Reference By TOM JONES © St. Petersburg Times published March 28, 2003

CLEARWATER -- The Devil Rays' opening-day starter might be struggling, but their No. 2 pitcher looks in regular-season form.

Make that fine regular-season form.

One day after staff ace Joe Kennedy finished a dreadful spring by getting pounded by the Yankees, Victor Zambrano was just about perfect against the Phillies on Thursday at Jack Russell Stadium.

Zambrano retired the first 12 batters and didn't give up a hit in five scoreless and impressive innings as the Rays no-hit the Phillies 8-0.

"I'm glad for the opportunity to be the No. 2 starter, and I have felt good all spring," Zambrano said. "The team has played (well) behind me, and tonight the defense was really good."

It really didn't need to be.

The only hiccup Zambrano suffered came in the fifth inning. After retiring the Phillies in order through four, Zambrano hit Pat Burrell in the head on an off-speed pitch that got away. He then hit the next batter, David Bell, on the thigh. But a double play and a popup got him out of trouble.

The performance capped a solid spring for Zambrano. In 22 innings against major-league lineups, Zambrano allowed 11 hits and five runs with 16 strikeouts and three walks.

"When I was back in my country (Venezuela), I worked very hard to get ready for spring training," Zambrano said. "And I've been getting better each (start) all spring. I'm ready to go."

JONNY BE GOOD: What a night for the Rays' Jonny Gomes, who is expected to start the season at Double-A Orlando.

Called up for Thursday's game, Gomes homered in his first-ever spring at-bat, a three-run blast on the second pitch.

He then made a diving catch in left with two outs in the eighth to preserve the no-hitter.

This comes after the 22-year-old has a heart attack Christmas Eve.

When the game was over, Rays manager Lou Piniella said Gomes had tears in his eyes.

"Back at Christmas, I was laying in a hospital bed for five days," Gomes said. "I didn't know if I was going to get shut down. To be here, it was a pretty emotional night for me."

It isn't sure if Piniella was serious, but he said he was going to take another look at Gomes and might use him as a designated hitter today.

"Hey," Piniella said. "We keep saying we're looking for right-handed power."

THANKS BUT NO THANKS: The Rays will not be bringing back outfielder Adrian Brown. The Rays rejected the tender of his contract after he was offered back by the Red Sox as a Rule 5 player.

His contract stays with the Red Sox, who likely will send Brown to the minors.

STOLEN MOMENTS: Perhaps the brightest, and certainly the fastest, star for the Rays this spring has been outfielder Carl Crawford. Entering play Thursday, the leadoff hitter was batting .303 with a .343 on-base percentage.

Most impressively, though, he stole his ninth base of the spring Thursday. That's tops in the majors.

That fits in well with Piniella's style. Over the past four years, Piniella's teams have attempted and stolen more bases than any team in the majors.

GAME DETAILS: The Rays took a 4-0 lead with two runs each in the first and second innings. Former Phillie Travis Lee, booed by the Clearwater crowd, delivered a two-run double in the first. Crawford and Rocco Baldelli, who went 3-for-4, had run-scoring hits in the second. ... Catcher Javier Valentin had a pair of singles. ... Rey Ordonez went 3-for-4.

MISCELLANY: Pitcher Dan Reichert, released by the Rays two weeks ago, signed a minor-league with Toronto on Thursday. ... Damian Rolls returned to the Rays. He missed Wednesday's game to attend the birth of his daughter.

Source FRIDAY, MARCH 28, 2003 By ELIZABETH DONALD

As part of a resolution to participate in community outreach at least once a month, the Student Assembly (S.A.) dined with Intensive English students in place of their usual weekly meeting.

The Intensive English Program (IEP) is "a program that helps [students] learn our customs and how 'normal' Cornell students talk," said Katie Howell '04, vice president of communication for IEP.

During the dinner, S.A. members and IEP students had a chance to discuss a wide range of topics, from the national health care system in South Korea to housing problems to the current political situation in Venezuela.

"The best experience [as a student in IEP] is seeing how different people look at the world -- maybe things that are right and normal for you are taboo for others," said Chriss Ruiz, a student from Venezuela. "Being a foreign student is hard, but it is very fun at the same time."

The IEP is made up of 49 students who speak a total of nine different native languages and have 39 fields of study. The students are non-matriculated, though many are applying to Cornell now or are considering doing so in the future.

"It's like a study-abroad experience [and] the majority of them have come here with the intention of going into some higher education institution in America," said Richard L. Feldman '69, director of the Language Learning Center.

Feldman gave a short speech during the dinner, expanding further on the goals and methods of the IEP.

"One of the things we do as teachers is encourage [the students] to find their places in the community. ... The program tries to provide a kind of transitional community for the students," Feldman said.

He also commented on the new complexities involved in obtaining international student visas.

"It's become much more difficult to come here -- a lot more paperwork," he said.

Though IEP students stay at Cornell for a relatively short time, "they're bringing to the Cornell community their experiences, backgrounds and perspectives," Feldman added.

Howell was pleased with the turnout of both S.A. members and IEP students, and S.A. president Noah Doyle '03 expressed his satisfaction with the way the S.A. has carried out its community involvement resolution.

"I'm really proud of the work [Howell] has done in reaching out to the community. Service is an intricate part of leadership; I'm proud the S.A. has taken part in a service event every month this year," Doyle said.

The S.A. hoped that the resolution would have a broader effect as well.

"We really wanted this to have a domino effect on our campus leaders to reach out and benefit Cornell and the surrounding community," he said.

<a href=www.upi.com>Source By Ian Campbell UPI Chief Economics Correspondent From the Business & Economics Desk Published 3/27/2003 6:09 PM

QUERETARO, Mexico, March 27 (UPI) -- What's in a name? Quite a bit.

"Pemex is the strength of Mexico. Pemex has Mexico in its name. Pemex is future for Mexico." Night after night, these phrases can be heard on Mexican television. The value of Pemex, the state-run oil company, is drummed into Mexicans with Goebbels-like repetition, and with about as much regard for the truth.

Pemex is big and does make a big contribution to the Mexican economy. But it ought to do much more. Mexico's oil wealth is being squandered in corruption and incompetence -- mainly corruption. As yet, President Vicente Fox, the president of change, has not been able to bring much of it to Pemex.

Oil is at the heart of the economy. Pemex is the world's fifth-biggest oil company, and Mexico, in 2002, was the world's fourth-largest producer of crude oil. And next door to Mexico is the world's biggest consumer of oil and natural gas; a country, moreover, that would love to get more of its energy from the Western Hemisphere and less of it from less than stable states in a certain other part of the world.

How convenient! What an opportunity! The fuel should flow out of the Mexico and the money should flow in, fueling Mexico's economy. But no. At present Mexico imports natural gas and gasoline from the United States. The opportunity is being squandered. For a poor country, that is criminal. And much of the reason has to do with criminality.

A key to earnings -- a country's, a company's, a person's -- is to add value. When Mexico sells unprocessed crude oil and imports gasoline it is throwing value-added, productive employment and profit away. Why does this happen? Because Pemex has not built the necessary refining capacity.

"Despite having sizable crude oil reserves," the U.S. government's Energy Information Agency writes, "Mexico's insufficient refining capacity compels the country to import petroleum products. In 2000, Mexico imported 448,000 barrels per day of petroleum products, accounting for approximately 22 percent of total consumption."

It is a staggering failure. Nor do Mexicans (like Venezuelans) enjoy access to cheap gasoline. On the contrary it costs more than twice as much as in the United States.

"Pemex is future for Mexico," as we wrote above, is one of the company's slogans yet it is not providing for the future. The company's latest estimate of proven reserves shows a big fall. It warns that there is a risk of output falling in coming years unless there is more investment.

It complains it lacks the funds to invest, saying it hands over too much to the government: funds that make up about one-third of government revenues. This contribution to government finances is extraordinarily high -- and vital to the government in a country that largely fails to collect income tax. But Pemex cannot blame all its financial problems on the government. There is also the question of the money lost within Pemex's less than pretty web.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, "Pemex, with its workforce of 139,000, employs three and a half times as many people as does Venezuela's PdVSA, to produce only slightly more oil and gas."

What the overmanning points to is huge inefficiency, the waste of Mexico's oil wealth in unproductive employment.

And the problem is worse than that. The overmanning is a reflection of lax management and of excessive trade union power. According to George Philip of the London School of Economics, "The unions are too political and the accounting system is too weak." Philip says, "The result is corruption, as we can see from Pemexgate, for example."

Pemexgate is a corruption scandal that might be seen as an iceberg: a relatively small crime that is an indication of a vast body of crime hidden beneath the surface. The accusation being made is that Pemex's former top executives, some of them now on the run, and leaders of the oil workers' union -- some of whom, astonishingly, are also Partido Revolucionario Institucional politicians -- diverted funds from Pemex to the electoral campaign of Francisco Labastida, the PRI presidential candidate in 2000, who was beaten by Vicente Fox, now Mexico's president. Two weeks ago the Federal Electoral Institute fined the PRI $90 million for allegedly using these funds.

What is Fox, the president of change, doing about all these problems? So far, Pemexgate might be called his greatest success. Corruption was exposed and slow steps are being taken to punish those responsible. Accountability: It is vital, and is only beginning to be enforced, though at the top, which is where reform must begin. But other steps are proving hard to make. Mexico's vast inertia stands in their way.

According to Juan Rosellón of the CIDE research school in Mexico City, Fox "tried to create a new Pemex board that included several members of the private sector and tried to introduce more private participation in the natural gas sector. Both attempts were blocked by the Congress."

In the Congress, the PRI is still strong. It has also sought to shield the union members that the government would like to prosecute, labeling that effort a politically minded attack rather than an attempt to punish theft.

Fox's other big initiative is to involve the private sector more in oil production and distribution. The idea is that Pemex's ownership of oil fields is preserved but private companies compete to provide an enhanced range of services to the state company under Multiple Service Contracts. But in 2002 both the Mexican Congress and investors received the prototype MSC put forward by Fox less than warmly.

Progress, then, is slow. Was it a mistake ever to have nationalized the U.S. and U.K. oil companies in 1938, thereby creating the Pemex monolith? Both Rosellón and Philip feel the nationalization was right in its time. According to Philip, "It made excellent sense to nationalize the oil industry, but the main reason for doing so was political. The oil companies were clearly trying to play a part in Mexican politics."

Rosellón and Philip also share the view that privatization is impossible at present. Political opposition is too strong. President Lázaro Cárdenas's nationalizing coup of 1938 is still a landmark for Mexicans, an assertion of the nation's independence and identity. Pemex is not going to be swept away, it can only be reformed piece by piece.

For Rosellón, the privatization of Telmex, the dominant Mexican phone company, shows that privatization may not offer a quick solution. The key for him is less dramatic, more systematic: "regulatory reform, production incentives, efficient industrial organization, vertical desegregation of the industry."

Another area where progress may be possible is natural gas, which is vital for Mexico's own industrial development and might be a lucrative export to the United States where it has become the fuel of choice, particularly in homes, because of its clean-burning properties. Since 1995 the government has permitted some private participation downstream in the natural gas industry. This has helped to attract, according to Rosellón, about $1 billion into distribution projects. But it has not been successful, he says, "in promoting increments in production and more competition in marketing activities." This is a challenge that the government and its regulators must address, overcoming, if they can, the political obstacles.

The struggle goes on, less than briskly, less than noisily. The obstacles are such that Fox is pursuing his goals less than publicly. The oil workers' union is powerful and allied with the also-still-powerful PRI. And the resistance goes still deeper, down to the man on the street, and to that name itself: Pemex.

To most Mexicans it means the oil is theirs, not the gringos' -- even if, for decades, Pemex's wealth has been shared liberally among few hands.

-0-

(Inside Mexico is a weekly column in which our international economics correspondent reflects on the country in which he lives part of the time. Comments to icampbell@upi.com.)

Read Thursday, March 27, 2003 10:40AM EST By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - Venezuela won't stop paying its foreign debt obligations despite a severe cash crunch stemming from a crippling two-month strike, the finance ministry said.

"Venezuela completely dismisses the possibility of moratorium, halt of payments or forced restructuring of public foreign debt," the ministry said in a statement released late Wednesday. The statement came after President Hugo Chavez announced in a speech to business owners that Venezuela may have to restructure its foreign debt. Chavez did not provide details.

The Finance Ministry said Venezuela planned to propose a voluntary bond swap, among other measures, to deal with the cash crunch. Venezuela's foreign debt amounts to about $23 billion, or 37 percent of its $63 billion economy. The country faces $5 billion in debt payments this year.

Last week, the government swapped maturing local debt worth more than 160 billion bolivars ($100 million) for new bonds with terms of up to two-and-a-half years. Since last year, the government has extended maturities on 3.8 trillion bolivars ($2.4 billion) in local debt, the finance ministry said.

The South American country lost $6 billion during a strike to force Chavez's resignation or early elections. The walkout hobbled the world's fifth-largest oil exporting industry and source of half of public revenue for Venezuela. Tax collection, the source of most of the rest of government income, also fell as thousands of businesses and the stock market closed.

The strike fizzled last month with Chavez solidly in power.

Ali Rodriguez, president of the government oil monopoly, said Thursday oil production reached 3.1 million barrels a day. Exports are 2.8 million barrels a day, Rodriguez told state news agency Venpres. Executives fired from Petroleos de Venezuela SA for leading the strike say output is 2.4 million barrels a day.

Private economists predict gross domestic product could shrink more than 20 percent this year. GDP contracted 9 percent in 2002.

Read More Reuters, 03.27.03, 5:36 PM ET By Ana Isabel Martinez

CARACAS, Venezuela, March 27 (Reuters) - Income from Venezuela's vital oil exports is slowly flowing again into the central bank coffers after a two-month opposition strike battered the petroleum industry and cut revenues to a trickle, a senior bank official said on Thursday. Venezuela's oil income collapsed dramatically during December and January when opposition leaders and dissident state oil workers spearheaded an economic shutdown aimed at ousting leftist President Hugo Chavez. Central bank director Armando Leon told Reuters that state oil firm Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) has transferred on average about $150 million a week to the bank since the start of March. Those transfers this week included an additional $550 million as part of delayed payments. "The flow of payments from PDVSA to the Central Bank has been reactivated. But it is below the level it was before the strike," Leon said in a telephone interview. Leon's comments came amid growing speculation about how far the world's No. 5 oil exporter has managed to restore the flow of its much-needed oil dollars even as it ramped up crude production severely disrupted by the two-month strike. Leon said PDVSA has forecast it will transfer about $200 million to $400 million weekly between April and the middle of May to the central bank. "If that flow is maintained with a combination of optimum prices and volumes, oil export earnings will be around $1 billion a month, which will allow international reserves to increase or stay stable even with impending foreign debt payments," he said. During periods of high oil prices, PDVSA has managed to hand over to the Central Bank on average around $1.2 billion a month or $14.4 billion per year. COLLAPSE OF OIL INCOME Chavez described the opposition strike as a "blow to the economic heart of the nation." The stoppage fizzled by February as many businesses reopened in the face of bankruptcy. Chavez has rebuffed opposition calls for early elections. According to Leon, the central bank only received about $200 million in February from oil exports and in January that income was "very low" because the government had to pay for huge gasoline imports to offset domestic shortages. The government, which has fired more than 16,000 PDVSA employees for taking part in the protest, says it has managed to restore oil production and the exports that account for half of state revenues. Still, Venezuela's oil-reliant economy contracted about 9 percent during 2002 and most analysts forecast that it will continue its downward slide in 2003 because of the lingering aftershocks of the crippling strike. Government officials now put oil production at around 3.1 million barrels per day (bpd) -- similar to levels reported in November before the strike -- and say crude exports have reached around 2.8 million bpd. But former PDVSA workers estimate that oil production is closer to 2.45 million bpd. Analysts have cast doubt on how far Venezuela can reactivate its strike-hit oil sector and say those difficulties will be reflected in its international reserves. Reserves fell dramatically as political instability drove capital out of the country and battered the local bolivar currency's value against the U.S. dollar. That crisis forced the government to close the foreign exchange market from Jan. 22 and later introduce strict currency controls that cut off dollars even to priority sectors such as food, medicine and primary goods. Central Bank reserves stood at $12.94 billion on March 25 compared with $11.24 billion at the end of January. Reserves including the government's FIEM rainy-day savings fund rose from $13.83 billion in January to $14.35 billion on March 25. Before the strike, Central Bank reserves were at $12.49 billion and total reserves were at $15.84 billion. Leon said that a rise in reserves had not been evident because Venezuela had paid $950 million in external public debt obligations during the first quarter of this year. "One must recognize that despite the complicated economic situation there was cash to deal with these obligations. The payments for this year are tough, but they will not be crushing if income is efficiently managed," he said. Leon said that in the second quarter Venezuela must pay around $1.2 billion in external public debt obligations with most concentrated in June when payments total around $800 million. For the second half, those payments total around $2.2 billion, he said.