Compartment

The day is immediately ruined for me when I walk out of my house Saturday and attempt to unlock the door of my car, only to find some dirt ball has beaten me to it, minus any invitation on my part.Wonderful. So now I'll add this break-in to the break-in of my garage a few months back, which I'll add to the break-in of my wife's car a few months before that, which I'll add to the theft of my car about a year ago. This time, apparently noticing the Club locked onto my steering wheel, the dirt ball only went for cash, about $3 in quarters I'd stuck in a little compartment.

A cab driver was robbed at gunpoint of $136 early Friday morning, county police said.Deborah Fowler, 38, told police she was at the 7-Eleven store at the intersection of Ritchie Highway and Church Street in Brooklyn Park shortly before 2 a.m. when two men approached her asking for a ride.One of the men pulled out a small-caliber handgun and demanded money. The second man searched her and took the cash from her, police said. The men ran east on Church Street. Police did not have a description of the bandits nor did they identify the cab company.

Two state troopers were praised yesterday for their perseverance in turning a traffic stop into an arrest of a still-unidentified man, and confiscating a dangerous stash of weapons from a secret compartment in the back of his car.The troopers found a mini-Uzi submachine gun loaded with 30 rounds, a Cobray .380 submachine gun with a laser sight and silencer, and a .38-caliber handgun when they searched the 1987 Lincoln Continental about 10:30 a.m. Thursday on...

Troopers seized $71,000 in drug money hidden in a false gas tank extension in a minivan yesterday after stopping a Virginia man they said was speeding north near Havre de Grace on Interstate 95, authorities said.Col. David B. Mitchell, the new Maryland State Police superintendent, said the stop ended an impressive week of drug interdiction by troopers from the John F. Kennedy barracks in Perryville. Since Jan. 20, JFK troopers have made 14 arrests and seized 19 pounds of cocaine, 2 1/2 pounds of marijuana and confiscated one vehicle, he said.

"Confinements," at UMBC, is a show that works almost all the way. Almost.It is the latest in the fine arts gallery's "Baltimore to Washington" (read regional artists) series. It has a curator in Andrea Pollan of Washington; it has a theme, exploring confinement of several kinds from physical to psychical to sociological; it has a catalog with an essay by Pollan and photographs of the five works on view; and four of the five relate to the theme.As Pollan writes, these works exist in a realm between sculpture and architecture; they are the size of sculpture, but they communicate architecturally.

Q: Enclosed is a photograph of a desk on display in our local heritage society museum. It has pigeonhole dividers in the top compartment, two drawers on one side, a single large compartment on the other and a bowed drawer front.The doors on the top compartment have an inlaid wood design. The mirror and leather writing surface are visible in the picture.Visitors frequently ask questions about it, but we have no information as to style or age.A: This is a Victorian lady's desk and was made about 1875.

The Canadian rail system is divided into Western Canada, Atlantic Canada and Quebec service, plus what is called the Corridor, which stretches between Windsor, Ontario, and Quebec City, Quebec. Corridor service includes Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa, and is like the U.S. Northeast Corridor in that it's an important commuter route with frequent trains.VIA Rail publishes a seasonal National Timetable with maps and schedules for all routes, and descriptions of cars and sleeping facilities. For a copy or information, call (800)

Lip service You can have a little fun with your lipsticks and get greater use out of them if you follow the example of professional makeup artists. Instead of toting dozens of lipsticks to photo sessions, they travel with plastic drugstore pillboxes that are divided into compartments of six, which they've filled with various melted-down lipsticks.Makeup artist Janice Kinigopoulos suggests trying it first with all those lipsticks you never wear because they're too dark, light or too bright.

GLOUCESTER, Va. -- A little past midnight yesterday, Chesapeake Bay pilot William F. X. Band went out on the port wing of the ship's bridge to enjoy the cool night air and the phosphorescent glow stirred up by the wake of a passing ship. His vessel,the Nosac Takayama, was heading north toward the Maryland-Virginia line, miles from shore, when he thought he heard a voice pierce the darkness. A few seconds later, any doubts he had about what to do were dispelled by the sound of a second shout.

NEW YORK -- Police scuba divers inspecting the hull of an oil tanker in New York Harbor made an unusual discovery recently, and it was not only the 366 pounds of cocaine hidden under water in the rudder compartment.It was also the people who were guarding it: two shivering and louse-infested Colombians who had survived five stormy days in a 10-foot air pocket, virtual prisoners of the sea.Customs officials said the tanker crew knew nothing of the stowaways, who had smuggled themselves into the rudder compartment by raft in Cartagena, Colombia, when the compartment was above water.

A man operating a crane was critically injured yesterday after being crushed by falling machinery while working in the same Annapolis development where a man was killed in a similar accident last year. The incident occurred as state regulators prepare for a public hearing on stricter safety standards for crane operators. The 46-year-old man was sitting in a compartment of a crane that was preparing to lift heating and cooling units onto the roof of a gym in the Annapolis Towne Centre when a pulley and other parts tumbled down about 7 a.m., fire officials said.

THE RED CENTER, AUSTRALIA / / Ten days, one wallaby, no kangaroos. My fantasy -- adorable 'roos galumphing around every bush in the Outback -- was just that. Camels -- wild ones -- were another matter. About 60,000 of the feral beasts roam the Outback that unfolded outside the picture window of my train compartment. I had come to Australia to ride the Ghan, the legendary train that bisects the country, traveling from Adelaide in the south to Darwin in the north. It's sometimes called the "Hundred Year Dream" -- the last track was laid just two years ago, capping nearly a century of struggle to connect one end of this great emptiness to the other.

FALLUJAH, Iraq - After nearly 18 hours in the claustrophobic urban canyons that constitute the front lines of the battle for Fallujah, the crew members of the lead Bradley Fighting Vehicle were cramped, weary and low on ammunition. Then they came under heavy enemy fire for the first time all week. Within 15 minutes, as shooting erupted around them, their radio crackled with the news that their company commander's vehicle, blocks behind them, had been hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.

A Memorable Place By Tom Potts SPECIAL TO THE SUN By rail into the Alps with new friends I have been fascinated with railroads all my life, so the decision to buy 15-day Eurail Passes for a European vacation was an easy one. For two weeks, my wife and I traveled in luxurious comfort through the heart of Europe. The most memorable of our rail journeys was the nearly 10-hour trip from Vienna to Zurich. On a crisp November morning, we boarded Train 62 for a prompt departure at 9 o'clock.

A Memorable Place Some experiences transcend language SPECIAL TO THE SUN By Richard Wachter I always thought that when the opportunity to travel to Europe finally arrived, I would not be like the American tourists who expect the rest of the world to talk like us. Instead, I would be ready with grammar books and Berlitz tapes. Good intentions mean little in the real world, however. And when a friend persuaded me to fly to Paris, I had to cram like a college student. It didn't work, but no matter.

IT'S ONE OF those tragedies that sounds totally preposterous until it becomes incomprehensibly real: more than 149 corpses found scattered around a rundown crematory in Georgia. What happened in Georgia is an anomaly; most of the nation's commercial crematories operate without complaint. But as this horrifying turn of events proves, that doesn't mean the industry is problem-free. A decade ago, for example, the decaying corpse of a former Burbank, Calif., mayor was found in a refrigeration compartment -- four months after his widow had received what purportedly were his ashes.

NEW LONDON, Conn. - Floating in the harbor outside the Groton Naval Base is an enormous tube of black steel, so bulky it seems inconceivable it could indeed float. But since 1952, when this tube, equipped with torpedoes and 111 crew and officers, was commissioned as the world's first nuclear-powered submarine, its belly has never touched ground. These days the USS Nautilus is a museum, a relic of the Cold War and once seemingly permanent records of speed and distance. Its cramped passageways wind like a maze through compartment after compartment furnished with metal piping and metal walls and doors, almost all painted a pale green.

The desire for efficiency during a trip to Italy, Austria and Hungary last summer led my wife and me to book an overnight sleeping compartment on a train from Padua, Italy, to Vienna, Austria. Although we had read warnings about the high potential for theft on overnight trains, we felt, given our experiences on several previous trips to the United Kingdom and Europe, that we would have no trouble. We boarded the train just before midnight and were the first to occupy the compartment. The conductor said two people would be joining us at the first stop, and we turned in for the night.

A cab driver was robbed at gunpoint of $136 early Friday morning, county police said.Deborah Fowler, 38, told police she was at the 7-Eleven store at the intersection of Ritchie Highway and Church Street in Brooklyn Park shortly before 2 a.m. when two men approached her asking for a ride.One of the men pulled out a small-caliber handgun and demanded money. The second man searched her and took the cash from her, police said. The men ran east on Church Street. Police did not have a description of the bandits nor did they identify the cab company.

The day is immediately ruined for me when I walk out of my house Saturday and attempt to unlock the door of my car, only to find some dirt ball has beaten me to it, minus any invitation on my part.Wonderful. So now I'll add this break-in to the break-in of my garage a few months back, which I'll add to the break-in of my wife's car a few months before that, which I'll add to the theft of my car about a year ago. This time, apparently noticing the Club locked onto my steering wheel, the dirt ball only went for cash, about $3 in quarters I'd stuck in a little compartment.