Panama Canal

WITH the transfer of the Panama Canal to Panama scheduled for December 31, the canal's capacity will receive increased attention.Although 92 percent of the world's oceangoing vessels still are able to transit the waterway, the trend is clearly to larger ships. Only 82 percent of the vessels on today's drawing boards will be able to clear the canal's 1,000-by-110-foot locks.Will it be necessary to enlarge the canal? The answer really depends on whose shoes you are walking in. Putting nationalistic pride aside, the real issue is the price tag that must be paid for any enlargement.

With each passing week, the Port of Baltimore, the region and the entire state of Maryland edge closer to an opportunity that will give our market a major advantage in the competition for jobs and economic development. The expansion of the Panama Canal, scheduled to be completed sometime in late 2014 or early 2015, will enable massive new cargo container ships to connect Asian markets to the East Coast of the United States. The Port of Baltimore is poised to be one of only two ports on the East Coast prepared to accommodate these new ships when the expanded canal opens.

I'm interested in seeing the Panama Canal, but don't want to do a lengthy cruise. Are there any cruise lines that offer a segment of a cruise through the canal? Many cruise ships sail through the Panama Canal on repositioning cruises. They're typically headed from their Caribbean itineraries to Alaska, or vice versa. Some lines also offer 10-day Panama Canal sailings that start, for example, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and end up in Acapulco, Mexico, then return. You might find a cruise line that would allow you to pick up a portion of such a cruise, but it would have to have available cabin space and would have to determine pricing before you left.

Pot holes are not liberal or conservative. Nor are bridges, sewer lines, roads, airports or tunnels. They are our infrastructure. And much of it is deteriorating, in Maryland and across the nation. There is simply not enough money. At least, not enough public money. And so, most state governments simply put off the new construction and slow down the maintenance. This is what happened with the state's two crumbling travel plazas along Interstate 95. What to do? A recent example of a creative solution to the state's infrastructure problem is instructive.

Capt. Charles R. Stevens, former United States Lines marine superintendent in Baltimore and retired Panama Canal pilot, died Feb. 24 of kidney failure at Leesburg (Fla.) Regional Hospital. The former East Baltimore resident was 77.In 1943, when he was 22, Captain Stevens was the youngest American to hold a master's ticket -- or captain's license -- and, in 1949, when he was appointed port captain in Baltimore, he was again the nation's youngest.His responsibilities included supervising loading and unloading the company's vessels that docked in Baltimore, and he worked from an office on the Pennsylvania Railroad's Pier 11 in Canton.

Q: Are there any boats that one can take locally to transit the Panama Canal? I truly want to make a canal passage but do not want to be involved in a seven- or 10-day cruise.A: The company that runs such trips, Argo Tours of Panama City, will soon be increasing their number from two to six a year.Starting Jan. 28 the 100-foot-long Islamorada, which holds up to 125 passengers, and the 500-passenger Fantasia del Mar will be operating every other month from Dock 17 in Balboa, on the Pacific, to Cristobal, on the Atlantic.

THE HANDOVER of the Panama Canal to Panama at midday Friday will be a symbolic non-event along a smooth transition that has been taking place for two decades.Whether this is a good idea was hotly debated before the treaty was ratified by one vote in the Senate in 1978. Now, it is a done deal.The canal was started in 1881 by a French company that failed. The United States conspired to tear Panama from Colombia in 1903, in return for getting a 10-mile zone wherein the United States was effectively sovereign and would build the canal.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton will rebuff a personal appeal from the president of Panama and skip next month's politically freighted ceremony at which the United States will hand over control of the Panama Canal, administration officials said yesterday. The White House had been deeply divided between policy experts who implored Clinton to go and political advisers who feared that the image of the president turning over control of the canal would damage Clinton's would-be successor, Vice President Al Gore.

MIREYA Moscoso, the new president of Panama, is not the only foreign leader educated in the United States, but she is the first with a degree in interior decorating from Miami-Dade Community College.Ms. Moscoso, elected in May, heads a party that is weaker in the legislature than its opposition. In recent days, she hammered out agreements with minor parties to give her a bare working majority, vulnerable to defections.Her government will take over the Panama Canal on Dec. 31, under the treaty signed by President Jimmy Carter and the Panamanian dictator Omar Torrijos in 1977.

Can one just go back and forth through the Panama Canal and spend a few days nearby, flying there and back?You can book a complete tour from the United States, including modations and a flight, so it might be cheaper and simpler to take a package after all.Canal transits are on ships operated by Argo Tours of Panama: the Islamorada, which holds up to 125 passengers, and the 500-passenger Fantasia del Mar.Argo's agent in the United ble range from $260 a...

President Barack Obama's jobs bill, a relatively modest effort given the risks the economy faces and the toll that extended joblessness has taken on American workers, is bogged down in a divided Congress and is about to get more so. Senate leaders are moving to amend the plan to substitute a tax surcharge on millionaires for the provisions Mr. Obama had used to offset the bill's $447 billion cost. That's a perfectly sensible idea, given the massive tax benefits the rich have seen during the last decade, but it's even more dead on arrival in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives than Mr. Obama's initial plan, which relied on things like an end to tax breaks for oil companies and a smaller tax increase on families making more than $250,000 a year.

Gov. Martin O'Malley is expected to announce today that a company will invest hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade the port of Baltimore - a project likely to bring thousands of jobs to the city. The deal, part of a long-term lease agreement, is needed to prepare the port for the larger ships expected to dominate maritime commerce after the widening of the Panama Canal is completed, high-ranking administration officials said. They identified the company that will take over container operations at Seagirt Marine Terminal as Ports America Chesapeake, a newly chartered affiliate of Ports America Group - the terminal's current operator.

The port of Baltimore has concentrated its search for a private partner to operate the state-owned Seagirt Marine Terminal on two competitors - a vital step in preparation for the expected widening of the Panama Canal in 2014. The Maryland Port Association said Tuesday that Ceres Terminals Inc./Alinda Capital Partners LLC and Ports America Group/Highstar Capital have passed the qualification process and will be permitted to submit bids to run the Southeast Baltimore terminal. The lead partners are both familiar names in the Baltimore port.

Dow Jones swaps Travelers, Cisco for Citigroup, GM NEW YORK: - The Dow Jones industrial average is the latest Wall Street institution to be reshaped by the financial crisis. The stock market's best-known barometer is adding Cisco Systems Inc. and Travelers Cos. and dropping General Motors Corp. and Citigroup Inc. The changes were announced as GM entered bankruptcy protection, a move that was widely expected. Cisco, which makes computer networking gear, is filling the role left by GM after 83 years as part of the Dow. Travelers, the property and casualty insurer and one-time division of Citicorp, will replace its former parent.

George L. Wallace Jr., a Coast Guard veteran who was stationed in Hawaii in its early days of statehood and a longtime fly-fishing enthusiast, died of lung cancer Jan. 16 at his daughter's home in Arnold. He was 69. Mr. Wallace was born in Baltimore to a seamstress and a mill foreman and grew up on North Robinson Street on the city's east side. In 1957, he graduated from Mount St. Joseph High School, and he joined the Coast Guard that year. He was stationed in 1959 on the island of Kauai.

GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA -- President Fidel Castro wages a silent protest against the U.S. "tenants" of this bay in southern Cuba from a drawer in his desk. There lie 47 uncashed checks drawn on the U.S. Treasury, each for $4,085, the annual rent fixed in a 1903 lease agreement that has vexed Cuba's leader since a leftist revolution brought him to power nearly a half-century ago. The presence of U.S. troops on Cuban soil has long rankled Castro, who has often ranted about the "imperialist occupation."

Gov. Martin O'Malley is expected to announce today that a company will invest hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade the port of Baltimore - a project likely to bring thousands of jobs to the city. The deal, part of a long-term lease agreement, is needed to prepare the port for the larger ships expected to dominate maritime commerce after the widening of the Panama Canal is completed, high-ranking administration officials said. They identified the company that will take over container operations at Seagirt Marine Terminal as Ports America Chesapeake, a newly chartered affiliate of Ports America Group - the terminal's current operator.

I'm interested in seeing the Panama Canal, but don't want to do a lengthy cruise. Are there any cruise lines that offer a segment of a cruise through the canal? Many cruise ships sail through the Panama Canal on repositioning cruises. They're typically headed from their Caribbean itineraries to Alaska, or vice versa. Some lines also offer 10-day Panama Canal sailings that start, for example, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and end up in Acapulco, Mexico, then return. You might find a cruise line that would allow you to pick up a portion of such a cruise, but it would have to have available cabin space and would have to determine pricing before you left.

MARYLAND Concern over plan for condos Though hundreds of residents of Federal Hill are alarmed by plans to build modern-looking condominiums in the neighborhood, there might not be much they can do to stop it. More than 200 have signed a petition opposing plans to replace two storefronts with the five-story project. pg 1B Campaign of cheers, checks Baltimore's Bethel AME Church showered Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. with ovations and donations yesterday while Mayor Martin O'Malley was at B'nai Israel Congregation.