<a href=www.sun-sentinel.com>Reuters Posted March 24 2003, 2:10 PM EST

CARACAS, Venezuela - A U.S. academic and expert on Venezuelan affairs was found dead under a road overpass in Caracas Monday and police said they were investigating her apparent suicide.

Janet Kelly, 56, who had lived and worked in Venezuela for more than 20 years, was a respected political analyst in the oil-rich country. Her articles appeared regularly in Venezuelan newspapers and her views were often quoted by foreign media covering the political conflict between leftist President Hugo Chavez and his foes.

Kelly's body was found on a road beneath an elevated highway in Caracas' eastern Altamira district Monday, police said. Her car was parked on the highway above and a note was found in her clothes giving her name, Venezuelan identity card number and the telephone numbers of her home and her son.

``It's presumed to be a suicide,'' Police chief inspector Ali Magdaleno Reyes told Reuters.

Philadelphia-born Kelly was a politics professor at Venezuela's IESA business school in Caracas and had recently bought the Spanish-speaking country's only English-language daily newspaper, The Daily Journal.

www.nbc30.com POSTED: 2:17 p.m. EST March 20, 2003

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. -- Former Waterbury, Conn., Mayor Philip Giordano admitted Thursday that two preteen children may have watched him receive oral sex from a prostitute.

PHILIP GIORDANO

Bio Birthdate: March 25, 1963 Birthplace: Caracas, Venezuela. Moved to Waterbury, Conn., at age 2. Education: Degree in political science and history from the University of Connecticut; law degree in 1990 from the Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Michigan. Family: Wife, Dawn; three children. Career: Enlisted in U.S. Marine Corps, 1981-1985; opened law office in Waterbury in 1992. Elected to state House of Representatives in 1994; elected mayor of Waterbury in 1995. Re-elected in 1997, 1999. Announced July 18, 2001, he would not seek fourth term. The Arrest Arrested: July 26, 2001, on federal charges of using an interstate facility to entice a minor to engage in sexual activity. Charged: Sept. 10 with six counts each of first-degree sexual assault, risk of injury to a minor and conspiracy to commit sexual assault. Currently held without bail at undisclosed prison.

But Giordano, testifying in his defense on federal charges he sexually abused the two girls, denied the girls ever participated.

"Those children have never given me oral sex. I have never touched those children," he said.

The girls testified Tuesday that they repeatedly performed oral sex on the mayor at Giordano's City Hall and law offices, home, car and elsewhere. They said that a prostitute who is the mother of one girl and the aunt of the other brought them to Giordano. The girls were 8 and 10 years old at the time.

The prostitute, who has pleaded guilty to state and federal charges, also testified against Giordano. The Associated Press is not identifying the woman or her family members to protect the identities of the children. Giordano admitted that he and the prostitute, a law client, had oral sex on numerous occasions. He said the girls usually waited outside his office with the door closed. On two occasions, he said, he left the door open. Giordano said the prostitute suggested allowing the girls to watch, and told him some men liked that.

"The kids had watched, or could have watched, from four rooms away, this person giving me oral sex," he said.

Giordano said he "reluctantly agreed" to let the children watch.

"I don't find that arousing. I don't find that interesting," he said.

Giordano was arrested in July 2001 a few days after FBI agents videotaped him paying the prostitute $500. Investigators have testified that they set up a sting after learning of the alleged abuse. An agent called Giordano, pretending to demand a payoff to keep the story out of the media. Giordano testified Thursday that he paid the money in hopes of avoiding a scandal, asking the jury to put themselves in his place.

"I was definitely concerned that this person had credible evidence, by way of children, that I was getting oral sex from a known prostitute in the city of Waterbury," he said.

Prosecutors were expected to begin cross-examining Giordano later Thursday morning. Giordano has pleaded innocent to 18 federal charges that he violated the civil rights of two girls by molesting them, conspired with the prostitute and used his cell phone, an interstate device, to set up liaisons with the children.

Giordano, who was mayor when he was arrested in 2001, faces life in prison if convicted. The defense opened its case Wednesday with an aunt of the two girls. The woman screamed at a prosecutor Wednesday and denied she ignored her 8-year-old niece's plea for help.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Jongbloed pressed the aunt on whether she had turned the girl away and told her not to use such dirty language.

"I'm not answering that," she shouted. "I'm not going to answer that filth. That's filthy."

"She told you what was happening and that was your same reaction," Jongbloed said. "Were you there?" the woman responded. "You don't know what was told to me, sir. My niece didn't tell me nothing, you hear me?"

The government rested its case Wednesday after an FBI lab expert testified that DNA evidence linked Giordano to semen stains found in his City Hall and law offices. Frank Baechtel, a scientist at the FBI's crime lab in Quantico, Va., said he found Giordano's DNA on 15 samples taken from the law office and on one from the carpet in the mayor's office.

"I see the profile of a single individual, and it's the same DNA profile I developed for Philip Giordano," he said.

He said the odds were, at best, 1-in-17 billion that the stains were made by someone other than Giordano. But Baechtel said he found no samples that matched the girls' DNA.

"One explanation, the first one that comes to my mind, is that it was never there," Baechtel said. He said it also was possible the girls did not leave behind enough DNA to show up in the samples.

Prosecutors put more than 40 witnesses on the stand during a week of testimony. They also played more than 100 taped phone conversations between Giordano and the prostitute.

For the latest news, stay tuned to NBC 30 Connecticut News and NBC30.com

www.directionsmag.com Company: LeadDog Consulting Mar 17, 2003

ANCHORAGE, ALASKA--LeadDog Consulting today announced the release of Caracas, Venezuela street-level routing. Designed for any industry needing to route and track vehicles in Caracas, LeadDog's product provides accurate and comprehensive street-level mapping.

"Street-level routing can be particularly problematic internationally," says LeadDog President Jim Anderson. "We have driven every street in Caracas to field collect routing information. The result is an accurate routing map with detailed one-way and z-level information for Caracas."

The Caracas routing product is part of a comprehensive City Streets product line for Venezeula. Other City Streets products include Barquisimento, Maracaibo, Maracay and Valencia. Major Roads & Highways are available for the entire country, integrated with the City Streets products.

Caracas Routing and all Venezuela GIS maps are available in every major GIS format.

LeadDog Consulting is a leading producer and provider of GIS street data sets for Mexico and Latin America.

www.guardian.co.uk Sunday March 16, 2003 1:20 AM

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - Venezuela's crude oil production has surpassed 3 million barrels a day - approaching levels that made it the world's fifth-largest exporter before a crippling national strike, the state oil monopoly's president said Saturday.

But government officials say work still needs to be done before the industry fully recovers from the failed two-month walkout aimed at forcing President Hugo Chavez to resign or call early elections.

The strike, which ended last month, was strongest in the oil industry, the source of half of government revenues and 80 percent of export earnings.

``The task now that we have reached that level is to maintain and stabilize production,'' said Ali Rodriguez, president of Petroleos de Venezuela S.A.

Oil executives fired for participating in the strike dispute the government figures, saying daily production is at 2.1 million barrels.

Before the strike, the South American country was a main exporter to the United States, producing 3.2 million barrels a day. Oil production dropped to 200,000 barrels a day at the height of the walkout, costing the country $6 billion. Several refineries also were damaged by being shut down for so long.

Energy and Mines Minister Rafael Ramirez said Friday that Venezuela reached an agreement with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries allowing it to produce above its crude oil output quota of 2.8 million barrels a day to make up for the lost revenue. Venezuela is an OPEC member.

www.nj.com Saturday, March 15, 2003 BY BRUCE STANLEY Associated Press

LONDON -- Crude oil prices fell yesterday on reports that Saudi Arabia's state-run oil company, Saudi Aramco, had chartered supertankers to carry an exceptionally large shipment of crude -- 28 million barrels -- to the United States.

April contracts of U.S. light, sweet crude tumbled by more than $2 a barrel in New York before rebounding somewhat to close at $35.38, down 63 cents. In London, North Sea Brent crude futures settled down $1.05, at $31.38.

Analysts say fears of a wartime disruption in supply have swollen crude prices by at least $5 a barrel. This so-called war premium has increased along with tensions in the Persian Gulf because markets worry that hostilities with Iraq will paralyze its daily 2 million barrel production.

Although prices might rise in the last hours before any actual outbreak of hostilities, several analysts predicted that an attack on Iraq would knock the floor out from beneath the market -- just as it did when coalition forces launched Operation Desert Storm on Jan. 16, 1991.

"History would suggest that oil prices would go down fairly rapidly, maybe $5 to 7 a barrel, probably within one day," said Angus McPhail, an analyst at ING Financial Markets in Scotland.

He thinks markets will be awash in crude after a swift war, particularly if Venezuela continues to recover from an oil industry strike and other OPEC members keep producing more than their output quotas. For the second half of the year, ING Financial Markets foresees an average Brent crude price of $18.50 a barrel.

"We are adamant that oil prices will fall," McPhail said.

Matthew Cordaro, an energy specialist at Long Island University argued U.S. crude prices would fall to $25 to 28 a barrel within a couple of days of the start of a war.

Prices might fall by an additional $2 a barrel beyond that, Cordaro said, if President Bush authorizes a release of crude from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham has repeatedly emphasized that the United States will tap into its 600 million barrels of strategic reserves only if it sees a serious disruption in crude supplies. A short war that didn't impair Iraq's ability to soon resume exporting oil would probably not warrant a release of the strategic reserves oil, Cordaro said.

The first line of defense for importing countries in the event of a war would be an increase in OPEC production. OPEC this week estimated its spare production capacity up to 4 million barrels a day, but the International Energy Agency said that OPEC might not be able to raise output quickly by more than 1 million barrels. The agency is the energy watchdog for major consuming countries.