Condemned

BAGHDAD -- U.S. officials yesterday sidestepped the demand of Iraq's prime minister for the immediate handover for execution of three former officials from Saddam Hussein's regime. The U.S. military issued a written statement reaffirming the position of the military and U.S. Embassy that the three condemned men would remain in U.S. custody until the Iraqi government has sorted out disputed procedures for death sentences handed down by Iraq's high tribunal for war crimes. The three men received death sentences in June for their roles in Hussein's internal campaigns during the 1980s that killed up to 180,000 Kurds.

Hollywood has done what the biggest and baddest professional wrestlers never could. It got a hold on "Stone Cold" Steve Austin and wouldn't let go until he gave in. The former World Wrestling Entertainment competitor, who said in a 2003 interview that if a good acting role "got dumped in my lap, I'm cool with that, but it's not something I care to pursue," now hopes to pin down a career as an action star. Austin, who was at the forefront of the wrestling boom in the late 1990s before neck injuries forced him out of the ring four years ago, makes his debut as a lead actor in the action thriller The Condemned, which opens today.

When the rowhouse at 2417 E. Biddle St. came tumbling down recently, a congregation praised God, a grandmother breathed a little easier, and a neighborhood felt things were just a bit safer.The decrepit Formstone building in the heart of a blighted East Baltimore neighborhood known as "Zombieland" has been razed, and city workers are clearing the rubble from the lot where it once stood."We're all elated here now," said Donna Money, president of the Lakewood Chase Community Association and a member of the Bibleway Missionary Baptist Church.

As Upton's Helen E. Wilson prepares to celebrate her 100th birthday Sept. 18, she faces the loss of what she worked much of the century to achieve.Heavy rainstorms -- one late last week and the other on July 22, which spewed 6 tons of sewer and creek-bed trash into the Inner Harbor -- collapsed the roof of her home, snapping the supporting walls and causing an estimated $50,000 in damage.For weeks Wilson, who since the cave-in has stayed at her grandson's home in Ashburton, has set her birthday as the deadline for when she wants to be back in her home, a place that's worth roughly $11,000.

The city Board of Estimates today is expected to approve the purchase of five properties in Wagner's Point in another step toward relocating 270 residents who fear ill health because of neighborhood chemical plants.The properties on the board's agenda today brings to about a dozen the number of homes the city has approved for purchase in the tiny neighborhood in southernmost Baltimore. With the city negotiating to buy about 20 more, about a third of the 92 properties will have been acquired when all the deals are complete.

In the drug-troubled East Baltimore neighborhood locals call "Zombieland," residents trudge by 2417 E. Biddle St., a condemned rowhouse with a Formstone facade, assuming the boarded-up building is the least of their worries.On weekdays, scores of grade-school children pass the building on their way to and from Dr. Rayner Browne Elementary School around the corner. They sometimes play in the dirt and rubble surrounding it. On Sundays, about 100 worshipers skirt the property on their way to service across the street at Bibleway Missionary Baptist Church.

Fourteen people were forced to move yesterday when city housing officials condemned an apartment building shortly after a car ran into a rear wall of the structure.Police said the 1994 Cadillac was traveling in reverse on Riggs Avenue just before noon when it backed into the wall of the three-story rowhouse in the 1000 block of N. Stricker St. One unidentified occupant of the building was injured and taken to Bon Secours Hospital, authorities said.Despite the crash, many occupants of the building's four apartments remained inside until ordered out by housing officials.

25 years ago (week of Oct. 24-30, 1971):Three homes on New Cut Road in Ellicott City were condemned by Howard County and deemed "unfit for human habitation." The houses, which were rented for $8 per week, had no running water. The only sanitary facilities were outdoor toilets, which allegedly had been constructed by the landlord only after condemnation signs had been posted on the property.50 years ago (week of Oct. 20-26, 1946):Major paving work is under way near the railroad depot in Ellicott City.

ALL HOPE that the inspired Million Man March had brought Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan into moderation is shattered. On his month-long tour of African and Middle Eastern states, Minister Farrakhan has sought out as friends not only the enemies of the United States but also those singled out by black American leaders for condemnation as tyrants.Most black members of Congress as well as Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke have joined Randall Robinson, the leader of TransAfrica, in denouncing Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha for suppressing dissent and now for the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa.

COMMUNIST regimes are a form of latent civil war between the government and the people. The state is not merely an instrument of tyranny; the society as well as the executive bodies of the state machine is in a continuous and lively opposition to the oligarchy, which aspires to reduce this opposition by naked force."

There was something unsettling in the air last Monday at Unity United Methodist Church. It was disturbing for the Rev. Napoleon Rush, not because it was new but because he had seen it before. A funeral was about to begin. Young men were walking in and out of church and up to the casket to express ... what? Condolences? Good riddance? He asked them to behave appropriately. He asked them to respect the body that lay at the front of the church and the 300 assembled mourners. They ignored him. As always, he was prepared to speak about the defeating cycle of violence.

Baltimore is proposing to condemn and buy seven homes with arsenic pollution in their yards beside contaminated Swann Park as part of a large waterfront development. The plan for the 50-acre West Covington project in South Baltimore would include hundreds of homes and more than a million square feet of retail and offices beside a cleaned-up and reopened park, city officials said. "It's pretty clear that this part of the city and the whole Middle Branch area offers a very exciting opportunity for development that doesn't exist now," said City Solicitor George Nilson.

Jan. 21 1793 During the French Revolution, King Louis XVI, condemned for treason, was executed on the guillotine.

BAGHDAD -- U.S. officials yesterday sidestepped the demand of Iraq's prime minister for the immediate handover for execution of three former officials from Saddam Hussein's regime. The U.S. military issued a written statement reaffirming the position of the military and U.S. Embassy that the three condemned men would remain in U.S. custody until the Iraqi government has sorted out disputed procedures for death sentences handed down by Iraq's high tribunal for war crimes. The three men received death sentences in June for their roles in Hussein's internal campaigns during the 1980s that killed up to 180,000 Kurds.

Hollywood has done what the biggest and baddest professional wrestlers never could. It got a hold on "Stone Cold" Steve Austin and wouldn't let go until he gave in. The former World Wrestling Entertainment competitor, who said in a 2003 interview that if a good acting role "got dumped in my lap, I'm cool with that, but it's not something I care to pursue," now hopes to pin down a career as an action star. Austin, who was at the forefront of the wrestling boom in the late 1990s before neck injuries forced him out of the ring four years ago, makes his debut as a lead actor in the action thriller The Condemned, which opens today.

In a catastrophically messy action-movie mash-up, The Dirty Dozen meets Survivor and The Most Dangerous Game in The Condemned. This World Wrestling Entertainment production starring "Stone Cold" Steve Austin marks the first time this year I walked into an advance screening of an elaborate American action film and wasn't wanded for cell phones or recording devices. Maybe that's because 90 percent of the action scenes look, sound and move as if they were shot, mixed and edited on a BlackBerry.

When the city of Aberdeen ordered Janice M. Grant to tear down her dilapidated house, it was enough to turn her into an overnight history buff. Racing against the imminent wrecking ball, Grant pulled out tattered newspaper clippings and yellowing letters and interviewed relatives about the home her family has owned for nine decades. She wrote a four-page primer on the history of her early 1900s Colonial: How Eleanor Roosevelt twice visited Grant's aunt, an aide to the first lady, and how the house was among the first in the city owned by blacks.

IN PUBLIC discussions of homosexuality that now focus on the acceptance of gay clergy and gay marriage, references are frequently made to how homosexuality is condemned in Scripture. "It's in the Bible" is the statement often used. For many, this is conclusive that God condemns homosexuality. The implication, obviously, is that society should as well. I would beg to differ on both counts. The statement, "It's in the Bible," is not an argument against homosexuality. Homosexual acts are condemned in some parts of Scripture.

Strapless: John Singer Sargent & the Fall of Madame X, by Deborah Davis. Tarcher Penguin. 262 pages. $24.95. This is a strange book: a brief biography of the renowned artist John Singer Sargent, melded with a light social history of the belle epoque in France, plus a patchy account of the life of Virginie Amelie Avegno Gautreau, a.k.a. Madame X, subject of a famous Sargent portrait. The disparate elements add up to a book that -- no surprise -- lacks coherence and depth. The author would have been better off publishing Strapless as a magazine article.

WASHINGTON -- Alexis Williams died last Sunday afternoon. He was sitting with some friends under an oak tree at a housing project in New Orleans when three men walked up and opened fire. As people scattered, one of the gunmen reportedly remained behind to shoot the dying man in the back. None of which, however awful it sounds, is the most shocking element of the man's death. No, that would be what happened next, as recounted by the New Orleans Times-Picayune: A crowd of more than 200 people assembled around the bullet-punctured corpse, and many of them celebrated.