Anxiety

...ba href=/anxiety/a/b about the next hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico, were expected to limit any price decline.

Some analysts believe gasoline prices could climb as high as US$3 a gallon this summer, though that assumes some significant disruptions at refineries or difficulty in getting fuel to markets.

On Monday, militants in Nigeria's oil-rich southern delta released their last remaining foreign hostages - two Americans and one Briton - more than five weeks after the oil-industry workers were kidnapped.

The militants took nine foreign oil workers hostage Feb.

18 from a barge owned by Houston-based oil services company Willbros Group Inc., which was laying pipeline in the delta for Royal Dutch Shell PLC.

The group released six of the captives after 12 days in captivity.

The militants are behind a spate of attacks that have cut Nigeria's oil exports by more than 20 per cent.

On Saturday, they said they killed three soldiers in clashes near a key natural gas plant run by Shell.

Shell said there was no impact on the gas plant.

Iran, the No.

2 oil producer in OPEC, also remains a potential source of concern.

It has been referred to the U.N.

Security Council over fears it may want to misuse its nuclear program to make weapons, but the council has been at loggerheads over U.S.-led efforts to ratchet up the pressure on Tehran.

© The Canadian Press, 2006 ...

...ba href=/anxiety/a/b about the outfield, but it doesn't change the fact general manager J.P.

Ricciardi has rightly been after the underrated Wilson ever since left fielder Brian Giles turned down his free-agent offer and re-signed with San Diego.No matter what the Jays now say, they did not want to enter the regular season with platoons in both outfield corners.

Wilson has been dangled so much by Pittsburgh in recent months that he's given himself the appropriate nickname "The Lure" this spring as rumours of his pending departure from the Pirates continue to swirl.There is no starting job available in Pittsburgh for Wilson, despite the fact he's still viewed as an everyday corner outfielder with an on-base-plus slugging percentage of .808 in an injury-plagued 2005 campaign and .851 for his career.

Both of those numbers are higher than any current Jays outfielder had upon entering the final week of last season.But if the Pirates were stingy in their asking price for Wilson over the winter, they've gotten even more so this spring upon learning that starting pitcher Kip Wells will be sidelined for the entire first half of the schedule with a blood clot problem in his throwing arm.The Jays may have been able to offer up a major league ready arm — someone like a Pete Walker, or Downs — several weeks ago to land Wilson.

But with Burnett's status still up in the air, there is no way Downs will be leaving any time soon.As for Walker, the Jays already decided— well before Burnett's injury —that he...

...ba href=/anxiety/a/b and a need for control, rather than confidence.Another Clough-like trait is his unpredictability.

He seems to like to keep players on their toes by not sticking to any routine.

He will turn up at the training ground unexpectedly, alter plans at the last minute, and swing between sympathetic friendliness and abrupt professionalism in a way that can be disconcerting.

He likes to keep his players outside the comfort zone, motivated to retain his good opinion by always giving their best on each occasion.

This is not rule by fear - he is simply giving the message that past performances and past reputations count for nothing with him.

All that matters is the next game, when the players must prove themselves anew.Clough and O'Neill did not get on.

The player was subjected to a barrage of criticism and faint praise, which is said to have hurt O'Neill deeply.

Perhaps the intention was to motivate, but there also appears to have been a resentment on Clough's part which went beyond the professional.

Clough was always conscious of his own limited education, recalling his failing of the 11-plus exam as a traumatic event in his childhood.

O'Neill was an ex-University student of law, a thinker who liked to develop his own opinions and who was articulate enough to express himself to telling effect.

Perhaps Clough told himself that O'Neill was a smart-arse who needed to be taken down a peg, but more than likely the player also induced a sense of inferiority that his manager found hard...