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Non-Tech : Auric Goldfinger's Short List -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: afrayem onigwecher who wrote (11377)	3/21/2003 10:07:29 AM
From: StockDung	Respond to of 19428

A BEVY OF GOOD NEWS FOR BOOTS AND COOTS, YET THE STOCK CONTINUES TO SINK!!

To: afrayem onigwecher who wrote (11377)	3/21/2003 10:14:34 AM
From: StockDung	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 19428

MARTHA IS PAYING LEGAL FEES FOR POTENTIAL IMCLONE WITNESS By LAUREN BARACK March 21, 2003 -- Martha Stewart is shelling out thousands of dollars in legal fees for pal Mariana Pasternak - a woman who could be used as a witness against Stewart, The Post has learned. Pasternak asked Stewart for $150,000 to pay her mortgage and her legal fees - just before Pasternak began speaking with the Justice Department last year. Pasternak flew with Stewart to Mexico on Dec. 27 - the day Stewart sold her 3,928 shares in biotech company ImClone, whose founder and former CEO Sam Waksal has been indicted for insider trading. Stewart balked at paying Pasternak's housing costs, but agreed to pay her legal expenses, according to a source familiar with the investigation. Stewart is currently being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission for possible insider trading and obstruction of justice connected to the ImClone trading scandal. The S.E.C. served Stewart, the chairman of Martha Stewart Omnimedia, with a Wells Notice last year. Stewart sold her ImClone shares the same day her pal, ImClone's CEO Sam Waksal, tipped family members that the Food and Drug Administration was rejecting a marketing application for ImClone's experimental drug Erbitux. When that news hit days later, the stock started its dramatic downward spiral. A spokesman for Martha Stewart Omnimedia declined to comment. Lawyers for Pasternak and Stewart could not be reached for comment. A spokeswoman for Martha Stewart could not be reached for comment.

To: afrayem onigwecher who wrote (11377)	3/21/2003 11:29:59 AM
From: StockDung	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 19428

Sprout-picker convicted of fraud A man who tricked his fiancee out of £73,500 by claiming he was a wealthy singer-songwriter for well-known boy bands has been convicted of fraud and theft. Brian Simpson, 42, from Grantham, Lincolnshire, met widow Linda Pinnock, 44, at a singles club in Cambridgeshire. A jury at Cambridge Crown Court unanimously found Simpson guilty of four charges after deliberating for just 90 minutes. He had denied three charges of obtaining property by deception, and denied one count of stealing furniture from Mrs Pinnock's farmhouse. The jury had heard during the trial that Simpson, a part-time Brussels sprout picker in the Fens had claimed that he wrote songs for Boyzone and Westlife, had met Madonna, and ran a successful music company. By November 2001, when they had known each other for almost two years, they were living in a caravan after Mrs Pinnock sold her farmhouse in Haddenham, Cambridgeshire. The caravan was on the land of a house she had bought in Nottinghamshire. The court heard that Simpson had told Mrs Pinnock that he avoided having a high profile because he did not want any publicity. Their relationship ended early last year. The court heard Mrs Pinnock had withdrawn £33,000 and £40,000 in two separate amounts which she lent to Simpson. But Simpson had claimed that she cleared her account out because she did not want any involvement in her late husband's business. Simpson agreed with a prosecution comment that she lied about what he had told her because she was a jilted lover. Story filed: 14:08 Friday 21st March 2003

To: afrayem onigwecher who wrote (11377)	3/21/2003 11:35:09 AM
From: StockDung	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 19428

Beware the 'hellfighter' stock money.cnn.com Shares of Boots and Coots are up more than 250% this week. Too bad it might go bankrupt. March 20, 2003: 12:08 PM EST By Paul R. La Monica, CNN/Money Senior Writer NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Usually when a company says it is considering filing for bankruptcy, its stock plunges. Not Boots & Coots, a company that focuses on fighting oil well fires. The stock has surged 325 percent since announcing that it might file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Feb. 18 and is up more than 250 percent this week alone, as of Thursday morning. More than 70 million shares changed hands on Thursday morning, seven times the stock's average daily volume. Why? It appears that investors are hoping that the company will do major business if Iraq sets many of its oil fields on fire. To that end, the stock gushed nearly 20 percent Thursday morning following confirmation of fires in southern Iraq near the Kuwaiti border. The stock had fallen as much as 48 percent earlier in the morning. A Boots & Coots (WEL: down $0.10 to $2.00, Research, Estimates) competitor, RPC Inc., has shot up 23 percent this week and was up 5 percent Thursday morning. Even though the companies might benefit from Iraqi oil fires, day traders are probably fueling this surge, and the average investor should stay away, said Dan Pickering, director of research for Simmons & Co., a Houston-based investment bank focusing on the energy sector. "There is no doubt that if Iraq torches oil wells, there will be a huge amount of business for these companies," Pickering said. "But this is a very speculative investment." Both companies have relatively small market values, tiny floats and no mainstream analyst coverage. So their shares will probably be extremely volatile and are likely to drop once the war is over. That's what happened to RPC (RES: up $0.55 to $12.90, Research, Estimates) in 1991. The stock soared 35 percent during the Gulf War but by the end of 1991, it was back to where it began before the war started. Boots & Coots was not publicly traded during the first Gulf War. And just a reminder: Boots & Coots is considering a bankruptcy filing. If history doesn't repeat itself and Iraq leaves the oil wells alone, look out below. So investors interested in oil fire fighters would be better off saving their money and renting John Wayne's "Hellfighters" instead of buying these stocks.

To: afrayem onigwecher who wrote (11377)	3/21/2003 11:55:22 AM
From: StockDung	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 19428

Crude Oil Falls as U.S., U.K. Secure Iraq's Biggest Oil Fields By Soozhana Choi New York, March 21 (Bloomberg) -- Crude oil fell for a seventh session as U.S. and U.K. troops secured Iraq's two largest oil fields, limiting damage to wells by Iraqi troops. The war to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein entered a second day as cruise missiles struck Baghdad and allied troops pushed into the country. As many as 30 oil wells in southern Iraq were on fire, U.K. Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon said. Iraq's biggest oil field in the South, Rumaila, has more than 600 wells, according to the U.S. Energy Department. ``That's not a huge number of wells on fire,'' said Tom Bentz, an oil broker at BNP Paribas Commodity Futures Inc. in New York. ``Obviously it will affect some Iraqi output but not enough to send prices surging. People are still confident that this will be a short-lived war.'' Crude oil for May delivery was down 72 cents, or 2.7 percent, at $27.40 a barrel as of 10:06 a.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices have plummeted 28 percent since March 12. Oil reached $27.10 during the session, the lowest price since Dec. 10. In London, the May Brent crude-oil futures contract fell $1, or 3.9 percent, to $24,50 a barrel on the International Petroleum Exchange. Iraq's Rumaila field in the south holds the largest crude-oil reserves and produces about 40 percent of the country's oil, according to Dan Butler, an oil-market analyst with the Energy Department's Energy Information Administration. Iraq last month pumped 3 percent of the world's oil. U.S. Special Forces took oilfields around Kirkuk in northern Iraq and the nearby airport of Bamerni, Abu Dhabi Television news said. The U.S. 3rd Infantry Division is leading the main advance toward Baghdad, Sky News reported. Southern Port British troops carried out an amphibious assault on the Faw peninsula south of Basra, the BBC said. Basra is a southern Iraqi city near the Rumaila oil field. U.K. military officials who asked not to be named said the fields were secure. ``If allied forces have secured the areas around Basra and Kirkuk then you've effectively saved most of the Iraqi oil industry,'' said Bruce Evers, an analyst at Investec Henderson Crosthwaite in London. Iraq is pumping 573,600 barrels of oil a day to the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean, the lower end of what the pipeline normally carries, Turkey's pipeline monopoly Botas said. The pipeline normally carries between 573,600 barrels and 603,800 barrels a day, said Gulsum Korkmaz, a Botas spokeswoman. Allied movements in the north and the south came amid conflicting intelligence reports on whether Hussein was killed in the opening assault on Baghdad. In a news conference broadcast by the BBC, Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Al-Sahaf said Hussein was safe. The Washington Post, citing unidentified U.S. intelligence officials, said Hussein and possibly one or both of his sons were inside the compound in southern Baghdad when it was struck by bombs and cruise missiles. U.K. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told the BBC that the progress of the current campaign meant there may not be a need for the ``shock and awe'' strategy of massive bombardment initially planned.