Hurricane Dennis descends on Bahamas
NASSAU, Bahamas (AP) — Hurricane
Dennis strengthened as it crept up on the
Bahamas on Thursday, sending residents scur
rying to grocery stores to stock up on supplies.
By this morning, Dennis was expected to
come within 40 miles of the Bahamas’
Eleuthera Island, a 110-mile-long strip of pink
sand 8,000 people call home.
“People still remember Hurricane Andrew
here from 1992, so we’re keeping an eye out for
it,” Eleuthera hotel owner Harcourt Cambridge
said.
In die Bahamian capital, Nassau, boats were
hauled out of the harbor, and the governor gen
eral’s official residence was boarded up. One
resident, 25-year-old Brian Deal, said he had
bought lumber to cover his windows but was
waiting to see how the storm would progress.
Forecasters expected a weather system
moving east across the United States to force
Dennis away from Florida. The National
Hurricane Center in Miami said Dennis might
never hit land. But it also could turn and strike
near South Carolina as early as Sunday, when il
could be packing winds up to 109 mph, said
forecaster Robert Molleda.
“We’re hot letting anyone off the hook any
_ where along the coast ” said Todd Kimberlain,
another meteorologist at the center.
Dennis became a hurricane late Wednesday
as its winds reached 75 mph. At 5 p.m. EDT
Thursday, its maximum winds were up to 80
mph with hurricane force winds extending 45
miles from its center. The strongest were in the
northeast quadrant facing open seas.
Dennis was stalled about 40 miles east
northeast of San Salvador and 210 miles east
southeast of Nassau.
Forecasters predicted the storm would
strengthen as it continued at about 7 mph on its
west-northwest course.
As Dennis advanced, Bahamian authorities
put the central Bahamas and some northwest
Bahamian islands on hurricane warning and the
rest of the northwest on hurricane watch. Some
officials said they feared residents were being
complacent.
The Club Eleuthera Resort said it was con
sidering chartering an airplane to fly 180 Italian
guests to a sister resort m Cuba if the storm
worsened.
“Most of the guests are a little nervous
because they’ve heard all die stories about hur
ricanes, but we’ve told them not to worry at this
point,” manager Shawna McCarthney said.
Two other nearby storms posed Little threat
Thursday, forecasters said.
Cindy, upgraded to a hurricane again late
Wednesday, was far out in the Atlantic. And
Emily — which sprang up at near-hurricane
strength Tuesday — began to lose strength and
was downgraded to a tropical depression.
In the southeast Caribbean, though, two
wooden houses in Barbados were torn down
Thursday morning by winds that the Barbados
Meteorological Office said could have been
u
Most of the guests are a
____
little nervous... but we’ve
told them notjo worry at
. • ■ ..
this point.
* '
Shawna McCarthney
Club Eleuthera Resort manager
associated with Tropical Storm Emily, even
though it was more than 200 miles away and
likely to dissipate offshore.
“Everything in my house is damaged, my
house flat on the ground,” Etheline Forde, a
farm laborer, said at the ruins of her Atlantic
Oceanside home on eastern Peak Bay.
Consumers cite banks
for invasion of privacy.
WASHINGTON (AP) -
Consumers are up in arms over what
they see as banks’ invasion of their
financial privacy, judging from recent
letters sent to the Treasury
Department, the Federal Deposit
Insurance Corp. and other agencies.
“I was utterly shocked to realize
my own bank would provide my cred
it card number to what I feel are uneth
ical, if not illegal, telemarketers,” one
consumer told the Office of the
Comptroller of the Currency, a
Treasury division that oversees
nationally chartered banks. “The next
day I went to the... (bank) branch to
cancel my card.”
For the first time ever, the House
voted on July 1 to give people the right
to block banks and other financial
companies from sharing their person
al data with outside firms, such as
telemarketers. No comparable mea
sure has cleared the Senate.
Copies of die letters were obtained
by The Associated Press under the
Freedom of Information Act.
The letters arose from consumers’
anger at their financial institutions.
Late last year, the government
tried to institute a rule that would have
required banks to track their cus
tomers’ transaction patterns, the so
called “Know Your Customer” rule.
That brought a public outcry over pri
vacy, fracing federal agencies to scrap
the proposal.
It will still allow banks and other
financial companies that are affiliated
to share customer data, such as
addresses, phone numbers, birth
dates, Social Security numbers and
checking and credit card account
information. Data sharing is a major
reason why financial companies want
to merge, as it opens numerous mar
keting opportunities.
In the view of many consumers,
however, such data sharing is a gross
invasion of privacy.
The banking industry defends its
record on protecting customers’ priva
cy and has warned that new laws
restricting data sharing could deprive
consumers of useful financial ser
vices.
Opponent named in Fed decision
WASHINGTON (AP) - The released. soon.”
__-a. i/.t_j:_.. j_it_t_n cut_i_:_i_
* Federal Reserve’s decision two months
ago to raise interest rates for the first
time in two years wasn’t unanimous.';
One Fed policy-maker dissented, say
ing the move wasn’t needed to keep
inflation under control, according to
minutes of the June 30 meeting
released Thursday.
•. Robert McTeer, president of the
" Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, was
the sole opponent of the Fed’s June 30
decision to raise the federal funds rate -
the interest that banks charge each other
on overnight loans - by a quarter of a
point to 5 percent.
Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and
eight other voting members of the
Federal Open Market Committee,
which sets interest rate policies, sup
ported the increase. Alice RivKn, who
at the time was preparing to leave her
post as vice chairman, didn’t attend the
meeting and didn’t vote.
The Fed decided Tuesday to raise
the federal funds rate another quarter
point to 5.25 percent. Whether that
decision was unanimous is unlikely to
be known until Oct. 7, when minutes
for the Aug. 24 meeting are to be
McTeer dissented on the June 30
increase “because he believed that
tightening was unnecessary to contain
inflation,” the minutes for that meeting
said. “He noted that most measures of
current inflation remain low, and he saw
few signs of inflation in the pipeline.”
But in the view of most members,
bumping up interest rates “represented
a desirable and cautious pre-emptive
step in the direction of reducing what
they saw as a significant risk of rising
inflation,” the minutes said.
The 9-1 decision to bump up inter
est rates June 30 was coupled with a
move by the Fed to switch its policy
directive— intended to signal future
moves - to neutral, from one leaning
toward raising rates.
The record of the meeting showed
that the decision to switch the directive
to neutral was reached after consider
able debate.
Some members were concerned
that adopting a directive leaning toward
a rate increase might be interpreted as
an indication that the central bank was
“relatively certain that it would need to
take further tightening action fairly
Other members raised concerns
that a neutral directive “could foster the
misleading conclusion” that policy
makers “no longer believed a further
adjustment to policy might be warrant
ed at some point later this year.” Those
members “saw the odds as reasonably
high that further tightening would be
needed before the end of the year to
gain adequate assurance that inflation
would be contained”
In the end, the nine members sup
porting the move to boost rates said
they also could support the neutral
directive because any misinterpreta
tions by Fed watchers could be correct
ed in Greenspan’s testimony to
Congress in July on the state of the
economy
After die Fed announced its neutrM
directive on June 30, the markets ral
lied Greenspan tried to correct die situ
ation by sounding mote hawkishiri Ms
appearance before Congress, pledging
to move “promptly and forcefully” to
counter inflation.
Those remarks were taken as
strongly signaling an August rate
increase.
Authentic Huskers
Inflatable Chair
.. T ;^6s" . . — . . -- *
burvey: Y2K readiness
will be last-minute affair
WASHINGTON (AP) — The
United States and at least five other
countries do not expect to finish Ax
ing their Year 2000 computer bugs
until just weeks before die new year,
an international survey reported
Thursday.
Two other countries, Slovakia and
Bolivia, do not believe they will fin
ish until next year, meaning problems
could occur alter midnight strikes on
New Year’s Eve.
Bruce McConnell, director of the
International Y2K Cooperation
Center, said the late completion dates
are not necessarily reason to expect
catastrophe. Rather, he said, the sur
vey points to areas in which to inten
sify contingency planning.
Y2K readiness is of greatest con
cern in developed countries, such as
the United States, because they are
the most dependent on information
technology, Y2K planners say.
Many computers were originally
programmed to recognize only the
last two digits of the year, so some
might not be able to differentiate
between 2000 and 1900. Unless they
are reprogrammed in time, comput
ers could malfunction.
The United States listed a
December completion date for com
puters in the health care industry.
Health care has been particularly
troublesome because doctors, hospi
tals and payment systems are so
decentralized.
- “The health sector is the one that
everyone is further behind in, so it’s
not surprising that the U.S. is also
getting finished in health later,”
McConnell said. “I think it’s a cause
for action, a cause for more attention
to be given to making sure the health
sector is ready.”
U.S. health care industry leaders
have insisted they will be ready for
Jan. 1, although a recent congression
al study said assurances from indus
try .groups have been based on sur
veys that may be unreliable because
of low response rates.
Other countries not expected to |
finish until December are: Pakistan
and Macedonia, for air transporta
tion; Bulgaria, for health; Bolivia, for
government services; Colombia, for
customs, and Angola, for sea and
land transportation, customs and
health.
Bolivia also would not be ready
with its customs systems until the
new year, while Slovakia does not
expect to complete its health systems
this year.
The International Y2K
Cooperation Center, a clearinghouse
set up by the United Nations and die
World Bank, received responses from
72 of 195 countries. The completion
dates were self-reported by the
national Y2K coordinator of each
country. Completion was defined as
implementing 90 percent of the fixes. ,
“No country in the world will get
all~of die systems fixed by Jan. 1, but
for those with lots of systems left to
be fixed, it heightens the importance
of knowing what they are going to do
to continue delivery of essential ser
vices,” McConnell said.