Word: march
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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After hiding for more than two months behind shuttered windows and CLOSED signs, Panama's bankers were ready for a stampede of cash-starved customers when the institutions reopened last week. With good reason: it was the first time since March 3, when the government controlled by General Manuel Antonio Noriega decreed a bank holiday, that depositors at most of the country's 120 banking institutions were allowed to make limited withdrawals. Yet the queues that curled around street corners last Monday were calm and orderly. Grunted one depositor, Roy Stone, as he waited to enter a Chase Manhattan branch...
...bank reopening is the latest sign that the Reagan Administration's effort to oust Noriega by applying economic pressure is failing to work as planned. The U.S. sanctions imposed last March included a freeze on $50 million in Panamanian bank accounts in the U.S. and suspension of trade preferences on $96 million in annual commerce between the two countries. The moves were expected to paralyze Panama's economy and spark internal pressure for Noriega's departure. But Panamanians are learning to cope with the cash shortage, and the U.S. sanctions may be causing only longer-term damage to Panama...
...pinch. The Panama Canal Commission, which is jointly administered by Panama and the U.S., is bringing cash into the country by airplane to meet its $3.3 million biweekly payroll. Moreover, despite the freezing of U.S. toll payments, the canal racked up a record $30.3 million in revenues during March...
Many domestic business leaders believe confidence can eventually be restored, but only after the political upheaval has ended. Steve Maduro, president of the 110-year-old Felix B. Maduro department store chain, remains optimistic, although he concedes that his March and April sales were 70% lower than during the same period last year. The firm has closed one store and put its 240 employees on half days with half pay. Less generous employers have added some 25,000 Panamanians to the rolls of the unemployed, boosting joblessness to an estimated 20% in recent months...
...March 1986, the Islamic Jihad announced that it had "executed" Seurat. It seems likely, however, that he succumbed, at 39, to his disease. But the jailers told the hostages he was alive and recovering in a hospital. Kauffmann later learned from a radio newscast that Hallat, doomed by his captors' rabid anti-Semitism, had been executed. Kauffmann, Carton and Fontaine were continually moved from apartment to apartment. At one point Kauffmann was wrapped in bandages like a mummy, sealed in a metal box and bolted under the chassis of a truck. When he banged on the side, he was told...