Ebony

Ebony and eleganceThe Ebony Fashion Fair is as close as Baltimore gets to international couture. These are designer fantasies that few wallets -- or figures -- can handle, but it's a real experience seeing those Versaces, Diors and Ferauds in motion. Eunice Johnson, wife of the head of the Ebony enterprises, visits the world's designer salons with an eye to finding the most dramatic and audacious turnouts for the show. Women can dream, and the 39th annual fashion highlight is an opportunity to revel in extravagance.

Chicago -- As the Soviet Union reforms the KGB, the Central Intelligence Agency raises its profile in the U.S. The president is a former head of the CIA, the attorney general-designate has CIA credentials on his resume -- and the CIA has placed an image-boosting advertisement in the current issue of Ebony magazine.The full-page ad portrays an idyllic scene with three children peacefully skipping rope in front of graceful and immaculate row houses as a fourth skateboards by. A grandmotherly type keeps watchful eye from her perch on a porch step, and a headline asks, ''Wouldn't you want to know if U.S. territory was going to be invaded?

Cheryl Green's 11-year heroin and cocaine addiction got so bad she lost custody of her three daughters. She was arrested for panhandling and robbery and wasn't allowed in her mother's West Baltimore house. She thought she'd never break free from drugs. But Audrey Moody wouldn't accept that her middle daughter was lost to drugs. So she took her to court via the nationally syndicated television show Judge Hatchett, on which they appeared Dec. 5, 2000. Since then, Green has gone through detoxification and she has completed six months at a residential treatment facility in Frederick.

Prosecutors have dropped murder and rape charges against a prominent preacher's brother who had been accused of killing 9-year-old Ebony Scott, whose body was found in 1992 in a trash bin at a West Baltimore public housing complex.Court records show that first-degree murder, first-degree rape and first-degree sex offense charges against Elliott Ray, 47, were dropped May 12 for lack of evidence. Police said they still are aggressively looking for the real killer.Investigators said the charges were dropped after a DNA test showed Mr. Ray's bodily fluids did not match the killer's fluids, which were found at the crime scene.

Baltimore police say they have no strong suspects in the strangulation of 9-year-old Ebony Scott, and are asking for help from anyone who may have seen the victim in the hours before she was killed.Two men who were questioned Sunday night in connection with the slaying several days earlier have been charged only with narcotics possession.Police said they have no indication that the men had any involvement in the killing.Both men live in the George B. Murphy Homes high-rise apartment complex in the 900 block of Argyle Ave.The girl was found dead Thursday afternoon in a trash bin outside the building, and investigators raided the men's apartment Sunday after receiving a tip, police said.

DALLAS -- She calls herself C. J. Nobody is sure who she is -- or if she even exists -- but many people fear that they know her.Before she dies, she says, she wants to kill as many men in this town as she can.C. J. is infected with the virus that causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome, which she says she contracted from a white bisexual man. Since then, she says, she has launched a deadly mission to infect the men of Dallas.For reasons no one quite understands, C. J., who is black, appears to pick black men as victims.

SEVERN SCHOOL student Ebony Flowers will be traveling to Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario this month as part of an environmental studies program.Ebony, 15, will work with scientists, taking soil samples, testing the water and analyzing the trees and animals during her 14-day stay.The park, the largest in Ontario, is north of Toronto, near the Quebec border.The trip is being funded by a grant to the Severn School from an alumnus. Teachers chose Ebony, a member of the Environment Club at the school.

Baltimore homicide detectives were questioning two men today after raiding an apartment last night in a search for evidence in the strangulation of Ebony Scott, 9, of New York City, whose body was found Thursday in a trash bin at the George B. Murphy Homes public housing project.Sgt. Steven Lehmann of the homicide unit said neither man had been charged as yet."We received information about the men and obtained a search and seizure warrant for an apartment on the 13th floor of the [Murphy Homes high-rise]

Some may sing the praises of awakening springtime.Some will endorse summer's ripened maturity.Others prefer the glistening stillness of winter.But I will take the changing kaleidoscope of autumn.I think that I shall never see a countryside as colorful as my native land's festive fall fantasia -- splendorous Carroll County.If I were an artist, I'd paint for you a breathtaking pastoral landscape or splash a scenic watercolor across the canvas.Instead, I invite you to embark on an odyssey.We'll wander through Wonderland, trek the hills of Heaven and sidestep into Shangri-La.

Spiegel, Inc., and Ebony magazine, responding to a growing black consumer market, said Tuesday that they plan to launch a new clothing catalog for contemporary black women.The nation's largest mail-order catalog company, Spiegel is designing a line of clothing in conjunction with Ebony magazine that the companies say reflects current fashion trends among black women.The company's catalog, expected to be mailed to 1.5 million people in early 1993, will contain a new line of affordable clothing called "E Style," designed to fit black women better and reflect their fashion tastes, said Rob Longendyke, a Spiegel spokesman.