<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Friday, May 16, 2003 By: David Coleman

Three gold mine workers have been killed and six seriously injured after a mine shaft collapse in the Cuasia sector of El Choco 10 in El Callao, southeastern Bolivar State.  Another 40 workers managed to get out safely to alert emergency crews.

El Callao Mayor Coromoto Lugo was quickly on the scene to direct operations as emergency workers tore out tonnes of earth and rock to uncover the dead and injured.  Three bodies were transferred to the El Callao morgue while six injured were ferried to the German Roscio hospital's emergency room.  It is believed there are two miners still missing and rescue crews have been working feverishly to reach any survivors.

Renato Anibal Cedeno (43) was among the first to be rescued but he died only hours later in hospital from his injuries. Jean Efren Basanta (32) had only worked at the mine for three months and leaves a wife and four children. Jesus Grillet (20) from Santa Maria de Upata was transferred directly to the El Callao morgue.

Civil Defense director Jose Garcia says only 20 miners were directly involved in the collapse but that authorities had decided to evacuate the mine pending a full investigation into what happened.

At the German Roscio hospital in El Callao Rolando Febres (37) from Mexico de El Peru is in intensive care with serious facial injuries and a fractured spinal column; Jose Herrera Basanta (31) from Santa Maria de Upata is also in intensive care ... it had been his first day at the mine after more than a year unemployed; Lisandro Pinilla (45) from Remintong El Callao is also in the ICU with Miguel Ramirez (36) from San Felix.

Miners Angel Sanchez (23) and Armando Palma (40) have been flown to Ciudad Guayana for specialist medical care as a result of the serious injuries they received in the mine collapse.  Emergency room doctor Jose Garcia says the hospital was put on a state of alert at 4 in the morning after a call from Civil Defense organizer Reinaldo Pasarela who immediately informed the State Governor to authorize a rescue helicopter and extra paramedics and crews.

An initial survey shows that the collapse may have been caused by heavy rains in the area, causing a gallery ceiling to collapse on support structure.  Working conditions, especially for small-scale miners, are such that safety regulations are often set aside as being prohibitively expensive and authorities are waging an endless battle to contain illegal mining operations centered on traditional gold mining zones in El Callao, Sifontes, Raul Leoni, El Manteco, Sucre and Cedeno.

smh.com.au May 17 2003

The "mail" in blackmail (at various times also spelt maill, male) is an old Scots word for rent. This was usually paid in what was often called white money, silver coins. It comes from Old Norse "mal", meaning an agreement, later a contract, and then the payment specified by the contract.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, chieftains in the Scottish Highlands and along the border between Scotland and England ran protection rackets in which they threatened farmers with pillage and worse if they didn't pay up. This amounted to an informal tax or extra rent and the farmers, with twisted humour, thought of it as the opposite of the legitimate white money, or white mail, that they paid. Black has for many centuries been associated with the dark side of human activities, hence blackmail. The term was extended in the 19th century to other ways of extorting money with menaces, and in particular to the threat of exposing a person's secrets.

Ian Blair Hamilton, Byron Bay

Why have the Dutch produced so many famous painters but hardly any composers or writers?

When Holland had its "Golden Age" in the 17th century, it was the burghers, and in particular the merchants, who amassed huge fortunes. While the wealthy aristocracy in other European countries (then a republic, Holland had no royal house) entertained their friends with their own court orchestra, the Dutch tried to impress their friends with works by the great masters (like Rembrandt) in their grand canal houses. Catholic churches (also the sponsors of music) were closed due to the Reformation, and the Dutch Reformed Church frowned upon large orchestras in churches. Anne Frank is probably the most famous Dutch writer, with more translations in other languages than any other book, apart from the Bible.

Johan de Ruiter, Surry Hills

I have noticed some Asian tourists giving the V-sign when having their photos taken. Why do they do this?

If you watch Japanese cartoons, you'll notice that the main characters tend to pose with a V-sign after they have accomplished their "missions". So V is more likely to stand for victory (or in this case, "I have made it here") rather than a sign of peace.

Adrian Lee, St Ives

It's predominantly Japanese tourists who display this for a photo. It symbolises victory. It's also a message of good fun or a good time. Generally, the former interpretation is for sporting team photos and the latter for holiday pix. I've observed this in Taiwan, but not so in Hong Kong.

Steven Katz, Gordon

Why is the abbreviation for number "No." and not "Nu."? "No." for number is a type of abbreviation called a contraction, meaning that you take out the middle of a word. In this case, the word is the Italian "numero", which means number. It was devised by Italian shipping clerks, who also contracted "ditto" and made do with that.

Torbjorn Lundmark, Manly

If you catalogued the Bible, would it be regarded as a work of fiction or non-fiction? Although the Bible contains material that some believe is fictional, it also contains historical information that has been verified as factual. On the basis of the latter it presumably would be catalogued as non-fiction.

David Gordon, Cranebrook

Is it cheaper to leave lights on if going in and out of a room, or to turn them on and off? The flick of the light switch completes the electrical circuit, after which point energy is being consumed. When using normal tungsten filament light bulbs, every second the light is on will lead to a more expensive electricity bill. In the case of fluorescent tubes, the energy consumption to electrically charge the gas in the tube (when the light flickers before starting up) is eight times greater than the general energy consumption of the same tube once started.

Assuming it takes a maximum of four seconds to start up a fluorescent light tube, it would only be cheaper to leave the light on if you were to be back in the room within 32 seconds - otherwise turning the light off as you exit the room would be the most cost-effective option.

Jason Carroll, Turramurra

Why do so many place names, especially countries, start and end with the letter A? Blame it on the Romans, the Latin language and the Renaissance. The ancient Romans, in their conquest of the then-known world, named many countries and towns/settlements with either masculine names, ending in "um" (such as Londinium and Belgium), or feminine names ending in "a" (Britannia, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Romania, Bulgaria). But the latter seemed to be preferred.

The period of the European Renaissance, the 14th to 16th centuries, saw a strong swing to the much-admired standards of the Roman and Greek civilisations. The Renaissance also saw the emergence of European world exploration and settlement. So many of the new colonies and their cities were given stylised names with "a" endings (Australia, America, Canada, Alaska, Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, India, Malaya and so on).

Jim Martyn, Mollymook

What is the difference between a government and a regime? The use of the regiment.

Michael Flatt, Byron Bay

A "free" press, or maybe Rupert Murdoch's personal support for your junta.

Timothy Aley, Federal

What's the difference between a government and a regime? Bail.

Conrad Mathias, Cooma

Any answers?

• Why do seasons start at the beginning of the month in Australia, but on the 21st of the month in the northern hemisphere?
• When Tasmania broke free of the mainland, why did it stop so close?
• Why doesn't toothpaste have a use-by date?
• Why is there beef and chicken stock but no lamb stock?
• What sort of event or collision would it take to make the planet explode?

READERS' RESPONSES: Email your answers, or any questions you want answered, to bigquestions@ smh.com.au or write to Big Questions, Spectrum, SMH, GPO Box 506, Sydney 2001. Limit questions to one short sentence and answers to a maximum of 130 words, and state your name and suburb/town.

<a href=www.iol.co.za>IOL, May 16 2003 at 06:12AM By Sid Astbury

Sydney - So long in coming, so sublime to behold, the euphoria that suffused East Timor's independence day almost a year ago has burned away like the morning mists on the hills that ring Dili, the new nation's sparkling seaside capital.

Helping lance the irrational exuberance of that day was rioting in December that took the lives of at least two young demonstrators and which left houses and businesses smouldering.

Also conspiring to deliver a painful dose of reality were the daily departures from Comoro Airport of the United Nations staff that had shepherded the half-island to freedom.

The 800 000 East Timorese are finally rid of their colonial masters - the Portuguese had been in charge for 400 years, the Indonesians for 24 - but independence is still a notional concept.

The border with the Indonesian province of West Timor is patrolled by the 3 800 UN peacekeepers that give the dirt-poor territory its security backbone.

The annual budget of the left-leaning administration of Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri is $77-million (about R610-million), 40 per cent of which is foreign aid.

Alkatiri has promised the mostly Roman Catholic East Timorese that true independence will come when oil and gas revenues from fields in the Timor Sea start rolling in next year.

From $7-million in 2004, the value of oil money sluicing through government coffers should rise to $300-million in 2013.

The cash comes courtesy of the Timor Sea Treaty, which gives Dili 90 per cent of petroleum revenues from one part of the Timor Sea and Canberra the remaining 10 per cent.

It's a huge windfall that could either underpin the prosperity of the world's newest nation or tip it into a cycle of massive corruption and revolving door governments - witness Nigeria and Venezuela.

"The equitable, sustainable, and transparent management of petroleum revenues is a heavy responsibility," Alkatiri has admitted. "The East Timorese desperately need the revenues."

They do indeed: with an annual average income of less than $500, they are the poorest people in South East Asia.

The East Timorese are in some ways worse off than they were when the Portuguese simply upped and left in 1975. Then, the territory was self sufficient in food, but is now reliant on imports of rice - despite over half the workforce being in agriculture.

Coffee, the biggest cash crop and only sizeable export, was being harvested at an annual rate of 45 000 tons before Indonesian troops carriers ran up Dili's beaches. This year, the coffee harvest should reach just 10 000 ton.

But optimism that East Timor will make a good go of independence has yet to fracture.

The December riots, described by President Xanana Gusmao as a little local difficulty unlikely to be repeated, did not prove the first of a series.

The administration in Jakarta, despite sending gunships into Dili harbour unannounced in the hours before independence, has caused little trouble to its counterpart in Dili over the past 12 months.

Paul Dibb, an academic at Canberra's Australian National University, has complimented the East Timorese on not riling their former masters.

"The Indonesians see the taking away of their East Timor province as an enormous humiliation - even though they clearly brought it upon themselves," Dibb wrote recently. "The East Timorese leadership know they must learn to live with a strongly resentful giant neighbour."

Another phenomenon the East Timorese must accept is the withering of international interest in their fate.

Before independence, Foreign Minister Ramos Horta said he would like to see East Timor become "almost an Australian protectorate".

He is likely to be disabused. Canberra is keen to get its relationship with Dili onto an equal footing, where there is no sentimentality and no residual special treatment.

An indication of this new climate came last month when Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock rejected a plea by Gusmao that the 1 600 East Timorese who hold temporary visas be allowed to stay in Australia.

Ruddock said it was "a little disingenuous" of Gusmao to appeal to East Timorese stuck in refugee camps in West Timor to return home but not extend the same entreaty to those availing themselves of Australia's hospitality.

That the relationship was going to be businesslike rather than patron-client was underlined when giant Australian phone company Telstra shocked the East Timorese by not extending its contract to run the territory's telecommunications system.

Expatriates in Dili may moan about creeping corruption, burdensome taxation and the high-cost economy, but the transition to self-rule has gone better than most expected. - Sapa-DPA

Pravda

The Foreign Ministers of Russia and Venezuela, Igor Ivanov and Roy Chaderton Matos, will discuss the situation on the world energy market, official Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko told RIA Novosti.

Russia and Venezuela, he said, are among the biggest producers and exporters of oil in the world. "Therefore both states are interested in maintaining stability on the energy market," Yakovenko said.

"We are prepared to continue the constructive dialogue on these matters both with Venezuela and in the framework of a broader multilateral interaction in this sphere," he went on.

Energy opens up most favorable prospects for cooperation between the two countries. A number of big Russian energy companies display interest in taking part in it.

Potentially successful areas of bilateral ties could be also gas production, petrochemistry, coal production and development of transport infrastructure. Russian-Venezuelan cooperation projects in this sphere, which are of mutual interest, are possible.

Yakovenko further said that "the present meeting is an important landmark in the development of political contacts with Venezuela." They have grown most active as a result of the two Moscow visits by President Hugo Chavez and the visit by Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov to Caracas in 2001.

It is noted with satisfaction in Moscow that "the approaches of Russia and Venezuela are close as regards problems of shaping a modern system of international relations based on multi-polarity and respect for international law," the diplomat pointed out.

In his view, the "closeness or our approaches to the key problems of our time provides a firm groundwork for continued cooperation between Russia and Venezuela on a bilateral and multilateral basis."

The visit by Venezuelan Foreign Minister Roy Chaderton Matos will last until May 18.

<a href=www.falkland-malvinas.com>MercoPress

The presidents of Uruguay, Jorge Batlle and Argentina, Eduardo Duhalde coincided in the need of a stronger regional integration, starting with a reinvigorated Mercosur that could open the way for trade discussions with United States following the 4+1 model.

Duhalde&Batlle

Argentina and Uruguay, together with Brazil and Paraguay are the four full members of Mercosur and rather skeptical about the United States sponsored Free Trade of the Americans Association, FTAA, given the diversity of countries it includes and the president George Bush administration new agenda of foreign priorities, particularly after the September 11 terrorist attacks and the Iraq conflict.

Although Mr. Duhalde will be stepping down next May 25, he indicated that he was sure his successor had similar ideas regarding the necessity of reinforcing Mercosur and then proceed to gradually include the rest of South America taking advantage of the Andean Countries association that includes Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela.

Mr. Batlle said that the 4+1 negotiations is a crucial instrument to “break” with the dependency small countries such as Uruguay have with a long term project such as FTAA.

“If we are to consolidate our democracies, if we are to ensure justice and fairness in our communities we need to know clearly where our trade possibilities with the outer world stand”, stressed Mr. Batlle.

The Uruguayan president also informed Mr. Duhalde of his talks last week end in Brasilia where he met with Brazilian president Lula da Silva.

“President Lula was most enthusiastic with the 4+1 negotiations, and he agreed with me in requesting from the United States trade proposals to be considered at Mercosur level. Mr. Lula said he would attempt a meeting with President Bush either in Washington or Brazil to talk about the issue”, revealed the Uruguayan president.

“4+1 means banging a very important door so we can clearly know if they are willing, or not, to consider all trade issues, not only those that interest the most powerful but all those essential to us; to us the great world suppliers of food, reliable, at better costs and produced in friendlier environmental conditions”, explained Mr. Batlle