By Lisa J. Adams, Boston.com-Associated Press, 4/14/2003 18:09

MEXICO CITY (AP) Mexican officials promised Monday to investigate a report that the personal data of Mexican voters and drivers was being sold to the U.S. government, without Mexicans' knowledge or permission.

Nicaragua's president also called for an investigation of the sale of citizens' identity files to a suburban Atlanta company, ChoicePoint Inc., which provides it to U.S. government agencies as reported by The Associated Press. The story made headlines in the region on Sunday.

''This is a particularly grave action, to sell confidential information and what's even more grave is that it has been sold to a foreign government,'' said Rep. Ricardo Moreno Bastida, a Mexican congressional liaison to the Federal Electoral Institute, or IFE, which oversees voter records.

Alberto Alonso, executive director of the IFE's Federal Voter Registry, said that if the report proves true the agency would ask the attorney general to investigate.

The AP had reported that the driving records of 6 million Mexico City residents and the country's entire voter registry 65 million people were sold to U.S. government agencies, allowing officials to track Mexicans entering and living in the United States.

The Nicaraguan president, Enrique Bolanos, said he ordered the Interior Ministry to investigate ''if a crime is being committed, and if so, to stop it.'' He said anyone found to have sold the data could be subject to severe penalties.

The Nicaraguan and Mexican databases were just a portion of digital dossiers that ChoicePoint told the AP it has collected on hundreds of millions of residents of 10 Latin American countries and sold to the U.S. government in the past 18 months.

ChoicePoint maintains it bought the data legally, under contracts with subcontractors who certified they followed privacy laws. The company will cooperate with any investigations by Mexico or other Latin governments, said James Lee, ChoicePoint's chief marketing officer.

The company also buys identity files from subcontractors in Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. It also sells some data from Brazil and Argentina. It refuses to name the sellers or say where those parties obtained the data.

U.S. officials say the data from Mexico and elsewhere could help law enforcers and the travel industry identify potential terrorists, or simply unmask fake identity documents. Immigrant advocates in the United States have said the files could make entering the United States more difficult for Latin Americans.

In Mexico, a similar accusation that private voter information was being sold to foreign governments arose in 1998, but an investigation was inconclusive, Alonso of the voter registry said.

Both federal and Mexico City laws prohibit public distribution of personal data contained on voter rolls and driver registration lists, noted Rep. Ranulfo Marquez, a congressional liaison to the IFE.

Marquez called for an investigation and a formal diplomatic protest with the United States. He said authorities of all of the Latin American countries involved should launch an international investigations.

Marquez said he suspected the United States leaked the information as ''part of a diplomatic strategy'' to pressure Mexico at a time when relations have been strained by Mexico's refusal to back the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, he said.

Moreno noted that later this week, Mexico will be watched when it votes on an annual U.N. resolution censuring the government of Cuban President Fidel Castro for its oppression of political movements.

In past years, Mexico, a longtime ally of Cuba, has abstained from the vote. But last year, the pro-U.S. administration of President Vicente Fox supported the resolution.

''This information (on personal data) has been made public precisely at a time when relations are difficult and when the vote on Cuba is approaching,'' Moreno said.

AP Technology Writer Jim Krane in New York contributed to this report.

Times Online April 15, 2003 People by Andrew Pierce

Euro loyalist cashes in his devalued single currency

Peter Mandelson may think that the Prime Minister will call a referendum on the single currency in the next 12 months, as he suggested in a weekend radio interview. But the pro-euro lobby clearly does not share the former Cabinet minister’s view.

With impeccable timing, Andy Mayer, a former secretary of the Pro-euro Conservative Party, has decided to kill off the Euro Information Network, which services MPs, MEPs and grassroots activists.

While Britain in Europe, the Blairite single currency campaign, continues to believe that there is hope of a referendum, Mayer, a long-standing critic of BiE, clearly does not.

In a valedictory message to his supporters, Mayer, who omitted to tell the now- disbanded Pro-euro Conservatives that he was still a member of the Liberal Democrats when he took up the post in 1999, wrote: “It was . . . my intention not to continue the service after it seemed implausible there would be a referendum in the near future or after a referendum was won.”

For Mayer, a leading Liberal Democrat activist who is a strong supporter of Charles Kennedy, last week’s Budget was the final straw.

“The Budget seems to have delivered a negative assessment despite the absence of the conclusion of the five tests,” he said, “and I see little point in dragging out the service for another month or two on that basis.”

The Euro Information Net- work attracted thousands of subscribers, including, according to a proud Mayer, the Estonian European Community press office.

“Recently, however, the service has suffered from new commitments that make it difficult to support on a regular daily basis,” he added.

“It is now unsustainable. There is a chance the main service may be resurrected in the future should circumstances change.”

Parker pens a lonely path as an author

THE creative genius of Sir Alan Parker, who directed The Commitments and the Oscar-nominated Mississippi Burning, has never been in doubt. But he found writing a novel, which he started during last year’s Hollywood studios strike, much more difficult.

“I’ve made 14 films but boy, is it hard writing a novel,” he said. “Unlike a film, every image, every fear, tear, doubt, glance and touch is there in the simplest but most difficult of digital effects: words.”

His main problem while writing A Sucker’s Kiss, a pickpocket’s odyssey through early 20th-century America, was the solitary life “without the usual 70 crew members”.

He can make up for that if the book becomes a film.

Pigs might swim, says the Vatican

HERE is one problem that the Pope’s spin-doctors will not have anticipated. The Vatican has come under fire for driving towards extinction a species of giant guinea pig, the capybara, a resident of Venezuela.

The country’s MPs were told that the beast’s popularity at the dinner table during Lent stemmed from a 400-year-old ruling from Rome that the 120lb rodent should be classified as a fish rather than meat. Spanish missionaries told the then Pope that there was precious little other protein-rich food for local Catholics to eat. Now 20,000 a year are hunted for their meat. The Vatican is being urged to do a U-turn.

• On the subject of animals. . . Fresh from the success of saving Marjon, the one-eyed lion in Kabul Zoo after the Afghan campaign, the Labour MP Tony Banks has taken up a new cause.

The former minister has tabled Commons questions to Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, urging him to look out for the animals in Baghdad Zoo. Not that there appear to be many to save.

The Bradt Travel Guide to Iraq says: “Apart from some bird cages, and three lions donated by Saddam’s son, Uday, there are only dogs in cages, family pets sold by people who could not afford to keep them any more.”

PS

• Mario Testino, the photographer who shot those extraordinary pictures of Diana, Princess of Wales, shortly before she died, has a new cultural icon. Testino, speaking at Vogue’s spring party at the palatial Il Bottaccio in Grosvenor Square, said: “After Diana the most beautiful woman on Earth to photograph has to be Kate Moss.” Judge for yourself.

• Chris Tarrant, host of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? has shown he has style. He advised Sir Paul McCartney and his wife, Heather Mills, against appearing on the celebrity version of the show because he thought that they would be “terrible”.

• Plenty of surreal suggestions for what to do with 80 pairs of false nails that came in the post. They included a mosaic entitled Nail Me, to be exhibited at Tate Modern, to “use the false nails to put up false fences”. Another proposal was to “scrape them across 80 blackboards”. Lorelly Wilson wins them for her idea of using them as clues in a forensic science workshop she runs for children.

E-mail: people@thetimes.co.uk

<a href=reuters.com>Reuters Mon April 14, 2003 05:41 PM ET By Hugh Bronstein

NEW YORK, April 14 (Reuters) - Emerging market debt prices rose on Monday as a rally in U.S. stocks helped investors feel comfortable buying riskier high-yielding sovereign bonds.

With the war in Iraq apparently winding down and investors feeling less frightened about putting money to work in global markets, emerging debt rose 0.68 percent in daily returns, adding to a 9.5 percent uptick since Jan. 1.

"The credits that have a little extra yield to offer, such as Brazil and Venezuela, outperformed today while the market as a whole followed U.S. equities higher," said Christian Stracke, lead emerging markets analyst at CreditSights, a Wall Street research firm.

Benchmark Brazil C bonds BRAZILC=RR rose 1-5/8 to bid 84-7/8 while Venezuela DCB bonds VENDCB=RR gained 1-1/4 to bid 73-1/4.

"It's a continuation of the trend we've been seeing, daily rallies and the market making new highs," said Paul Masco, head of emerging market trading at Salomon Smith Barney.

"There is cash out here and expectations that there is more cash coming," Masco added.

While the Dow Jones industrial average jumped 148 points, fueled by solid earnings by big financial companies, emerging market bond spreads tightened by 18 basis points to 611 over U.S. Treasuries, according to JP Morgan's Emerging Markets Bond Index Plus.

Brazil's portion of the market tightened 48 basis points to 880 while Venezuela's tightened 46 basis points to 1,279.

Tighter spreads reflect the perception of decreased risk as measured against safe-haven U.S. Treasury bonds.

In Brazil, the market is focused on expectations that new President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will introduce social security and other reforms seen by Wall Street as necessary for the country to balance its mountainous debt load.

The Venezuelan economy will shrink by about 8.9 percent this year, in line with last year's contraction, while inflation will rise 35 percent, the government said on Monday, days after the International Monetary Fund issued more dire predictions.

Following a two-month national strike that crippled the country's key oil sector in December and January, the IMF last week forecast a gross domestic product contraction of 17 percent, with an inflation spike of 40 percent.

But since then the country has dramatically stepped up oil production, Venezuelan Finance Minister Tobias Nobrega said in an interview with Reuters during a visit to New York.

Inflation, Nobrega added, will be kept in check in part by the expected shrinkage in GDP.

Venezuela's annualized inflation hit 34.1 percent in March. Inflation closed 2002 at 31.2 percent, the highest level in five years and more than double the 12.3 percent recorded in 2001.

VENEZUELA'S FRACTIOUS POLITICS

Opponents of Chavez, who organized the strike, accuse him of trying to establish a Cuban-styled socialist state.

Despite the political turmoil, Stracke recommends investors take an overweight position in Venezuelan debt.

"The bonds have held up fine, even though they are lagging Brazil," Stracke said.

"I think you should stay overweight but it will take some time to be convinced that there is not another political collapse around the corner," Stracke said. "Meanwhile, the government has announced expenditure cuts that will ensure that the budget deficit is manageable."

By Larry Birns and Manuel Rueda <a href=www.upi.com>UPI Outside View Commentary From the International Desk Published 4/14/2003 5:38 PM

WASHINGTON, April 14 (UPI) -- A year ago, Venezuela's democracy narrowly survived a major test as rightist sectors of the middle-class-led opposition joined with several ranking military officers to briefly overthrow President Hugo Chavez, taking advantage of an ongoing popular protest that was peacefully calling upon him to resign.

Prior to last April's failed coup, Venezuela's opposition has had a list of both valid grievances and skeptical critiques on Chavez's commitment to democracy. These included a set of decrees issued by Chavez in November 2001 that critics maintained had undermined local authorities as well as the National Assembly's jurisdiction over projects small and large. These decrees allowed the president to appoint his political allies to senior posts at the national oil company, PDVSA, that could compromise that venerable institution's meritocracy.

At the time of the attempted coup, Chavez's narrow survival was mainly due to his close ties to certain factions of the military. Business federation head Pedro Carmona comedically declared himself the country's new leader. But he was unable to secure support from key senior officers and enlisted personnel at the air force base at Maracay and at other garrison sites in the interior, which declared that they would not recognize his rump government.

But ultimately, it was Venezuelans' high regard for non-violent solutions that allowed Chavez to return. Broad participation in the repeated protest marches that made up the opposition's core strategy preceding the coup indicated Chavez's rule had lost much of its popular support. But Carmona did not have sufficient elite backing or support of the poor to neutralize pro-Chavez generals in the country's interior.

This was the case even though Chavez was repeatedly being assailed by the media, particularly the country's four major television stations.

Since then, the opposition has continued to seek to bring down Chavez, most notably by the now-ended two-month general strike that paralyzed the government's main source of income, the national oil industry.

Venezuela's privately owned media once again joined the effort by churning out one-sided anti-Chavez coverage.

Once again, the opposition was inspired by a valid list of complaints against Chavez's commitment to plebiscitary democracy and its own interpretation of the rule of law. In recent months, it has mobilized around such issues as the inflammatory militarization of the Caracas metropolitan police, edicts that could restrict freedom of speech and the government's allegedly lax stance against Colombian rebels building staging sites on Venezuelan territory.

The opposition has provided a distinct service to the nation in reminding the government that democratic legitimacy goes much further than respecting electoral results. But, with the decline in the effectiveness of the now-disbanded general strike, even the most anti-government sector must realize that lasting changes in Venezuelan society should come about through an electoral solution and not by destroying the national economy.

The anti-Chavez movement has been rendered less effective because an abiding hatred for Chavez appears to be its only unifying credo. As a result, schisms are breaking out as various likely opposition presidential candidates jockey for the race, if a proposed referendum on Chavez's rule in August actually materializes.

The tough task of establishing a referendum date on Chavez's recall still lies ahead. Yet it should be remembered: none of the admittedly frustrating negotiations on mending Venezuela's democratic procedures could have been possible if the Bush administration had been successful in backing Carmona's White House-approved script to oust a constitutionally elected president, which would have all but guaranteed bloody class-warfare.

In that scenario, Venezuela's democracy would have been most likely engulfed in political violence, akin to that being witnessed in neighboring Colombia.

No one can deny that Venezuela's democracy still requires a fibrillater. But the slow rehabilitation of the country's democratic institutions and the population's almost visceral respect for non-violent solutions to political differences have at least given it an opportunity to confirm its heritage and move on. This is a lesson that hopefully Washington will take to heart.

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-- Larry Birns is director of the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs, an independent, non-profit, tax-exempt research and information organization. Manuel Rueda is a research associate at COHA. They can be contacted at: coha@coha.org.

-- Outside View commentaries are written for UPI by outside writers on subjects of public interest.

<a href=sportsnetwork.com>(Courtesy of International League)

Dublin, OH (Sports Network) - The International League announced today that Richmond catcher Johnny Estrada and Rochester pitcher Carlos Pulido have been named the League’s first Batter and Pitcher-of-the-Week for the 2003 season. These awards cover the first eleven days of the season, the period from April 3-13.

While much of the International League dealt with rain, snow, and cold temperatures during opening week, Richmond’s JOHNNY ESTRADA didn’t let the weather affect him, batting .500 with 14 RBI in the Braves’ first nine games.

On Opening Day in Charlotte, the 26-year-old had a two-run homer in the Braves’ 7-6 loss. The next night, Estrada went 2-3, walked, and scored a run in a 7-4 loss to the Knights. The native of Hayward, CA walked in a pinch-hitting appearance on Saturday (a 3-2 defeat), before returning to the line-up on Sunday. In Richmond’s 11-10 victory, Estrada had three RBI on two singles. The club traveled to Durham on Monday with the switch-hitter driving home both Richmond runs in a 5-2 loss to the defending Governors’ Cup Champions. The Braves fell to 1-5 with an 8-4 loss to the Bulls on Tuesday as Estrada had a hand in all the Richmond runs with a two-run double and a two-run homer. Rain washed out the R-Braves’ games against Toledo on Wednesday and Thursday, but the club returned to the field to play Columbus on Friday. In a 6-2 win over the Clippers, Estrada went 3-4 with a double and an RBI. Saturday, in an 8-2 loss, Johnny again drove in both Richmond runs with a single and a double. As the designated hitter yesterday, he went 2-3 with a double, extending his hitting streak to eight games and improving his average to .500 (15-30 on the season). In addition to batting average, Estrada leads all IL batters in hits and RBI, is tied for first in doubles and extra-base hits, is second in on-base percentage and slugging percentage, and is tied for second with a pair of home runs.

Estrada is currently in his first season in the Atlanta organization, having been acquired from Philadelphia for pitcher Kevin Millwood last December. The Salisbury, NC resident spent much of last season in the International League with Scranton/WB, earning post-season All-Star honors after batting .279 with 11 HR and 67 RBI (a career-high). He hit .118 for the Phillies in September. Estrada got off to a fast start with the Red Barons in 2001, hitting at a .290 clip through the first 32 games, before being promoted to Philadelphia for the remainder of the season to replace injured All-Star catcher Mike Lieberthal.

Left-hander CARLOS PULIDO returned to affiliated baseball for the first time since 1998 to open the 2003 season and flourished in his first two starts, going 2-0 for the Rochester Red Wings. Inclement weather limited the Red Wings to just one game in the first six days of the season forcing Pulido to make his first start in the second game of last Wednesday’s double-header in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. The native of Caracas, Venezuela allowed just one hit with six strikeouts in five scoreless innings as Rochester won its first game of the young season, 2-1 over the Red Barons. The win was historic for the Rochester franchise as it marked the inaugural victory for the club as a Minnesota affiliate. The 31-year-old returned to the mound in the first game of yesterday’s double-header in Pawtucket, allowing an unearned run in five innings. Pulido fanned five for his second victory. Carlos is one of four pitchers (minimum six IP) tied for the League lead with a 0.00 ERA and is one of eleven IL pitchers who have started the season 2-0.

Pulido was out of baseball during the 2000 & 2001 seasons and returned to action in 2002 with Oaxaca of the Mexican League (13-7, 3.57 ERA). He last pitched in the affiliated minor leagues in 1998, making three relief appearances for Norfolk. Pulido, who also pitched in the Montreal and Chicago Cubs’ organizations, spent the entire 1994 season in the Major Leagues with Minnesota going 3-7 with a 5.98 ERA in 19 games.