Countries

Well here we go again, messing around with other countries around the world ("Obama and the Arab spring" May 20). Every time we do this we end up either picking the wrong side or just get everybody involved mad at us. President Obama already has managed to get Libya, Syria, Egypt and Israel mad at us. Sometimes it is just best to mind your own business and just butt out. The liberal news media pick on Sarah Palin for her lack of foreign affairs...

Just when Washington looked like it was completely preoccupied with the scandals, real and imaginary, swirling around the White House, a group of Democrats and Republicans in the Senate managed the unexpected (and, these days, extraordinary): They agreed on something. The vote Tuesday night in the Senate Judiciary Committee to forward to the floor a massive overhaul of the nation's immigration system was, to be sure, a small step and doesn't guarantee success in the full Senate, much less the House of Representatives.

Paris. -- Thanksgiving weekend is an appropriate time fo reflection on those who have nothing to be thankful for. There are plenty of them in the United States, whom it has been official policy to consider objects of economic and social predestination, people created by God to populate ghettos or become ''street people,'' and to die young and drugged.The philosophy of the new Clinton administration is activist, unresigned to the presumed fatalities of the marketplace, so we may hope to see some change in this.

The U.S. Peace Corps will begin accepting applications from same-sex couples who wish to serve overseas together for the first time next month, the agency announced Tuesday. The move follows a broader shift by the Obama administration toward publicly supporting gay rights and denouncing LGBT discrimination globally through U.S. diplomatic efforts, including at the State Department and the United Nations. The Peace Corps said opening its doors to same-sex domestic partners "further diversifies the pool of Peace Corps applicants and the skills of those invited to serve overseas in the fields of education, health, community economic development, environment, youth in development and agriculture.

Earlier this month, the New York State comptroller's office announced that the bonuses that Wall Street expected to hand out for 2005 would total $21.5 billion. That's twenty-one-and-a-half billion dollars! It was the biggest amount ever gifted to the big money men and women in the securities industry. It was a 15.5-percent increase over the previous year and the biggest increase since 2003. Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi calculated an average year-end bonus at $125,000. That means 172,000 men and women shared in the bonus pool of $21.5 billion.

THEIR economies ruined, Honduras and Nicaragua cannot begin reconstruction without massive forgiveness or postponement of their combined $10 billion international debt.They cannot possibly make payments for two years because the countries' production was wiped out by Hurricane Mitch. If they are penalized for not doing so, hopes of reconstruction from new borrowing will be set back.Needed airlifts of food and medicine are growing. The promise of U.S. Army engineers' help in erecting temporary bridges will help.

IT SHOULD COME as no surprise that the recent United Nations special session on AIDS produced few breakthroughs. What emerged, however, was a broader understanding and deeper commitment on the part of member nations to building the health infrastructure that is the only sure means of stemming the AIDS pandemic. Especially hard hit have been the poorer nations of the world, especially in Africa, where two-thirds of those currently infected with the AIDS virus live. To be sure, there was too much rhetoric and posturing at U.N. headquarters, as usual.

If Saddam Hussein had held on to Kuwait in 1991, oil would have been at the center of world politics. Much of the world would have been worrying about security of supply, and Hussein would have gained a major call over the world economy. He could have used such an oil position as a large bargaining chip for achieving his ambitions for hegemony and weaponry.But he didn't, and the fact that oil has not been central to the current confrontation with Iraq underscores how much has changed in the global oil picture.

THE 13th International AIDS Conference brought new hope that governments and the private sector together can slow the disease's lethal march through Africa. The United States' decision to offer $1 billion in loans annually to fight the disease in Africa will help considerably, but suffering countries need more help from outsiders, and they must help themselves. Many sub-Saharan nations have frighteningly high rates of HIV infection. In 1999, 85 percent of the world's 2.6 million AIDS-related deaths occurred in Africa, and 5.6 million new cases emerged in sub-Saharan countries.

FEW STROKES of midnight are as portentous as this New Year's in Europe, which ushers in the euro as the currency of 12 countries. No more changing escudos to drachmas, or francs to marks. The euro (current value about 89 cents) is king. The national and international currencies will trade together for two months. Come March, the fabled notes and coins of 300 million Europeans will vanish from use, worth only their weight in Confederate dollars. This is a boon to the rushing American tourist, unsure of which one is Belgium, nibbled to death by money-changing fees.

At last month's Academy of Country Music Awards, Brad Paisley performed his single, “Beat This Summer,” alongside John Mayer. The audience held up cell phones - the modern version of the lighter at concerts - that displayed bright, flashing colors that changed in time with the song. It was an eye-catching trick, and it wouldn't have been possible without Wham City. Yes, the same Wham City responsible for some of Baltimore's most wonderfully surreal music, comedy, theater, art and more since the mid-2000s.

Joel Rosario rode anyway. Upon returning to the jockey's room last May 20, he learned that his brother Marino , a police officer in his native Dominican Republic, had been killed in a motorcycle accident. Creative Cause -- and a chance to ride in his first Preakness -- awaited. Rosario went out to the track. "I just think it was really sad for me," he said Friday morning at Pimlico Race Course. "It was something that really hurt me. " Rosario took Creative Cause out with Bodemeister on the lead, but sagged to third as I'll Have Another won a duel down the stretch.

Deadly industrial accidents in the developing world are tragically common, but the recent collapse of a garment factory in Bangladesh that took the lives of more than 500 workers has captured the American public's attention, and no wonder. Knowingly or unknowingly, most Americans at some point have purchased clothing or other items made in Bangladesh, where factory workers labor under sweatshop conditions and employers keep manufacturing costs down by ignoring safety and building code violations.

William Seiferth hit four two-run homers Wednesday to power visiting Glenelg Country School past Baltimore Lutheran, 13-4. The Dragons (15-2, 12-2 Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association B Conference), who lost their first two games, haven't lost since March 22. Seiferth went 4-for-4 with four home runs, eight RBIs and an intentional walk. Jack Dougherty also hit a home run for Glenelg Country. The Quakers fell to 5-10 and 3-9. River Hill 5, No. 2 Oakland Mills 3: Shortly after No. 9 Atholton (11-2)

As I watched the horrific scenes from the Boston Marathon, and later the activities at political, social, religious and sporting events, with disconnected disbelief, I realized that the terrorists exemplified a political miscalculation, a social misunderstanding of "who" we are as a people and a nation ("Swift justice for suspected Boston bomber" April 23). Yes we argue, we debate, we fail to compromise, we discriminate and we absolutize our lifestyles and values. Yet what we witnessed on Patriot's Day and its sequelae was an unspoken coming together that transcended our petty priorities and differences.

Dallas-based chain of bakery/cafes La Madeleine Country French Café is eyeing the Baltimore area, with plans to open up to eight new franchised locations. A Baltimore-area restaurant is expected to open in the next year, with several more opening shortly after, a company spokesman said Monday. The restaurants in the Washington, D.C., market "are doing extremely well, and the company's momentum in the mid-Atlantic region is fueling its growth toward Baltimore," said Jason Gilbreth, the spokesman.

WASHINGTON -- With as much diplomatic delicacy as it could muster, the U.S. government advised traveling Americans yesterday that dozens of countries might not fix year 2000 computer problems in time to prevent major disruptions around Jan. 1.In its first country-by-country assessment of the "Y2K bug," the State Department said many nations are likely to suffer disruptions in energy systems, communications, health care and shipping. No foreign country is free of Y2K risk, it said.The reports range from cautiously optimistic for developed countries such as Japan and France to gloomy but hopeful for Russia and other states from the former Soviet Union.

MANY AMERICANS may be wondering what led to the massive demonstrations at the economic summit in Genoa, Italy. The answer: The protesters are convinced that the managers of globalization are taking our world in the wrong direction. As President Jacques Chirac of France noted during the summit, "One hundred thousand people don't get upset unless there is a problem in their hearts and spirits." Trade unionists, environmentalists, human-rights advocates, AIDS activists and proponents of Third World debt cancellation fear that corporate globalization is leading to greater inequality, increasing job insecurity, the destruction of our environment and, perhaps most frighteningly, the weakening of our democracies.

BALTIMORE -- A tuba and banjo duo dressed in saddle shoes, khakis and button-down shirts plays polkas and foxtrots by a set of escalators at the Baltimore-Washington International Airport on Friday morning. A nearby shoeshine man takes a break from his work to watch them and smile. It's a lighthearted moment that contrasts strongly with the scene a few feet away. There, in security lines for Terminal C, passengers intentionally avoid making eye contact as they shuffle toward whirring machines, removing their shoes and preparing for the possibility of delay, interrogation or arrest.

When Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. completes three deals announced in the past two months, it will own more television stations across the country than any other company. The Hunt Valley company will operate 134 stations in 69 markets, reaching more than a third of all U.S. homes with televisions. It will have more than doubled in size in about two years, and that's presuming it doesn't broker any more acquisitions. It still won't own stations in megamarkets such as New York or Los Angeles, but that's part of its strategy.