Abandonment

Two men, one armed with a handgun, robbed a Jessup bank of an undetermined amount of cash Thursday afternoon but dropped the bag of money when a dye pack exploded, Howard County police said.No one was injured during the robbery, which occurred shortly after noon at the Signet Bank in the 8600 block of Washington Blvd., police said.The two men entered the bank, demanding money from the tellers.One robber vaulted the counter as the other stood in the lobby with the handgun.The robber who vaulted the counter ordered the four tellers to empty their cash in a bag, police said.

WASHINGTON - The refusal of enough House Republicans to support the version of a patients' bill of rights President Bush says he wants is only the latest evidence that something is missing in his dealings with his own party colleagues. What appears to be missing is fear - fear of what he can, and just might, do to them if they don't deliver him legislation that provides the protection for HMOs against what he considers excessive litigation by dissatisfied patients. His early charm crusade that worked for his deep tax cut proposal and his education reform initiative appears to have lost its effectiveness with Republican moderates who are now showing no reluctance to stand up to him. The spectacle of 19 of them bucking him and House Speaker Dennis Hastert on campaign finance reform is becoming routine on other matters as well.

EVEN a brief stay in the West Bank places the Hebron massacre in perspective.An aberrant act by a psychopath perhaps, but one that was waiting to happen.It is also one that has happened many times in the 1980s, as repeated armed attacks on unarmed civilians, beginning with the bombs in West Bank mayors' cars, have maimed and claimed the lives of Palestinians.Victims of other "mini-massacres" include three Palestinian students in Hebron in July 1983, seven Palestinian workers outside Tel Aviv in May 1990 and 18 Palestinian worshipers in Jerusalem in October 1990.

An abandoned wooden structure in the 7600 block of Woodbine Road, filled with old automobile parts, burned to the ground after a fire was discovered in the building about 2 a.m. yesterday.Engines from Winfield, Mount Airy and Lisbon of Howard County responded and fought the fire until about 5 a.m., according to a spokesman at the Winfield station.One engine from Winfield remained at the site until 10:30 a.m. to deal with possible flare-ups, the spokesman said.The cause is under investigation by the state fire marshal's office.

KEVIN Phillips, the Republican Democrats love most to quote, has outlined a sour yet savvy political analysis that bodes ill for both major parties but reserves its harshest judgment for President Clinton.A prolific writer and political analyst -- his most recent book is "Boiling Point: Democrats, Republicans and the Decline of Middle Class Prosperity" -- Mr. Phillips told a Comstock Club audience in Sacramento last week that Mr. Clinton seems to have blown a historic opportunity to acknowledge and reward an enraged and economically failing middle class.

An unusual auction took place recently on the steps of the Clarence E. Mitchell Courthouse. Four abandoned houses, removed from their owners and ordered into receivership by the District Court, were auctioned to developers eager to rehabilitate them into residential units.This kind of legal redistribution of vacant houses will become a routine procedure in coming months. A total of 71 other vacant houses are to be auctioned by Save A. Neighborhood Inc., a non-profit organization the Community Law Center created to help the court dispose of vacant problem houses under a new city receivership law.The Community Law Center is using this new weapon quite successfully.

Republican Ellen R. Sauerbrey said yesterday that she won't take her legal challenge of the gubernatorial election to the state's highest court, a decision made after advisers warned that the battle would be too costly in terms of money and public opinion.In a brief written statement, Mrs. Sauerbrey announced that she was abandoning her scheduled appeal of Friday's Anne Arundel County Circuit Court decision that rejected her attempt to nullify Gov.-elect Parris N. Glendening's narrow victory in November.

Despite a door-to-door canvass yesterday of every apartment in a Lafayette Courts public housing high-rise, authorities were unable to find the mother of a newborn boy dumped -- alive and inside a plastic garbage bag -- in the building's trash chute.The infant, with his umbilical cord attached, was rescued Sunday night by police and firefighters after a tenant heard his cries. The bag was found stuck in the chute between the first and second floors of the building at 200 Aisquith St.Police said the infant was examined and treated at Johns Hopkins Hospital for a minor head cut and placed in the custody of the Baltimore Department of Social Services.

Every Secret Thing, by Laura Lippman. William Morrow. $24.95. 388 pages. Laura Lippman, author of the Tess Monaghan series (Charm City, Baltimore Blues), has won every prestigious American mystery award: the Edgar, Agatha, Shamus, Anthony and Nero Wolfe. Her latest foray into mystery and crime introduces a new detective, Nancy Porter (formerly Potrcurzski, a cop from a family of cops with a fed for a husband) and a much darker vision, both of which will no doubt earn another round of accolades.

As a child in England, I was taught that Eskimos in North America put their old people on ice floes to die. Pulled them 'way out on a sled, then turned their backs and left them behind.Last month a woman drove her 82-year-old father several hundred miles from home and dumped him outside the men's room at a dog-racing track in Post Falls, Idaho. He was found there, strapped to a wheelchair and holding a bag of diapers. On his baseball cap were the ironic words: ''Proud to be an American.''Alzheimer's disease made John Kingery oblivious of his name or surroundings, but local officials traced him to a Portland, Oregon, nursing home where he had lived for 18 months before his daughter abruptly removed him and abandoned him in another state.