<a href=www.dailypeloton.com>dailypeloton.comBy Staff Date: 05/08/03 By Jakob Duma

At a present time when names like Filippo Pozatto, Yaroslav Popovych, and Tom Boonen, are well on the way to start the new domination of the "1980´s generation" on the modern international cycle scene all around Europe, another young prodigy is about to start letting loose some of his enormous potential with only one target in mind, to make a name of himself and conquer the international world of cycling. He is truly already well on his way.

The name is Rujano, Jose Rujano a 21 year old young man, from the relative unknown (from a cycling point of view, anyway) Latin American country of Venezuela, a land with a population around 24 milion and currently the fastest growing country in all of South America. Born on the 18th of February 1982, in the small town of Santa Cruz de Mora (in the Province of Mérida), Rujano was coached and got a lot of help from his father who was himself a former cyclist early on in his career, but he also however received a lot of help and advice from former Venezuelan professional and Carrera and ZG-Mobili rider Leonardo Sierra, who to this date is the only Venezuelan to win a stage in a Grand Tour -  stage 16 to Aprica in 1990´s Giro d'Italia, and who is a former neighbour of J. Rujano´s back in the days in Santa Cruz de Mora.

Before the start of 2003, Jose Rujano signed with the Colombian/Italian equipment Colombia-Selle Italia,  directed by Gianni Savio who actually is also a former sports director of Leonardo Sierra at ZG-Mobili. He has already impressed highly at Tour de Langkawi where he finished 18th on the final GC, but also at Giro Della Liguria, where he showed his potential by finishing 7th in the 10,2km mountain time trail, and receiving a lot of praise from team director Gianni Savio.

Caracas, May 8 (<a href=quote.bloomberg.com>Bloomberg) -- CA Nacional Telefonos de Venezuela, the country's largest telephone company, said its first- quarter net income dropped 74 percent as a nationwide strike and recession slashed revenue.

Income totaled 10.5 billion bolivars ($7 million), or 94 bolivars an American depositary receipt, compared with year-ago profit of 39.8 billion bolivars, or 354 bolivars an ADR.

Nacional Telefonos said revenue from operations fell 10.4 percent to 648.2 billion bolivars from 723.4 billion bolivars.

The company, which is 28.5 percent-owned by Verizon Communications Inc., said total financial debt fell 14 percent to 393.1 billion bolivars. The company made debt payments of 66.5 billion bolivars during the quarter.

Data revenue rose 45 percent, while Internet revenue rose 20 percent. Wireless subscribers fell 0.8 percent during the quarter. Last Updated: May 8, 2003 08:15 EDT

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Thursday, May 08, 2003 By: David Coleman

According to local media reports, the Exxon Mobil Corporation says it may go ahead with a $2 billion plastics joint venture with Venezuelan state petrochemical company, Pequiven. Exxon Mobil Venezuelan executive Mark Ward is quoted as saying that the company wants to resume talks on an agreement which has been under study for the last seven years.

"We are re-establishing contact with the new Pequiven leadership and we are waiting for Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) and the Energy & Mines (MEM) Ministry to sit down and negotiate.''

The proposed plastics JV is said to be a key part of Venezuela's plans to raise petrochemical output and to reduce dependence on crude oil exports ... Pequiven and Exxon Mobil will each have a 49% stake in the project with the remaining 2% reserved for financiers.

According to an already released plan, the new plant could be located at the Jose petrochemical complex due west of Puerto La Cruz and would use natural gas from eastern oil fields as feedstock, or raw material. It would be centered around a 1 million metric tonnes a year ethylene cracker unit and would convert the resulting ethylene into 750,000 metric tonnes of polyethylenes and 420,000 metric tons of ethylene glycols.

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Thursday, May 08, 2003 By: David Coleman

The Group of Friends of Venezuela created last January from Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Portugal, Spain and the United States to attempt to help the Organization of American States (OAS) arrive at a solution to Venezuela's political crisis has brokered an agreement only to end political violence and verbal insults from both sides of the political divide.

The Chavez Frias government has put OAS Secretary General Cesar Gaviria in something of an embarrassing situation by appearing to back out of an April 11 deal for a revocatory referendum on the Presidency with government negotiators saying that opposition delegates don't represent all sectors opposing Chavez and suggesting that OAS-mediated talks should more properly be replaced by democratic debate in Venezuela's own National Assembly (AN).

Legislators say parliament is better equipped for the assignment since they task since its representatives were democratically elected by the Venezuelan people, while OAS delegates are political party appointees.

Meanwhile, Interior & Justice (MIJ) Minister, General Lucas Rincon has described opposition leaders as being "brain-damaged'' since they have "excessive expectations on fighting crime."  He added that exiled CTV union leader  Carlos Ortega is "not well in the head'' while the President consistently speaks of the opposition as fascists, terrorists and coup-plotters after a 2-month labor/employer stoppage which crippled the nation's oil production and cost $6 billion. Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel has blamed the opposition saying they're "obsessed with necrophilia" latching onto violent deaths in the criminal underworld as a pretext to blame the government as "perpetrators of evil."

President Hugo Chavez Frias says that "a reckless opposition" is more interested in anti-government hatred and his unconstitutional ouster than helping any efforts to govern the country under its new-found participative democracy ... his most rabid opponents vociferously accuse him of mismanaging the economy, dividing the country along class lines and increasing authoritarianism.

May 8, 2003

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- For the first time, President Alvaro Uribe on Wednesday ordered a leftist Colombian rebel extradited to the United States. Nelson Vargas Rueda faces murder charges in the 1999 slaying of three American activists.

Vargas is one of six members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, indicted in April 2002 in federal court in Washington for the murders of Terence Freitas, 24, of Los Angeles, Ingrid Washinawatok, 41, of New York City and Lahe'ena'e Gay, 39, of Pahoa, Hawaii. Washinawatok was a Menominee Indian originally from Wisconsin.

They were in Colombia to help set up a school system for the 5,000-member U'wa Indian tribe.

FARC rebels kidnapped the three in February 1999 in northeastern Colombia, the indictment says. Days later, the kidnappers shot the victims. Their bullet-riddled bodies were found across the border in Venezuela.

Facing international outrage, the FARC admitted its fighters killed the Americans. They blamed a rogue lower-level commander and said he would be punished internally.

The murders prompted the United States to suspend all contact with the FARC, a leftist rebel group that has been fighting a series of elected governments in this South American nation for 38 years.

The United States considers the FARC an international terrorist organization and has provided Colombia with millions of dollars, mostly military aid, to fight the organization and other rebel groups. The State Department considers most of the country unsafe for Americans.