Choice

NICHE CARGO, it's called. Forest products, autos, heavy equipment. That's where the port of Baltimore should focus its attention, according to a carefully devised strategic plan announced four years ago. The strategy is beginning to pay off. Baltimore's port, a key economic engine for this region, is No. 1 in the nation in roll-on/roll-off cargo. It handles more wood pulp, aluminum imports and raw sugar imports than any other U.S. harbor. It's now the port of choice for magazine-quality paper, generating more jobs and spinoff economic value.

WASHINGTON - It is an article of faith in politics that the selection of a running mate is a defining moment for a future president, even though history shows that vice presidential nominees rarely influence the outcome of a national election. For Gov. George W. Bush, an unknown quantity to many Americans, the choice could be particularly important. Vice President Al Gore's campaign has raised questions whether Bush has the background and knowledge to be president. Bush has countered by arguing that as a big-state governor for the past six years, "I have been a decision-maker, [and]

A team of Howard County students scored first place in one category of the 2009 International Botball Tournament, an educational robotics competition. Three teenagers who attend Cedar Brook Academy, a private school in Clarksburg in Montgomery County, worked for about four months to develop a mobile, autonomous robot, winning the judge's choice award at the regional level and topping the Alliance Match category at the international level in July. "My favorite part for the past couple years has been winning," said Ethan Myers, 16, the team captain, who's been competing annually since sixth grade.

In 1994, when Three Tall Women won Edward Albee his third Pulitzer Prize, it was hailed as the return of a playwright whose work had become relatively inaccessible to mainstream audiences. Based on his adoptive mother, Three Tall Women focuses on a domineering 92-year-old dowager, her 52-year-old caretaker and a young lawyer. But when an unexpected connection is revealed among these three women, Albee's play turns out to be far less conventional than it first appears. Center Stage's production, which opens Wednesday, will be the first Albee play the theater has produced since 1974's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

PRESIDENT CLINTON, in another move to co-opt a Republican issue, has vowed to block United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali from another five-year term. His White House spokesman, Mike McCurry, describes the U.N. headquarters in New York as a building "stuffed with too many bureaucrats and stuffed with too much waste and inefficiency." Bob Dole, a constant critic of the 73-year-old Egyptian statesman, will have a tough time topping such undiplomatic language.Politics aside, the president is fully justified in taking this action.

NO CHILD SHOULD be left to languish in a school where teachers are unprepared, books are as scarce as gold and "reforms" crop up and disappear like flavors of the month. But lots of poor kids are. Take a peek into any one of dozens of public schools in cities like Baltimore, and you'll see them: Children who aren't learning anything, who are being doomed to life in poverty, and whose parents would send them somewhere else -- anywhere else -- if only they had a choice. And there's the magic word.

Kaiser Permanente of the Mid-Atlantic States opened its Columbia medical office this month, returning the health maintenance organization-style of health care to Howard County, but offering more choices in local physicians. The 17,500-square-foot health center in the Gateway office park is the first in the county for the HMO, filling a dead zone in the company's coverage area between Baltimore and Washington. The office will have full-time and part-time physicians. But new to the program is a range of choices for patients, including more than 30 community physicians.

PBS' "The Choice 2000" is not as even-handed as the network would like us to think, and I for one learned nothing new from watching it. Yet, the two-hour film offering biographies of presidential candidates Al Gore and George W. Bush is indispensable viewing for anyone concerned about casting the most-informed vote possible next month. The reason: research and reporting. The producers from PBS' "Frontline" series pull together virtually everything we know or think we know about these two men and package it into an engaging, easily-digestible two-hour narrative.

By conventional wisdom, Harper's Choice Middle School should be one of Howard County's lower-performing schools.It's the county middle school with the highest percentage of students with limited English skills, the second-highest percentage of special education pupils and the third-highest percentage of students eligible for free lunches.So why was Harper's Choice the only middle school in Howard to meet five of the six standards on the most recent round of the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP)

Wine is the fermented juice of the grape, which by itself is not all that romantic. But centuries of experience have taught us that, when carefully chosen, attractively presented and served to an appreciative partner, wine can enhance a romantic occasion like Valentine's Day in a most delightful way. In this regard, it is distinctly superior to, say, malt liquor. So what makes one wine a more romantic choice than another? It's a difficult question, and there are no hard-and-fast rules.