El Salvador

Board of Estimates OKs $11 million police helicopter contract The Board of Estimates approved yesterday an $11.2 million contract for the purchase and maintenance of four new helicopters, giving the city a police helicopter unit for the first time since a fatal 1998 crash. American Eurocopter Corp. helicopters, which police say could be airborne daily by mid-April, are expected to improve drug enforcement and cut accidents caused by high-speed chases. The EC 120 helicopters, which are to be equipped with surveillance technology, cost $4.9 million, and a 10-year contract for mandatory replacement parts costs $6.3 million.

I HAVE followed with great interest, and no small amount of anger, the recent trial of two former Salvadoran generals who were cleared of liability in the deaths of four American churchwomen in El Salvador nearly 20 years ago. On Dec. 2, 1980, Maryknoll nuns Ita Ford and Maura Clarke, Ursuline nun Dorothy Kazel and lay volunteer Jean Donovan were abducted, raped and killed by Salvadoran soldiers who suspected them of sympathizing with leftist guerrillas....

WHEN EMILIA Costa, a 17-year-old resident of Hickory Ridge, arrived in the small village of Santa Marta, El Salvador, last month, she said she felt like a "spectacle." "They had never seen people who looked like us," Emilia said. "We were bombarded by children, and they were staring. It was very warm but overwhelming." Emilia, a member of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Columbia, joined a group of teens and chaperons from the River Road Unitarian Church in Bethesda for a two-week trip to El Salvador.

WASHINGTON -- Critics have branded it the School of Assassins. Now the Pentagon wants to remake the Army's School of the Americas, to put a more humanitarian face on the controversial 54-year-old training academy for Latin American military officers and police. Last week, the Clinton administration sent a reform package for the Fort Benning, Ga., school to Capitol Hill, where lawmakers have tried for years to close it down, complaining that its less illustrious students include a death squad leader, a drug-connected dictator and roving bands of killers.

Having completed the most extensive, intensive and expensive training an American soccer team so young has ever received, the Maryland-flavored, U.S. Under-17 men's squad flies to New Zealand today in quest of a world championship.Coached by John Ellinger, a Frostburg State alumnus whose resume includes nine years as men's coach at UMBC, the American team features three Maryland starters.They are midfielder Kyle Beckerman of Crofton and Arundel High; and defenders Alex Yi, an Easton resident who attended McDonogh, and Olney's Oguchi Onyewu, from Bullis Prep.

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador -- Torrential rains that have pelted Central America for two weeks threatened Honduras' major dam yesterday, forcing the evacuation of more than 100,000 people downstream.The entire region has suffered from flooding that has killed 13 people and destroyed millions of dollars' worth of crops and buildings, many in areas devastated by Tropical Storm Mitch less than a year ago.Concurrent rain-producing weather systems over the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea have swamped the Central American isthmus.

SAN MIGUEL, El Salvador -- At 17, Gustavo Adolfo Morales is a legend -- the hero of a rap song banned from the radio airwaves and the symbol of a lost generation.He has been convicted of murdering six people in a two-year reign of terror as a youth gang leader in this sweltering city in eastern El Salvador. Police suspect that he actually killed 17 people, but proving his guilt in the other 11 crimes would be academic.No matter how many people he killed, Morales will serve only seven years because he is under 18 and that is the maximum sentence for a minor, no matter how horrible -- or numerous -- the crimes.

IMAGINE YOUR HOME, your school and part of your hometown washed away by a raging river during a hurricane.For residents of Chilanguera, a poverty-stricken town in El Salvador, that nightmare became a reality when Hurricane Mitch roared through in October. Of the 2,000 townspeople, 180 residents were killed when the river deluged the town.Mount Airy Elementary art teacher and Westminster resident Pat Aaron was among the 14 members of the 29th Aviation Unit of the Maryland Army National Guard who worked June 5-19 in El Salvador to help the town rebuild roads, bridges, homes and schools.

THE MOST important thing the United States can do now for the little states of Central America is provide the nearly $1 billion in emergency aid that President Clinton asked of Congress. And the most important part of the aid is its substantial forgiveness of Nicaraguan and Honduran debts and its two years of grace for other repayments.President Clinton's swing through Central America, meeting its leaders in one room, heralds a new relationship. Before, the CIA was heavily involved in right-wing and brutal regimes that went beyond legitimate suppression of Communist-influenced insurgent movements in Guatemala and El Salvador.

A former Baltimore police officer accused of using the power of his badge to steal money from three immigrants was arrested yesterday moments after he held a news conference to profess his innocence.Dorian J. Martin, who resigned after he was first accused on Dec. 28, was being held last night in the Central Booking and Intake Center awaiting a bail hearing. He was charged with three counts each of robbery and misconduct."I feel I'm not being treated right," said Martin, who had been on the force six years.