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The lead story in this issue is an opinion column found in the Sports section. Pedro "Rockero" Alcazar dropped dead at a hotel in Las Vegas, a little more than a day and one-half after losing the WBO junior bantamweight championship to Mexico's Fernando Montiel by way of a sixth-round TKO. It's a tragedy for this gifted young athlete, for the family he leaves behind, for his friends and for the entire Panamanian nation. It's also an occasion to take stock of both the sport of professional boxing and the way that Panama treats its athletes, because on both counts there's a need for reform.

There's plenty of tragedy to go around --- way too much --- in Panama lately. Noted in our News Briefs we have a grim indicator of the depth of this country's economic crisis, the starvation death of a little girl in Arraijan. There are a few indications that there's reason for hope in our Business & Economy Briefs, but on balance the news on the economic front is pretty bad. The lead Business story this time is another chapter in the Enron saga, the one in which a major development project that would have provided some jobs in Colon fell by the wayside due to corruption.

In keeping with a long-standing expansive definition of what makes a business story, that section also includes a report from the International Labor Organization's recent global conference in Geneva. In our Spanish-language opinion section, we have a declaration by some of the union activists at that gathering, about a wave of anti-labor repression in many parts of the world. The ILO conference was about how labor can meet the challenges of globalization. A couple of Washington DC economist friends, Mark Weisbrot and Dean Baker, have put the problem in more scholarly terms in a recent report on what neo-liberal trade policies in reality offer to developing and industrialized nations, and Weisbrot states the case in more popular terms in an interview he gave to the Argentine newspaper Clarín.

The Legislative Assembly passed a watered-down version of the press law, which still stinks but at least wouldn't ban all of the contributors to this newspaper from working in Panama. It's one of the subjects that's taken up on an Editorial page that's unusual for taking up two distinct subjects. The other issue taken up there is the escalating war in Colombia and what it means for Panama, a story that also appears under the heading of News --- the head of Colombia's AUC paramilitary admits to acts of air piracy against Panama, and our government does not appear to be very concerned about it.

Our Opinion pages this time get into municipal powers under the Panamanian constitutional system, environmental concerns about the proposed Governmental City project, an Israeli peace activist's ideas for ending the ongoing horror in the Holy Land and Amnesty International's take on Peru's human rights situation. In this issue's Letters page we find an appeal for help from a worthy little independent publication, a rejoinder to legislators who decided that Rod Carew is unworthy of having the National Stadium named after him, a British perspective on a recent column on media content laws and a Cristobal High School grad's opinion about the US controversy over the Pledge of Allegiance.

Willy Gutman, whose work is most often found on our Opinion pages, continues his three-part Science section on emerging biological threats to humanity. (Let us recall that, even though the Taliban has been ousted from power in Kabul, the United States is at war, there are bad guys very much at large, and the FBI apparently isn't close to identifying the person or persons responsible for the anthrax attacks that followed soon after last year's September 11 events.)

Willy's work is also found in the Fun section, where Sparky the Wonder Dog has become accustomed to holding down the fort all by himself. Gutman takes a savagely irreverent swipe at Costa Rica, where one can rest assured that when it snows, "it's only cocaine."

Fourth of July is coming up, and though it's not a holiday in Panama, the American community will be celebrating here. (We won't have a big fireworks show, but I think that the day is fast approaching when this would be very popular with Americans and Panamanians alike in the Panama City metro area.) In Orlando the Panama Canal Society is having its annual reunion, at which we hope to have copies of our special print edition for sale. This magazine-format publication, the content of which is not published online, can be ordered directly from us by mail if you are unable to pick up a copy at the reunion. Copies are $2 by mail to the US, or $3 to places outside the Americas. Send your check or money order to:

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