Panama Canal

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.

Q: I would like to travel on a commercial vessel with private accommodations on an around-the-world trip. Can you help?A: There are four major freighter lines that cater to around-the-world passengers and two companies in the United States act as their agents.Freighter World Cruises represents three of them: Bank Line, a ++ British concern, and two German lines, Deutsche Seereederei Rostock (known as D.S.R.) and Niederelbe Schiffahrtsgesellschaft Buxtehube (N.S.B.).Maris USA represents the other one, ABC Containerline, a Belgian company.

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.

PANAMA CITY -- Is Panama City about to become Hong Kong West?Immigration officials were astounded recently when as many as 8,000 Hong Kong Chinese expressed an interest in Panama's little-used policy of granting a passport to anybody willing to put $80,000 in the national bank for five years.The passports appeal to Hong Kong businessmen made nervous by China's takeover of the British colony in 1997, say members of the long-established Chinese community in Panama.Despite Beijing's promise that no changes will be made in Hong Kong's freewheeling way of life and trade before 2047, the switch of sovereignty could generate a westward-bound rush of cash from the Far East's financial capital.

PANAMA CANAL, PANAMA -- The Panama Canal is one of those things you learned about in grade school, perhaps found mildly interesting, then filed away -- very far away -- in the back of your mind, along with historical tidbits like Seward's Folly (what was that again?) and the Spanish-American War (Remember the Maine?). But when you are sitting in a canal lock, marveling that your 780-foot-long cruise ship has just been lifted 28 feet in only eight minutes, you get a new perspective -- and admiration.

WASHINGTON -- Twenty years after signing a wrenching agreement to give the Panama Canal to the Panamanians as the millennium draws to a close, the United States and Panama are talking about how to keep U.S. forces there after the deal's completed.Panamanians who once couldn't wait to see the last U.S. soldier leave their territory, worry about what will befall them economically once the United States relinquishes the Panama Canal and really does leave for good. They now want to keep a U.S. presence without appearing to be under America's thumb.

ON THE PANAMA CANAL -- Less than a month before the start of the U.S. pullout that this nation always wanted, Panama has not one plan for developing the huge chunk of territory under U.S. control, and a majority of citizens now want the Americans to stay.There is little likelihood that nervous Panamanians will get their wish. Under the 1977 Panama Canal treaties that mandate the pullout, the United States has already transferred several hundred buildings and some control of the canal to the Panamanians.

PANAMA CITY, Panama -- Panamanian voters overwhelmingly approved yesterday a $5.2-billion proposal to expand the country's national treasure, the Panama Canal. With 64 percent of votes counted, ballots in favor of the project led those opposed, 78.7 percent to 21.3 percent, prompting Panama's electoral tribunal to declare the "yes" vote victorious. That gave the green light to the first major modification to the 50-mile waterway since it opened in 1914. President Martin Torrijos staked his considerable popularity on voters approving the proposal, which he described in a recent interview as the "chance of a lifetime" for Panama.

The price of everything from running shoes to televisions could go up if West Coast dock workers go on strike this summer, which would deal a fragile U.S. economy another blow as it struggles to recover from a widening crisis in confidence, economists and retail experts said yesterday. Talks between the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and the Pacific Maritime Association have been suspended while union leaders consider the shipping lines' latest proposal. The ILWU's top executives have sharply criticized the offer, leaving retailers dependent on goods from Asia increasingly worried that their supply lines could be cut by a protracted strike.

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.