By KARI NEERING THE JOURNAL NEWS (Original publication: June 2, 2003)

A housing office created to help match interested Rockland Community College students with prospective rentals in the county is rarely open and doesn't provide students with enough information, according to school employees.

Kim Sojak, secretary in the college's international student services office, said she and her co-workers have helped just as many students than before the office was created, even though it was supposed to ease their load. With more than 250 international students enrolled, Sojak said the group of students weren't getting enough help from the housing office.

"It's very frustrating, even for us," she said. "I don't know if it's because of the hours there or what. Whatever it is, it's not working. And we have to stick to what we know works here."

The housing office was established two years ago to help athletes and international students find a place to live. The college's intention was not to act as an agent or landlord, but merely a referral service.

Gary Peskin was asked to stretch his responsibilities as an employee in the athletic department to assist students. No new money was available to hire new faculty, so the college worked out a new schedule for Peskin.

But a recent academic reorganization changed that schedule, giving him less time to devote to the housing office.

Peskin deferred all comments to his boss, Athletic Director Dan Keeley, who said 491 students picked up a housing list from the office this academic year. The list was updated every two weeks, he said, and nearly 120 listings were not renewed, presumably because they got a tenant.

"On our end, it's doing fine," Keeley said of the office. "Is it the best housing office in Rockland county? No. But we do what we can."

The college began the office in the spring of 2001. Officials asked landlords with apartments, basements, rooms or other vacancies near the main campus in Suffern to contact them with listings.

Maria Dell'Arciprete, coordinator of international student services at the college, said the housing situation in Rockland was tough on foreign students who already lacked the credit history and references most landlords require.

Local housing and real estate experts say monthly rent on most two-bedroom units in the county can range from $1,200 to $1,500 — apartments that are hard to come by, even for locals.

Dell'Arciprete said because foreign students don't know the country, language or culture, they needed help throughout the process. The housing office was helping athletes, she said, but she was disappointed in its effort to help foreign students.

"A person comes from halfway around the world ... how can you expect to hand them a list and just say 'here?' " she asked.

Maria Salazar, 25, arrived at the school from Venezuela in 2000, and left and came back in 2002 with no place to live. Instead of the housing office, she sought help from the international student services office, and within a week, had an apartment in Suffern.

"I tried to look for an apartment at first, by myself, but as a student, it was very hard," said Salazar. "You have to have a job, and credit, and more than $2,000 a month for rent."

Dell'Arciprete said her office has a strong relationship with Suffern Realtors who called regularly with new listings for students. Originally it made sense that she and Peskin would work together, she said, but it never happened.

Though a growing number of community colleges in New York state either offer or are considering campus dormitories, the college has no such plans in the near future.

Keeley said that in addition to athletes and international students, the office was open to any RCC student in need of housing. He said the college was renewing its housing effort this year and hoped to help more students.

"It's a valuable service that we provide," he said, "and I hope it's as helpful as I think it is."

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Monday, June 02, 2003 By: Ambassador Alfredo Toro Hardy

Venezuelan scholar & diplomat Alfredo Toro Hardy writes: Through the road map the United States is placing all the weight of its might on the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians.  The great pitfall will come from the fundamentalism. Not only from the Islamic fundamentalism, but the Jewish and Christian fundamentalism. 

The second half of the seventies of the last century saw the emergence of fundamentalism within the religions above mentioned.  The common denominator was the reaction to the disassociating challenges of modernity and the search for a new encounter with the immutable certainties of the holy scriptures.  In essence, it represented a rejection of dominant secularism and an attempt to affirm the primacy of the religious over all the other spheres of social life. As a phenomenon it was an expression of the three monotheist  religions already mentioned for the simple fact that it responded to a literal interpretation of the sacred texts and canons: the Koran and Shariah for Muslims, the Torah for Jews and the Bible for Christians. Such literalism did not find sustenance in other religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism, precisely for their lack of scriptures and canons.  All in all, fundamentalism understands the “revealed truth” textually and free from its symbolic character. Through this it seeks the reconstitution of patriarchal and traditionalist societies.

Although the Islamic and Christian fundamentalisms date back to the decade of the twenties in the last century, it was in the seventies that they showed true  expansion.  It was also at that time that Jewish fundamentalism erupted.  Islamism, synonymous with Muslim fundamentalism, established itself with the victory of the revolution of Khomeini in Iran.  However, it expressed itself through a group of different movements that started to spread throughout the Islamic world:  Society of Muslims, Jamaat, Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the most notorious of them all, Al Qaeda, among others.  The majority of such movements channeled their actions through terrorism, as a reaction to the Palestinian issue and the pro Western and secular orientation of many dominant regimes. Jewish fundamentalism was expressed basically through two movements:  Gush Emunim and Haredim... The extremist rhetoric of various rabbis associated to the former was responsible for the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin.  The Christian fundamentalism, on the other hand, is essentially Protestant, Evangelist and has its roots in America.  Among its most sonorous expressions are the Moral Majority and the New Christian Right.  It is noteworthy that the North American Christian fundamentalism has managed to penetrate significantly the Republican  party, even controlling it in some states of the “Bible Belt”.

Any possibility of a solution to the Palestinian-Jewish issue will inexorably clash with the action of fundamentalists.  From the Islamic extremism that tries to thwart any peace process, to the Jewish extremism which fiercely oppose the abandonment of settlements and the devolution of occupied territories, and the Christian fundamentalism that has become common cause with the Jewish, the obstacles faced by fundamentalisms will be huge.  They will undermine although in different ways and with variable intensity, the initiatives coming from the Palestinian, Israeli and American authorities.

Alfredo Toro Hardy is a Venezuelan scholar and diplomat who has held many ambassadorial posts, including Washington D.C., London, Brazil, Chile etc. Author of several books, he writes regular editorial commentaries in the Spanish-language Venezuelan media and VHeadline.com Venezuela. You may email Ambassador Toro Hardy at embvenuk-despacho@dial.pipex.com

Fundamentalismo y paz en el Medio Oriente

A través del llamado 'mapa de ruta', Estados Unidos está poniendo todo el peso de su poderío en el proceso de paz entre israelíes y palestinos. El gran escollo vendrá del fundamentalismo. Pero no sólo del fundamentalismo islámico, sino también del judío y del cristiano.

LA SEGUNDA MITAD de los años setenta del siglo pasado evidenció el emerger del fundamentalismo dentro de las tres religiones citadas. El denominador común fue la reacción ante los retos disociadores de la modernidad y la búsqueda de un reencuentro con las certidumbres inmutables de los textos sagrados. En esencia, representó un rechazo al secularismo dominante y un intento por afirmar la primacía de lo religioso sobre todas las demás esferas de la vida social. Como fenómeno fue expresión de las tres religiones monoteístas citadas, por el simple hecho de que respondía a una interpretación literal de los textos y cánones sagrados: el Corán y la Shaira para los musulmanes, la Torah$para los judíos y la Biblia para los cristianos. Dicho literalismo no encontraba sustento en otras religiones como el budismo y el hinduismo, precisamente por la carencia de textos y cánones. En definitiva, el fundamentalismo entiende la 'verdad revelada' en forma textual y desprovista de su carácter simbólico. Por esta vía busca la reconstitución de sociedades patriarcales y tradicionalistas.

SI BIEN los fundamentalismos islámico y cristiano se remontan a la década de los veinte del siglo pasado, fue a partir de los setenta que éstos evidenciaron su verdadera expansión. Fue también por esa época que el fundamentalismo judío hizo erupción. El islamismo, sinónimo de fundamentalismo musulmán, se consagró con el triunfo de la revolución de Khomeini en Irán. Sin embargo, se expresó también a través de un conjunto de movimientos variados que comenzaron a diseminarse por todo el mundo islámico: Sociedad de Musulmanes, Jamaat, Hezbollah, Hamas, Jihad Islámica y, el más célebre de todos, Al Qaeda, entre otros. La mayor parte de esos movimientos encauzaron su acción por vía del terrorismo, como reacción al problema palestino y a la orientación pro occidental y secularista de muchos de los regímenes dominantes. El fundamentalismo judío se expresó básicamente a través de dos movimientos: Gush Emunim y Haredim. La retórica extremista de varios rabinos asociados al primero de ellos fue responsable del asesinato del primer ministro Rabin. El fundamentalismo cristiano, por su parte, es esencialmente protestante, evangelista y de raigambre estadounidense. Entre sus expresiones más sonoras se encuentran la Mayoría Moral y la Nueva Derecha Cristiana. Valga agregar que el fundamentalismo cristiano norteamericano ha logrado penetrar de manera muy significativa al Partido Republicano, controlándolo, incluso, en algunos estados del llamado 'Cinturón de la Biblia'.

CUALQUIER POSIBILIDAD de solución al problema judío-palestino, chocará inexorablemente con la acción de los fundamentalistas. Desde el extremismo islámico que intenta frustrar cualquier proceso de paz, hasta el extremismo judío que se opone férreamente al abandono de los asentamientos y a la devolución de los territorios ocupados, pasando por el integrismo cristiano que ha hecho causa común con el judío, los escollos planteados por los fundamentalismos serán gigantescos. Estos minarán por igual, aunque de distinta manera y variable intensidad, las iniciativas provenientes de las autoridades palestinas, israelíes y estadounidenses.

AllAfrica.com, June 2, 2003 Posted to the web June 2, 2003 Mike Oduniyi Lagos

The Federal Government may have directed oil producing companies to raise output substantially up to Nigeria's capacity this month, in a bid to make up for the production losses to violence in the Niger Delta and the attendant revenue loss.

Nigeria's oil production had been reduced to around 1.9 million barrels per day (bpd) compared to its officially assigned quota of 2.018 million by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), since March this year when communal violence broke out in Warri, Delta State. Check out allAfrica's debate on the election in Nigeria. Click here.

While oil industry sources disclosed that they had been told to raise production to full capacity, the Department of Petroleum Resources (the nation's oil industry monitors) said at the weekend that companies with spare capacity had only been directed to make up for the losses from the violence-prone areas.

According to a senior DPR official, Nigeria has struggled to remain within her OPEC limit even though she was still running below the quota.

"We had a lot of crisis in May. As at Friday, we were still running slightly below our quota," said the official, adding, "what we do is to give additional quota to companies with spare capacity if a company can't meet up with quota."

OPEC meets on June 11, this year to review its new ceiling of 25.4 million bpd. Officials however, said that effectively, there was still no serious attachment to OPEC quota following the Middle East crisis while the effect of the Venezuela crisis was yet to wane on the market.

Nigeria has an installed production capacity of about 2.6 million bpd. Its new OPEC quota effective June 1, this year was 2.092 million. However, in the aftermath of the Warri crisis, industry officials said that about 300,000 bpd of crude production was still shut in by Shell, ChevronTexaco and Total, almost over two months ago.

In monetary terms, this translates into a daily loss of $6.6 million revenue, given the $22 per barrel official selling price for Nigeria's crude oil.

Furthermore, income from condensate production, (which does not fall under OPEC quota application) has been halted following the fire at ExxonMobil Oso Condensate production platform offshore Akwa Ibom, early last month.

Oil exports account for more than 90 percent of Nigeria's foreign exchange earnings. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), said in its 2002 Annual Reports and Account that following a cut in Nigeria's OPEC quota last year, the country's total exports declined to 545.1 million barrels compared to 674.9 million barrels in 2001.

Consequently, revenue stood at N496.3 billion, declining by N438 billion when compared to 2001 earnings.

Meanwhile, the United States of America (USA) remained the largest importer of Nigeria's crude oil. The CBN report said the country's import accounted for 40.3 per cent of Nigeria's total oil exports last year.

Nigeria, according to the apex bank, exported 1.66 million barrels of oil daily last year, where the value of crude exported to Asia countries, which had been on the increase since 1999, dropped to N313.1 billion from N366.0 billion in 2001.

Export of crude to the Americas decreased to 278.5 million barrels valued at N842.2 billion, from 334.9 million barrels valued at N912.7 billion in 2001.

"Similarly, the volume and value of oil exports to western Europe also fell during the review year, totalling 121.0 million barrels valued at N369.2 billion compared with 154.4 million barrels worth N420.7 billion in 2001," said the CBN.

06/02/2003 - Source: <a href=www.latintrade.com>LatinTrade - BNamericas Spanish financial group SCH (NYSE: STD) is likely to launch a new technological center in Mexico next year to expand the success of Altec, its Chile-based regional tech center, Altec CEO Patricio Melo told BNamericas. SCH launched Altec in 2001 and today the firm serves eight of its Latin American subsidiaries (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Uruguay) with technological services from Santiago, Melo said. Altec's client list includes SCH's largest Brazilian bank Banespa, which was not initially planned, he said, adding that Banespa and the banking subsidiaries in Chile and Puerto Rico are the SCH units currently demanding most services from Altec. SCH chose to locate Altec in Santiago because of the city's comparative advantages in terms of telecoms and human resources, among other factors. The Spanish group has earmarked US$15mn investments in the first two years of operations, and expects annual cost savings of US$300mn-400mn when it is fully up and running. The great success of Altec in the region has prompted SCH to begin closing down a Madrid-based tech center that was serving Latin America, Melo said. The Mexico center is being created due to Altec's cost saving ability for the group in the region, and the large presence of SCH in the Mexican market, he said, adding the country has a great pool of talent in terms of human resources, which is expensive to transfer to Chile. Some 25% of Altec's 460 professionals have been brought in from SCH subsidiaries outside of Chile. SCH is yet to decide if the Mexican tech center will operate as an Altec competitor or subsidiary, Melo said, adding the latter is more likely. The Chilean center plans to hire another 30 professionals in the near future due to great demand from SCH subsidiaries for Altec's services, Melo said. In Chile, SCH controls the country's largest bank Santander Santiago (NYSE: SAN), which has some 28% of the local loan market. SCH is Latin America's largest financial group with 23 million clients and assets exceeded US$115bn. SCH also runs the largest banking franchise in Spain.

<a href=www.latintrade.com>LatinTrade June, 2003 Investors can take solace in this news: Microsoft founder Bill Gates, the world’s richest person, has lost more than half his fortune in the last five years, according to an exclusive Latin Trade analysis of the annual Forbes magazine ranking of the world’s billionaires. Bill is scraping by on US$41 billion. In Latin America, billionaires are suffering far less than Bill, yet los ricos are crying, too. Mexican telecom mogul Carlos Slim has $7.4 billion in 2003, down from $8 billion in 1999.

Argentina’s Gregorio Pérez Companc’s holdings were cut in half to $1.6 billion during the last five years. Overall, José Billionaire—the average Latin American billionaire—is almost 14% richer than he was in 1999, but his wealth has declined $300,000 to $2.2 billion in the last two years. The primary challenge for Latin American investors in recent years has not been to increase wealth, but simply not to lose it.

“Latin American investors face double jeopardy: significant risk in their own markets and risk associated with investing in developed markets,” says Ted Berenblum, chief investment executive for Citigroup Private Bank, which manages money for 24,000 of the world’s wealthiest and most influential families. “The vast majority seeks to preserve capital.”

The fortunes of Latin America’s elite have been dwindling due to political and economic instability at home during the past year. Currencies have collapsed with respect to the dollar in Argentina, Venezuela, Brazil and even Chile, with little or no rebound in the countries’ economies. Brokerage Morgan Stanley’s index for emerging stock markets has fallen 40% during the last five years, while J.P. Morgan’s index for emerging market bonds has been cut practically in half.

Taking no chances. Global markets have been abysmal during the past five years, too. The Dow Jones industrial average was at the same level at the end of March 2003 as it was at the start of 1998. A five-year U.S. Treasury bond now pays an annual yield of less than 3%—close to the historic U.S. inflation rate, or effectively a zero real return.

Accordingly, investors are combining traditional assets like cash, stocks and bonds with alternative investments such as positions in hedge funds, private equity, real estate, commodities and art. People who don’t like to take chances favor traditional investments, while those who like to live on the edge see a buying opportunity.

“A large pool of clients is risk averse,” says Citibank’s Berenblum. “One could argue historically that when it has looked the worst, it was often a good time to enter into private equity or other alternative investments. However, to say that this is happening in a large way today would be misleading.”

Latin American investors are exploring new ideas to preserve capital while trying to put a little zip into returns of a small portion their portfolios. Mainstream ideas include stable value funds that have short- and medium-term bonds, guaranteed investment contracts and insurance to keep the fund’s net-asset value stable. According to specialized research firm Heuler Analytics, annual returns on these funds has been more than 5% for the last five years.

Gold, real estate and art, the traditional havens for emerging market investors in tough times, especially during periods of high inflation, have not proven risk free. Investors who plowed into gold, seeking refuge from uncertainty surrounding the Iraq war, watched in horror as prices zoomed to more than $380 per ounce during January 2003, from $325, only to collapse back to $325 by the start of April. Nonetheless, the average price is up 10% since 1998.

Real estate, another favorite of emerging market investors, is harder to quantify. Prudential Real Estate Investments, which managed $21.6 billion in assets for 363 institutional clients at the end of 2002, puts the minimum acceptable rate of return for Latin American real estate investments at anywhere from 13.8% for Chile to 34% in Argentina. It then requires a further average return of 11.5% for Latin America for taking the risk of investing outside the United States.

Oil futures. Some Latin American developers are building projects in Miami to reduce the risk of investing in Latin American real estate. Mexico’s Grupo Inmobiliario Cababie is building a $40 million twin-condo tower, shopping mall and office complex in the northern suburb of Aventura, where the developer expects to sell units for as much as $1.4 million each.

Art has traditionally been hard to buy and sell as an investment because each piece’s unique value makes it harder to trade than, say, a commodity like pork bellies. Returns are even harder to predict. Nevertheless, slowly but surely, it is becoming a market like all the rest. U.K.-based fund managers Fine Art Management Services has been trying to raise $350 million to create a fund dedicated to investing in museum-quality pieces.

In a recent article titled, “Can Rembrandt Get You Through Wars and Recessions,” Jianping Mei and Michael Moses, associate professors at New York University’s Stern School of Business, calculated that the average annual appreciation of art prices from 1875 to 2000 outpaced inflation but was considerably less than the 6.6% real return of the S&P 500 index.

“People don’t buy art for a return in three to six months,” says Ana Sokoloff, head of the Latin America art department at auction house Christie’s. “They don’t talk about returns on investment.”

While the amount of work offered at auctions of Latin American art continues to decline, the total value of art sold grew slightly last year to $30 million, according to the London-based research firm Art Sales Index. Auction house Sotheby’s reports a $2 million rise in Latin American art sales, including an estimated 20% buyers’ premium, to almost $17 million last year, albeit far below Sotheby’s peak sales of almost $24 million in 2000.

Kirsten Hammer, director of Latin American art at Sotheby’s, says that works in the $800,000 to $1 million price range continue to sell well even though these paintings, by artists Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Rufino Tamayo and Wifredo Lam, among others, do not necessarily offer the highest return.

Buying lesser-known or under-appreciated artists at $10,000 to $30,000 is where art offers a large payback. Kahlo’s work sold in that price range in the 1970s and went on to sell for $5.1 million in 2000—still the highest price paid for a female artist’s work, says Hammer.

The artists don’t have to be dead to sell well. Pablo Vallecilla of the Marlborough Gallery in New York says that investors are paying $100,000 to $300,000 for paintings by Colombian Fernando Botero, Chilean Claudio Bravo and Cubans Tomás Sánchez and Julio Larraz. The Marlborough Gallery’s presence in New York, London and Madrid create el marketing muscle, he says, to give artists worldwide exposure. “Whenever an artist crosses borders with an international exhibition, it’s always an important sign,” says Vallecilla.

As the pool of buyers of Latin American art grows, Vallecilla says, Latin Americans don’t see its importance as only art. “They see it as an investment,” he says.

Given the time frame to generate returns on art, however, investors may be well-advised to take to heart what a professor once said to Sotheby’s Hammer about investing in art: “You have to think of the dividend as sitting and looking at wonderful art.”