Despite Bacardi threat, Havana Club J-V enjoys booming rum sales in W. Europe.
I'm just a humble rum merchant," protests Alexandre Sirech as he sits in his cheerful, sunny office decorated with posters of 1950s Havana and shelves lined with liquor bottles of every size, shape and brand imaginable. Of course, Sirech is joking. As director-general of Havana...

From the womb to the tomb.
LIFE is a complicated business but the Catholic Church is determined to simplify it. That, anyway, is the view of the heretics who heard about the draft resolution presented by the International Theological and Pastoral Congress at the 4th World Meeting of Families. In a nutshell it called on...

DA eyes sorghum in producing fuel.
As fuel price becomes prohibitive, the Department of Agriculture (DA), in a tie-up with the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), eyes sweet sorghum as alternative feedstock to sugarcane for manufacturing biofuel ethanol. William D. Dar, ICRISAT director general, said sweet sorghum holds a...

Bitter sweets: a politically connected industry devastates the Everglades.
Sustaining an otherwise cerulean sky, oily black smoke billows a mile high from more than half a dozen fires south of Lake Okeechobee. You can see the smoke from West Palm Beach, like the exhalations of detonated bombs. It is eerily quiet. From the highway around the...

Ethanol projects seen to lure investors.
Byline: MELODY M. AGUIBA Ethanol production will lure local and foreign investors given the incentive of a ready market while sugar producers will benefit from ethanols higher price of P600 per 50-kilo bags compared to the P200 to P400 per bag export price for the sugar surplus....

Remission of Gin: what 18th-century London can teach us about fighting vice.
GIN: The Much Lamented Death of Madam Geneva by Patrick Dillon Norton & Co., $26.95 LIKE GIN. ALWAYS HAVE. IT REMINDS ME of Christmas, and the elderly. I once got laughed out of a trendy Dupont Circle bar for ordering a gin and tonic, but I can't...

Oil firm commits pumps for ethanol.
Byline: MELODY M. AGUIBA One of the countrys three major oil companies committed to putting a pump on ethanol pump in its gasoline stations to help reduce fuel price and provide a market for an abounding sugarcane supply. V. Francisco Varua, Philippine Sugar Millers Association...

Rizal, spirituality, and national destiny.
Byline: Dr. PABLO S. TRILLANA III (Speech delivered at the Rizal Day National Breakfast, Order of the Knights of Rizal, Manila Hotel, December 30, 2004.) DR. Jose Rizal is unique among Filipino historical figures in his broad appeal across social classes in the past and...

Touring and tasting in Scotland's whisky country.
Scenic drives, historic buildings, and distilleries in the Highlands, north of Edinburgh BONNIE SCOTLAND'S Highlands--where craggy peaks give way to undulating green fields laced with rushing rivers--is the rich, damp birthplace of Scotch whisky (from the Gaelic uisge beatha, "water of life"). No drink better captures the essence of...

More than a drink.
AS LOVERS of Scotch abandon ordinary blends in favor of single-malt whiskies, they unwittingly display symptoms of a cosmic shift from Civilization to High Civilization. The process of Civilization consisted of progress from rough to smooth. Our savage ancestors gnawed raw meat off the bone; we delicately nibble pate...