F 16

CASCADE, Md. - A recently closed Army base might not be everyone's idea of paradise, but Sharon Garcia saw enough to like about Fort Ritchie and its picturesque mountain setting to move her family here a few years ago. The place grew on her. She bowled in a league at the Sunshine Lanes. Her neighbors came to her door with cookies. And her son Jonathan found friends among the children settling with their families into the modest townhouses that once housed soldiers. Then the base's past intruded.

Brussels -- When the NATO Council meets tomorrow to discuss U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali's call for authorization for air strikes in Bosnia, it will be in the firm knowledge that such a call could be answered "in a maximum of 30 minutes."More than 140 fighters and bombers under NATO command are deployed at Italian bases and on aircraft carriers close to the Bosnian coast ready for the order to strike.Hundreds of shells fall on Sarajevo each day from the estimated 230 artillery pieces and T-55 tanks ringing Sarajevo.

Federal Contracts Report is a weekly summary of selected contracts recently awarded by the federal government to companies and other vendors in the Baltimore area.Westinghouse Electric Corp. of Baltimore won a $9,522,785 contract from the Air Force to provide development and flight demonstration for the active side array and radar integration technology.* Allied-Signal Aerospace Co. of Towson won a $1 million contract from the Navy to provide engineering and technical services for target detecting device/shroud assembly.

A joint venture between Northrop Grumman's Electronic Sensors and Systems Division in Linthicum and ITT Avionics of New Jersey has won a $100 million contract to put radar jammers on South Korean fighter planes, the companies said yesterday.The Airborne Self-Protection Jammer will protect South Korean F-16s from enemy radar threats during combat.Similar systems are being installed in F-18 Hornets operated by air forces in Finland and Switzerland, and the jammer is in use on American F-18s and F-14s in Bosnia and the Middle East.

City prosecutors ruled Thursday that a Johns Hopkins student who killed an intruder last fall by using a samurai sword was justified in his actions, according to a letter sent to homicide investigators. State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy said prosecutors determined that the student, John Pontolillo, "reasonably believed he was in danger of imminent death or serious bodily injury" and was justified in striking Donald Rice, a 49-year-old repeat offender who is believed to have broken into the student's home earlier in the night.

WASHINGTON -- The Senate Armed Services Committee has voted to continue building the B-2 Stealth bomber, a position likely to meet fierce opposition on the Senate floor and in conference with the House.The committee unveiled a 1992 defense authorization bill yesterday that also sets up Senate floor fights or conflicts with the House over women in combat, abortion and the F-16 and F-117 fighters.Postponed until next week was committee action on the Strategic Defense Initiative, the only part of the bill left unfinished.

The arrival of a Baltimore County woman at a White Marsh clinic with a cobra bite to her finger touched off a two-state scramble for antivenin to save her. Meanwhile, her story - that she had come across the highly poisonous monocled cobra in the parking lot of the White Marsh Mall - immediately raised eyebrows among the snake-savvy. Experts say the animals, normally found in Southeast Asia, could not survive outdoors in Maryland in January. And finger bites are typical of injuries to careless snake handlers during feeding.

Baltimore's Public Works Museum, called the only one of its kind, has delighted engineering geeks and other Inner Harbor visitors with a peek into a world of odoriferous sewer pipes, spidery tunnels and water treatment plants since it opened almost 30 years ago. But Wednesday, the museum became a victim of municipal hardship and closed immediately, saving the city about $300,000 a year. "It was a great way to present to the public all the challenges we take for granted," said Mari Ross, its director, who is one of five museum employees to lose their jobs.

JERUSALEM - Israeli tank shells damaged the home of a top Palestinian security official in the West Bank last night as the region continued to feel the aftershocks of Friday's cycle of bombing and reprisal, which left 18 Israelis and Palestinians dead. With international concern rising that the violence has spun out of control, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney came close to demanding that Israel stop using U.S.-supplied F-16 warplanes in attacks on Palestinians, as occurred Friday night.

WASHINGTON -- After a second incident in three days involving military fighters coming "too close" to a civilian jetliner -- this time off Ocean City -- the Air Force suspended its operations in designated training areas off the East Coast last night.The suspension came after the pilot of an American Eagle turboprop plane reported that fighter jets appeared to come too close to his plane as it flew 10 to 15 miles off the Maryland coast yesterday. It was the second complaint this week against military fighters in the busy skies over the Atlantic.