osaka in Japan and to Seoul, South Korea.

Lufthansa had already moved in February to cut capacity on short-haul routes in Europe with 31 aircraft taken out of service in addition to the 17 removed by its regional airline partners.

The capacity cuts by the European airlines follow similar actions already taken by many North American and Asian airlines.

Tuesday,  March 25,  2003 <a href=www.lapress.org>CARIBBEAN Charles Arthur.  Mar 22, 2003

Caribbean economy could suffer fallout from war.

At a time when most of the region’s countries are suffering economic difficulties resulting from the collapse of traditional agro-export industries such as sugar and bananas, further economic disruption as a result of the war against Iraq, which began March 20, could have dire consequences.

The Caribbean is particularly vulnerable because it is now heavily reliant on revenues from tourism — a sector that each year provides some 30 percent of the region’s gross domestic product, and employment for around one in seven workers. (LP, June 21, 1999).

At a Trinidad summit meeting in mid-February, the 15-member Caribbean Community (CARICOM) released a statement opposing the use of armed force against Iraq. The communiqué, which urged the US and its allies to exercise restraint, stressed that Caribbean leaders were "deeply troubled over the humanitarian tragedy that an outbreak of war could bring about and the disastrous effects it could have on global economic stability."

Tourist arrivals declined sharply in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in the United States, as a dip in the US economy and heightened fear of air travel deterred many potential visitors during the following winter holiday season. The World Tourism and Travel Council estimates that 364,000 people in the region lost jobs as a result.

According to the Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO), an aggressive publicity campaign and slashed airline ticket and hotel prices succeeded in reviving the Caribbean tourist sector during 2002. But this recovery is now in jeopardy.

The CTO bulletin for the first quarter of 2003 warned, "The possibility of war in Iraq undercuts the stability which international tourism, especially long haul travel, needs in order to operate at its best ... The onset of war will likely hit international travel quite hard."

A heightened terror alert could again hit passenger confidence in air travel with immediate repercussions for those Caribbean islands dependent on airlines to bring tourists to their beaches and resorts.

Neither is the important cruise ship sector immune. In December 2002, the P&O Princess Cruises company started canceling stops in Trinidad in the wake of a warning of possible terrorist attacks issued by the British Foreign Office. The warning, made in the context of the Bali tourist resort bomb blast, is believed to be connected to a Trinidad police investigation of a black Muslim cleric known to sympathize with Osama bin Laden. A total of six planned visits to Port of Spain, each of which would have brought about 1,200 passengers ashore, were cancelled before the travel advisory was withdrawn.

In January 2003, Jamaica’s Minister of Tourism, Aloun Assamba, called for the implementation of new security measures at the islands’s main cruise ship ports if her country was to avoid the same fate.

Although few Caribbean politicians have risked incurring the wrath of the US by speaking out against the war, CARICOM Secretary-General, Shridath Ramphal, has been prepared to sound the alarm. Pouring scorn on optimism that the Iraq war might be quickly over, he said, "Do not believe that the Americans sent half a million forces and hundreds of tons of weaponry into Iraq for a couple of weeks. We are in for the long haul. What will that war environment mean for the tourism industry on which the Caribbean relies so heavily?"

The possibility of rising fuel prices is another issue of concern to the Caribbean. The previous hike in the price of crude oil on the international market, coinciding with interruptions to Venezuela's output as a result of the campaign to destabilize the government of President Hugo Chavez, (LP, Jan. 15, 2003) has already had an impact.

In Jamaica, bus and taxi drivers and operators have threatened violent disturbances in response to a hike in fuel costs, while in Guyana and Haiti there have already been a number of strikes to protest recent fuel price increases. If war in Iraq lasts any length of time, or if it is accompanied by sabotage of the country’s oilfields, then international fuel prices would be expected to skyrocket.

As Maurice Odle, economic adviser at the Guyana-based CARICOM Secretariat, warns, "We are still reeling from the effects of 9/11 and we know for sure that our high-energy sectors like the aviation industry would be seriously affected. We can see airfares and jet fuel (prices) going up and that would be tough on airlines and our tourism industry."

One of the region’s main airlines, the ailing BWIA, is already facing monthly losses of around one million US dollars, and in January it laid off 617 of its 2,400 workers, many of them maintenance engineers.

The wider consequences of a prolonged war could also negatively impact on the Caribbean. Higher oil prices would further undermine the fragile economies of the United States, Germany and Japan, and might in the long run lead to a worldwide economic contraction.

Such a scenario would be disastrous for countries like the Dominican Republic and Jamaica that are heavily dependent on external financial sources in terms of investment and capital flows, and Haiti where the economy is sustained almost entirely by the remittances sent back by nationals working abroad.

At a time when most of the region’s countries are suffering economic difficulties resulting from the collapse of traditional agro-export industries such as sugar and bananas, further economic disruption as a result of the war against Iraq, which began March 20, could have dire consequences.

The Caribbean is particularly vulnerable because it is now heavily reliant on revenues from tourism — a sector that each year provides some 30 percent of the region’s gross domestic product, and employment for around one in seven workers. (LP, June 21, 1999).

At a Trinidad summit meeting in mid-February, the 15-member Caribbean Community (CARICOM) released a statement opposing the use of armed force against Iraq. The communiqué, which urged the US and its allies to exercise restraint, stressed that Caribbean leaders were "deeply troubled over the humanitarian tragedy that an outbreak of war could bring about and the disastrous effects it could have on global economic stability."

Tourist arrivals declined sharply in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in the United States, as a dip in the US economy and heightened fear of air travel deterred many potential visitors during the following winter holiday season. The World Tourism and Travel Council estimates that 364,000 people in the region lost jobs as a result.

According to the Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO), an aggressive publicity campaign and slashed airline ticket and hotel prices succeeded in reviving the Caribbean tourist sector during 2002. But this recovery is now in jeopardy.

The CTO bulletin for the first quarter of 2003 warned, "The possibility of war in Iraq undercuts the stability which international tourism, especially long haul travel, needs in order to operate at its best ... The onset of war will likely hit international travel quite hard."

A heightened terror alert could again hit passenger confidence in air travel with immediate repercussions for those Caribbean islands dependent on airlines to bring tourists to their beaches and resorts.

Neither is the important cruise ship sector immune. In December 2002, the P&O Princess Cruises company started canceling stops in Trinidad in the wake of a warning of possible terrorist attacks issued by the British Foreign Office. The warning, made in the context of the Bali tourist resort bomb blast, is believed to be connected to a Trinidad police investigation of a black Muslim cleric known to sympathize with Osama bin Laden. A total of six planned visits to Port of Spain, each of which would have brought about 1,200 passengers ashore, were cancelled before the travel advisory was withdrawn.

In January 2003, Jamaica’s Minister of Tourism, Aloun Assamba, called for the implementation of new security measures at the islands’s main cruise ship ports if her country was to avoid the same fate.

Although few Caribbean politicians have risked incurring the wrath of the US by speaking out against the war, CARICOM Secretary-General, Shridath Ramphal, has been prepared to sound the alarm. Pouring scorn on optimism that the Iraq war might be quickly over, he said, "Do not believe that the Americans sent half a million forces and hundreds of tons of weaponry into Iraq for a couple of weeks. We are in for the long haul. What will that war environment mean for the tourism industry on which the Caribbean relies so heavily?"

The possibility of rising fuel prices is another issue of concern to the Caribbean. The previous hike in the price of crude oil on the international market, coinciding with interruptions to Venezuela's output as a result of the campaign to destabilize the government of President Hugo Chavez, (LP, Jan. 15, 2003) has already had an impact.

In Jamaica, bus and taxi drivers and operators have threatened violent disturbances in response to a hike in fuel costs, while in Guyana and Haiti there have already been a number of strikes to protest recent fuel price increases. If war in Iraq lasts any length of time, or if it is accompanied by sabotage of the country’s oilfields, then international fuel prices would be expected to skyrocket.

As Maurice Odle, economic adviser at the Guyana-based CARICOM Secretariat, warns, "We are still reeling from the effects of 9/11 and we know for sure that our high-energy sectors like the aviation industry would be seriously affected. We can see airfares and jet fuel (prices) going up and that would be tough on airlines and our tourism industry."

One of the region’s main airlines, the ailing BWIA, is already facing monthly losses of around one million US dollars, and in January it laid off 617 of its 2,400 workers, many of them maintenance engineers.

The wider consequences of a prolonged war could also negatively impact on the Caribbean. Higher oil prices would further undermine the fragile economies of the United States, Germany and Japan, and might in the long run lead to a worldwide economic contraction.

Such a scenario would be disastrous for countries like the Dominican Republic and Jamaica that are heavily dependent on external financial sources in terms of investment and capital flows, and Haiti where the economy is sustained almost entirely by the remittances sent back by nationals working abroad.

<a href=www.vicksburgpost.com>More By Sam Knowlton

[3/25/03]Consumers may have noticed slightly lower or at least more stable gasoline prices recently, but a wholesaler and an economics professor see no relation to the war in Iraq.

After approaching record highs, prices have been continued near or above $1.60 a gallon.

“We haven’t had a price change in two or three weeks,” said Catina Freeman, manager of Mac’s Gas, 1920 Drummond St., where today’s price was $1.59. The last change was a 3-cent increase, she said.

A manager at Hill City’s Exxon Jubilee Store No. 114, Mission 66 at Clay Street, said the price there had been decreased a couple of days ago from $1.65 to its current $1.63.

The Gulf Coast average was $1.58.9, down 2.3 cents from the previous week but up 31.4 cents from a year ago, Department of Energy statistics show.

The retail-administration manager at local fuel wholesaler Hill City Oil, Benno Van Ryswyk, said the price his company pays for gas fluctuates daily.

“The last decrease we had was last week,” he said. “I think it’s going to go up again tonight.”

Wholesalers like Hill City, which provides gasoline to several Vicksburg retail stations, respond at different rates of speed to the price increases or decreases.

“I look across the street to my competitor and if he’s going down, I’ll go down,” Van Ryswyk said. “Within a day, day and a half, people come to about the same decisions. They’re economic decisions.”

Van Ryswyk said this morning that he had seen an overnight increase in the price asked by independent oil producers, who deliver the least-expensive gas to Vicksburg, of 3.65 cents per gallon, and an increase of 1.5 cents per gallon in gas from name-brand producers.

Prices charged by the oil companies are strongly influenced by a futures market at the Chicago Board of Trade, he said, adding that trouble spots in at least two other places in the world besides the war in Iraq may have contributed to the recent relatively high U.S. gas prices. The additional factors he mentioned are decreased production in Nigeria and Venezuela.

“Most of the problem is related to problems in the refining sector,” said Professor William Shughart, the Hearon Professor of Economics at the University of Mississippi, adding that American now has less oil-refining capacity than it had in 1970.

“That reduction, combined with growth in demand and balkanization in domestic gas markets caused by variations in environmental regulations from state to state, have been major culprits in the most recent spike” in gas prices,” he said. “As well as an interruption in supply from Venezuela,” which has been experiencing domestic strife in recent months.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has pledged to step up production of oil from Saudi Arabia, he said.

“Even though Iraq is the location of the second-largest known crude-oil deposits, it has been a minor player in world markets because of the embargo, which only the French have violated,” Shughart said.

For gasoline consumers, the end of the winter heating-oil season may be good news, Shughart said.

“A day or two ago we saw a fairly significant decline in the world price of crude oil,” he said, adding that as refineries shift capacity from the production of heating oil to that of gasoline, “that should lead to declining prices at the pump.”3

Read source 25/03/03

The 18-man U.S. roster for the March 29 match traveled to Portland on Monday for a week-long training camp, reuniting ten players from the U.S. squad that made an historic run to the quarterfinals of the 2002 World Cup in Korea/Japan.

"Over the past two or three years, the Venezuelan national team has made great strides, and I think they are perhaps the most improved team in South America," Arena told US Soccer. "We are certainly looking forward to the challenge."

Included in the roster is Washington native Kasey Keller, second on the USA's all-time goalkeeping list for wins (31) and shutouts (28), who has collected an astonishing 13-0-4 record on home soil since 1998.

Also returning is the striker tandem of Brian McBride and Landon Donovan, who together scored four of the USA's seven goals in Korea/Japan.

The camp also marks the reunion of the midfield corps of Pablo Mastroeni, John O'Brien, DaMarcus Beasley and Earnie Stewart, who last took the field together as starters in the 3-2 upset victory against Portugal in the USA's opening match.

Once again, MLS players dominate the roster, with 14 of the 18 now playing domestically.

The following is the U.S. roster for the March 29 match:

GOALKEEPERS (2): Tim Howard (MetroStars), Kasey Keller (Tottenham Hotspur)

DEFENDERS (5): Carlos Bocanegra (Chicago Fire), Steve Cherundolo (Hannover 96), Nick Garcia (Kansas City Wizards), Frankie Hejduk (Columbus Crew), Eddie Pope (MetroStars)

MIDFIELDERS (7): DaMarcus Beasley (Chicago Fire), Bobby Convey (D.C. United), Chris Klein (Kansas City Wizards), Kyle Martino (Columbus Crew), Pablo Mastroeni (Colorado Rapids), John O'Brien (Ajax Amsterdam), Earnie Stewart (D.C. United)

FORWARDS (4): Edson Buddle (Columbus Crew), Landon Donovan (San Jose Earthquakes), Jovan Kirovski (Birmingham City), Brian McBride (Columbus Crew).