Beacon

Technology might never take the search out of search and rescue, but for outdoors enthusiasts in trouble, the ability to get help became a lot easier this month. Personal locator beacons (PLBs) use satellites to alert national dispatch centers and give rescuers the name of the owner and the longitude and latitude readings of the point of origin - the backcountry equivalent of a street address. "These are not just glorified cell phones. These work where cell phones won't," says Lt. Dan Karlson of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

WASHINGTON - Immediately after the Iraq war, turning on the lights in Baghdad was a No. 1 priority along with general security and other basic services. But there's more than one way to bring Iraq out of darkness. Critical to Iraq's future is the future of its media. The largest delegation of Arab non-governmental organizations is meeting for three days in Athens, Greece, beginning yesterday to help design the legal framework for a democratic media for postwar Iraq. With support from the United States, Greece (as president of the European Union)

AMID THEIR budgetary and administrative anxieties, Baltimore school officials cling to this indicator of hoped-for progress: The city high school graduation rate has been going up. Between 1996 and 2002, the rate of students earning diplomas rose from 42.6 percent to 59.2 percent, according to state data on students who persevered from ninth grade to graduation day. The numbers are heartening because for too long more than half of teens who entered some...

For more than a century, Thomas Point Shoal Lighthouse has watched over the Chesapeake Bay and helped define Maryland. Miniature versions of the famous screw-pile lighthouse - the last one of its type standing in its original location anywhere in America - grace T-shirts and postcards, bookshelves and calendars. "It's one of only a handful of things that, when you see it, you think Maryland," says Rodney Little, state historic preservation officer. Now, this 128-year-old jewel is seeking a new identity.

NORTH EAST -- For 167 years -- first by whale oil, later by electricity, then by solar panel -- the Turkey Point Lighthouse burned high above the bluff at the end of Elk Neck State Park, a constant beacon to guide boats big and small around the peninsula jutting into the head of the Chesapeake Bay. Then, on April 1, 2000, the light went out. The Coast Guard, which owns hundreds of lighthouses along the nation's coastline, determined that the remote Cecil...

The rain is horizontal, and the wind is howling. It is the worst storm of the British winter. The BBC reports motorways blocked by overturned trucks and bridges closed because of dangerous crosswinds. And here we are, 300 feet up, atop the White Cliffs of Dover, overlooking the English Chan-nel, across whose white-capped waves the regular ferries to and from France and Belgium dare not venture. We are alone, and we're in our element. More accurately, we're in the keeper's cottage of the 149-year-old South Foreland Lighthouse, snug behind its thick stone walls and locked windows, designed and built by the Victorians to withstand the worst nature can throw its way. It may seem strange to rent such a remote and exposed abode in February, always the cruelest of months in northern Europe.

Above the domes atop Canton's St. Casimir Roman Catholic Church, more than 100 feet in the air, gusts of wind occasionally send Michael Kramer's thin flakes of gold flying into the sky. "There goes a couple bucks," jokes Kramer, a gilder who is putting the finishing touches on a three-month, $40,000 restoration project at the church that symbolizes the resurgence of St. Casimir and the once-bustling Polish settlement it was built to anchor. After 50 years of slow deterioration, both are growing.

Dr. Robert Bragg McDaniel, medical director of a Baltimore drug-addiction treatment center and a recovering addict whose struggle served as a beacon of hope to others with similar substance afflictions, died Saturday of a heart attack at his Ashburton home. He was 52. A third-generation physician dedicated to working with the sick and addicted in some of Baltimore's poorest neighborhoods, Dr. McDaniel -- whose addiction was to prescription drugs -- had been medical director of Glenwood Life Center in Govans since 1999.

Tom Silliman, the man responsible for the care of the antenna that crowns the Empire State Building, climbed 1,454 feet 6 3/4 inches to its pinnacle one recent morning to change the light bulb. Another bulb had burned out about 11 months ago, and Silliman fixed it then, too. Why it went dark again, exactly, remains a mystery. But without a flashing red beacon, the building is in violation of federal aviation law. Then there are the thousands of children who are sure to be disappointed on Christmas Eve when they don't see Rudolph's blinking red nose.

A bill banning discrimination against homosexuals became state law yesterday after organizers of a campaign to overturn the legislation admitted they did not gather enough valid signatures to force a referendum. The measure took effect at 3:31 p.m., when Judge Eugene M. Lerner of Anne Arundel Circuit Court approved an agreement reached by opponents and advocates earlier in the day. "I'm glad you were able to work it out," Lerner said, shaking the hands of lawyers Charles J. Butler and Dwight H. Sullivan, who represented gay rights organizations.