GRANMA • Signing in Miraflores Palace in the presence of President Hugo Chávez

CARACAS.— Cuba and Venezuela today signed an agreement to avoid double taxation and fiscal fraud, alongside eight trade agreements within the framework of the Comprehensive Cooperation Agreement existing between the two countries, Prensa Latina reports.

The ceremony took place at the Miraflores Presidential Palace in the presence of Hugo Chávez, president;José Vicente Rangel, vice president; the Council of Ministers and heads of autonomous institutions; and Julio Montes, Venezuelan ambassador in Cuba.

The Cuban side was represented by Marta Lomas, minister for foreign investment and economic cooperation; specialists from that agency; Germán Sánchez Otero, the Cuban ambassador to Venezuela; and other officials from the Cuban diplomatic mission.

The agreement on double taxation is applied in Cuba as a tax on profits, personal income, ownership of possession of goods, and in Venezuela as income tax and business assets.

The contracts signed cover tourism, technical advice in that sector and personnel training for expansion in that industry, and plans for the environmental management of coastal areas within this sector.

In the agricultural sector, Cubans and Venezuelans are to continue works on the Ezequiel Zamora Sugarcane Agribusiness being developed in the state of Barinas, as well as technical assistance in the Pío Tamayo sugar mill for cultivation this year.

Another of the documents signed refers to the training of 20 Venezuelan science and technology researchers and the purchase by Caracas of Cuban medical equipment for the early detection of hearing problems in children.

Cuba is to lend technical assistance for the construction of 1,400 low-cost, prefabricated homes, the first group to be started in the state of Nueva Esparta; as well as technical-cultural services from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports.

Minister Lomas noted that these contracts complete the cooperation agreement for this year and initiate labors to incorporate further activities in 2004.

She emphasized gains in the field of health, both in terms of medical supplies to Venezuela and the work of the 268 Cuban doctors lending their services in that nation, who are also now working alongside their Venezuelan counterparts in the capital’s barrios.

She recalled that more than 3,000 Venezuelan patients have been treated without charge in Havana, with 1,400 mainly orthopedic, cardiovascular and ophthalmic operations.

The Cuban minister also praised the labors of the more than 760 sports trainers in 20 Venezuelan states and the work of specialists in the sugarcane and agricultural industries.

Finally Marta Lomas referred to the presence in Cuba of more than 700 Venezuelan students on medical courses or being trained as sports technicians and social workers. “We are at the point of consolidating this integrationist program, which is our commitment to Simón Bolívar, José Martí, Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez,” she concluded

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In about a month Margarita Vivas hopes to make a long-awaited trip to her native Venezuela, a trip she had planned last year but which she later canceled.

As things stand, it's getting harder for the Orlando woman to plan a trip to the South American country that would avoid the country's political and economic turmoil. That's because in Venezuela political and civil unrest have become the order of the day.

Vivas, worried about her ailing 78-year-old mother, says she's going anyway because she can't wait any longer to see her.

"My mom has had a stroke and she's in a wheelchair," Vivas said.

She would have gone to Venezuela last year but, to put it mildly, 2002 wasn't a very good year for the country.

In April 2002 there was the on-again, off-again coup against President Hugo Chávez.

Since then, it seems Venezuela has experienced civil demonstrations on a weekly basis, standoffs between pro- and anti-Chávez forces, massive strikes, shootings, gasoline shortages (in an oil-rich country, no less) and a two-digit recession.

Venezuela's shock waves have been felt even in Central Florida. First, Venezuelans are among the fastest-growing Hispanic groups in the region, and will remain so as long as they seek to escape Chávez.

In addition, Venezuela's political mayhem caused Vivas to close down the Venezuelan Trade Office in Orlando, which she used to head. The office was located on the ninth floor of City Hall, where the Office of the Government of Puerto Rico and Casa de Mexico also are based.

During Mayor Glenda Hood's tenure, the doors of City Hall were opened wide to such diverse groups, often on very favorable terms. For instance, the Venezuelan Trade Office paid just $200 a month in rent, according to Vivas. The other groups also pay nominal amounts for their space.

When Chávez returned to power (48 hours after the coup attempt) and consolidated his hold over Venezuela, it seemed the folks in City Hall began to get a little nervous. Far be it for the name of Glenda Hood to be linked with that of Hugo Chávez in any way. The Venezuelan Trade Office had to go. Vivas said the office wasn't part of Chávez's government, but that may be too fine a distinction. The office received funding from the Venezuelan government.

"This is a disaster," Vivas said of Chávez's government. "People were associating us with Chávez."

Disaster or not, Vivas said she will head to Venezuela in June, and she is taking her American-born daughter with her.

Vivas' mother pleads with her not to come, but she will have none of it.

If there are gasoline shortages, Vivas said she'll figure out a way to get to her hometown, which is four hours from the capital of Caracas.

If trouble breaks out while she is there, her daughter is her ace card, Vivas said.

"My daughter is an American citizen, and we can go to the American embassy to get protection," she said.

Or, if things get really bad -- Venezuela is rocking and rolling toward a constitutional referendum in August -- Vivas may be forced to heed her mother's advice and postpone her trip, yet again.

María Padilla can be reached at mpadilla@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5162.

By DON MELVIN The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

LONDON -- The world must now confront the many threats it faces from the Middle East to Asia to the Americas with a system of international relationships that has been gravely damaged by the crisis in Iraq, according to a respected London-based policy group that published its annual survey of world affairs Tuesday.

A number of institutions, including the United Nations and the European Union, "have been left badly wounded by the course and nature of the Iraq crisis," said John Chipman, director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, which produced the 354-page report.

The relationship between the United States and much of Europe, Chipman added, is "urgently in need of some repair."

And despite the military victory, the success of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq has yet to be determined, he said. The perception of the operation's legitimacy may hinge largely on whether the political reconstruction of Iraq is successful and whether the operation appears to have helped the campaign against terrorism, he said.

The report blames both the United States and Europe for the breakdown of the trans-Atlantic working relationship. The United States became obsessed with substance -- regime change and disarmament -- at the expense of process, or diplomacy, the report contends. Major European powers became obsessed with process at the expense of substance, it says.

The report singles out Secretary of State Colin Powell for criticism regarding the failed U.S. effort to build a serious international coalition.

"Before the first Gulf War, then-Secretary of State James Baker engaged in near-constant diplomacy -- making 39 visits in five major overseas missions to sign up allies and make the case for war," the report said. "During the run-up to war in February and March 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell made only a few short foreign trips, none to key capitals in Europe or the Middle East."

Before the war, media reports suggested an internal debate raged inside the Bush administration over how vigorously to pursue diplomacy, pitting Powell against hawks like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who had little patience for negotiation. Administration officials at the time denied there was a disagreement on the strategy.

The report and its authors also had these comments on key issues faced by various regions of the world:

• Stability in Afghanistan is vitally important if the terrorist threat from remnants of al-Qaida now based in Pakistan is to be contained. • The recently unveiled "road map" to Middle East peace could succeed with intensive diplomatic efforts. However, Chipman said, "with the U.S. electoral season beginning in earnest by the late autumn of this year, the window for that diplomacy is narrow." • A solution to the North Korean nuclear threat will be very hard to achieve, and the collapse of diplomatic efforts could make the situation even more dangerous. • Continuing disorder in countries in South America's northern Andes, particularly Colombia and Venezuela, will pose challenges for the Bush administration. • Africa is an unexpected bright spot. "Sub-Saharan Africa undoubtedly took a turn for the better in 2002," the report says, pointing to progress toward achieving or maintaining peace in Congo, Sierra Leone, Angola, Sudan and Burundi.

Atlanta journal Constitution

Atlanta TV pioneer Yvonne Febres-Cordero de Wright, who began the Spanish language program "Viva Nuestra Amistad" ("Long Live Our Friendship") in 1968, is a 2003 recipient of the Governor's Award in the Humanities, given by the Georgia Humanities Council. The language and culture program ran until the mid-1970s and was used in schools to teach Spanish.

De Wright also hosted "Latin Atlanta," from 1977 to 1997. The community affairs program was on WAGA-TV and was rebroadcast on Atlanta Public Broadcasting.

"Latin Atlanta," which was in Spanish, oriented newcomers with "information about what was going on in the community," said de Wright, a native of Caracas, Venezuela. "It helped integrate the community with information about health, taxes, jobs and immigration."

De Wright is among eight individuals and three organizations honored Monday during a lunch ceremony at the Old Georgia Railroad Freight Depot in Atlanta.

The humanities council is an independent nonprofit organization. It supports educational activities that help Georgians learn about their heritage. For a list of the other recipients, go to www.georgiahumanities.org.

Poll: Immigrants anti-war

A multilingual poll of 1,000 immigrants found that they tended to be less supportive of the war in Iraq than the U.S. population as a whole and more concerned about negative repercussions around the world.

About 61 percent of Asians, 50 percent of Latinos and 44 percent of Middle Eastern immigrants supported the war, the poll said.

The poll, conducted by New California Media, turned up variations by nationality that underscore the danger of broad categories such as "Asian" or "Middle Eastern." Among Asians, for example, 85 percent of Vietnamese-Americans and 75 percent of Filipino-Americans supported the war, compared with 40 percent of Chinese-Americans and 48 percent of Indian-Americans. Results are online: news.ncmonline.com/news.

Contributing: Yolanda Rodríguez and Shelia M. Poole

Nature14 May 2003 TOM CLARKE

A new technique that can estimate local weather patterns 50 years from now could help poorer countries to prepare for shifts in agricultural productivity.

"We hope to get to the point where, at the household level, we can decide which crops and livestock are most suitable for future climatic conditions," says economist Phillip Thornton of the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi, Kenya.

Previous studies estimated the impacts of climate change on continents or countries, rather than at finer scales. "We will need to have these kinds of analysis for the future," agrees land-use expert Mahendra Shah of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria.

With colleague Peter Jones at the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture in Cali, Colombia, Thornton has devised a statistical tool called a synthetic weather simulator. The duo link this to a standard model that forecasts global climate change1.

Fed with ten years' worth of rainfall data from thousands of weather stations in Africa and South America, the simulator predicts the probability of future rainfall within 18-kilometre squares throughout the continents. "It won't tell you whether it's going to rain or not, but it will tell you what should be characteristic weather for that site," says Thornton.

The researchers link this model to another that predicts how well maize, a developing world staple, grows depending on sunlight, temperature, rainfall and soil type.

The system predicts a 10% average decrease in maize production by 2055, which could, in theory, be compensated for by improved crop varieties and farming technologies.

More alarmingly, the study suggests that some areas that are now producing tonnes of maize might not produce any 50 years from now. "It's the variability that's going to have the impact," says Thornton. "Some places will be absolutely devastated."

Some areas of the Ethiopian highlands, for example, could have bumper maize crops by 2055 whereas others next door, which are now very productive, could yield next to nothing. Venezuela may have to shift its maize production from the north to the southwest of the country, which does not currently support the crop.

It's very early days for trying to predict future weather patterns from one valley to the next, stress climate researchers. There are five leading Global Climate Models (GCMs) - none perfect, all different. This latest study uses just one. "The work would really need to be repeated using other GCMs to remove uncertainty," says climate modeller Geoff Jenkins at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Bracknell, UK.

Better techniques for integrating local weather predictions with GCMs will also be needed, admits Thornton. "But we are getting to the stage when we can really zoom in," he says. The next iteration of their system should be accurate to a 10-km-square scale, he reckons.

Statistics aside, says Shah, the situation on the ground is always more complex. Maize is grown twice a year in many parts of Africa and is often planted beside other crops. "The reality is multiple cropping," he says. The impacts of climate change on those crop yields will be even harder to predict.

References

1. Jones, P. G. & Thornton, P. K.The potential impacts of climate change on maize production in Africa and Latin America in 2055. Global Environmental Change, 13, 51 - 59, (2003). |Article|

© Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2003

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