Four Women

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Four women plan to go where no women have gone before -- on a 1,500-mile journey across Antarctica.The American Women's Trans-Antarctica Expedition leaves ,X Sunday on a journey on which they'll ski for four months across the continent, pulling sleds of food and supplies. The wind will be up to 100 mph, with temperatures dipping to 50 below zero."The challenge is whether we can ski across this thing [without dogsleds] and pull it off, make this distance when no women have done this," expedition leader Ann Bancroft said.

A federal charge of sex trafficking of a minor was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore against a man initially charged in Anne Arundel County with holding a 12-year-old girl as a prostitute, and supporting documents allege he threatened her. The girl told officers with the Maryland Human Trafficking Task Force that Derwin Smith, 42, took her to a big vacant house he promised would be hers if she worked for him, and then brought her...

Four women, including a mailroom employee of an Anne Arundel County check printing firm, have pleaded guilty to stealing at least $10,000 by cashing checks stolen from the business. The women pleaded guilty Wednesday in Baltimore District Court, said postal inspector Tom Boyle. Boyle said that an employee of Data Search Inc., in the 7300 block of Ritchie Highway, stole 25 paychecks and billing checks bound for various companies and gave them to three other women. "The checks ranged in amounts between $1,500 to $70," he said.

Two men, one armed with a handgun, forced their way into an apartment in Edgewood Sunday night and robbed four women ranging in age from 62 to 95 of pain medication, purses, money, bank cards and a cellular phone, according to the Harford County Sheriff's Department. Police said the men knocked on the door of the apartment in the 1900 block of Edgewater Drive about 10 p.m. and introduced themselves as "Junior." Police said one of the occupants has a friend by that name and opened the door.

A 35-year-old man jailed on charges of assaulting alleged prostitutes was indicted yesterday in the killing of one of four women found in remote areas of Harford County in recent months - crimes that authorities have said might be linked. Charles Eugene Burns, a sixth-grade dropout who one acquaintance said acknowledged a fascination with books on serial killers, was charged with murder in the death of Lillian Abramowicz Phelps. The a 43-year-old Elkton woman was last seen alive in May and her body was discovered near Havre de Grace on June 14. Harford County State's Attorney Joseph I. Cassilly said yesterday that prosecutors had not completed their investigation and would not divulge details of how Phelps died or how Burns was connected.

WASHINGTON -- Two Supreme Court justices, a novelist who once called herself a "flaming feminist" and a high school student who hopes to enter an all-male military domain: The lives of these four women are woven together in the past and the future of sex equality in America.The justices are the first two women to reach the Supreme Court, Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. As the women's rights revolution moved on, both have played roles. They may yet play more decisive roles.Fate also has linked Ruth Ginsburg, when she was a civil rights lawyer and a law professor, with a Gloucester, Mass.

Five years ago, four grandmothers marched into the mayor's office with children in tow. They said their Edgewood neighborhood needed a new community center to replace the shack where kids didn't have enough room to play pingpong and pool at the same time. The grandmothers wouldn't take no for an answer. Yesterday, the determined women joined Mayor Martin O'Malley in opening the 5,700-square-foot Edgewood Lyndhurst Recreation Center in West Baltimore, the first such center built in the city since 1975.

Nearly three out of four women are not getting eight hours or more of sleep per night during the work week. Two-thirds say sleeplessness causes problems in their relationships, and 27 percent say it hurts their job performance. - National Sleep Foundation

"Set It Off" never really gets down.Some are calling it a "Girlz N the Hood," but it bears a closer resemblance to glitzy armed-robbery films -- "Heat" or "Asphalt Jungle" or even "Reservoir Dogs" -- than to John Singleton's gritty probe of urban pathology.Where "Boyz N the Hood" cut deep, to bone, this one stays glibly on the surface. It's slick and routinely entertaining, if never quite persuasive. It chronicles how four black women, abused by "the system" (they claim), turn to violent crime to express themselves and find an identity.

A Columbia man charged with sexually assaulting four young women while posing as a professional photographer had his bail increased by $10,000 yesterday by a Howard Circuit Court judge.Prosecutors are expected to indict 28-year-old Richard Charles on additional charges, because three more women reported to police that they also were assaulted. The women came forward after reading an article about the case in The Sun last week, prosecutors said.Mr. Charles, of the 8800 block of Flowerstock Row in Columbia's Long Reach village, is charged with multiple counts of assault, battery and sexual offenses for allegedly fondling the four women.

For the past two days, Annie Siple has patiently crisscrossed the Johns Hopkins medical campus for test after test, being scanned by big machines, pricked with small needles, fastened to electrodes, injected with dye. Soon she will find out who is winning, Annie or the cancer. Not for one minute has she worried about the results. How could the news be bad, she is wondering when she is led into a tiny exam room. She looks and feels terrific on this May afternoon. Her cancer appeared first in her breast.

At St. Pete Times Forum, Tampa, Fla. Sunday's Semifinals Stanford (34-3) vs. Connecticut (36-1) 7 LSU (31-5) vs. Tennessee (34-2) 9 Tuesday's championship Semifinal winners 8:30

Anyone longing for a pleasant getaway to lift winter spirits might find an idyllic vacation without leaving Annapolis in the Colonial Players' production of Enchanted April. Italy has long been a favorite travel destination for me, and I was surprised at how well the Italian ambience was captured in the 1992 movie and in a later stage version that I caught in New York. Presumably, the Colonial Players crew will also be adept at creating similar magic when the show opens Friday at the 108 East St. location.

Laura Cain was a lawyer advocating for emotionally and physically disabled people - especially those further traumatized by the very treatments that were supposed to help. She had a story to tell. Diana Gross was a visual arts teacher looking to break into documentary filmmaking. She wanted to tell a story. Two years ago, the former neighbors, who met while both were living in Ednor Gardens, decided to collaborate. They focused their work on four women who had weathered some of the most demanding and demeaning treatments modern mental health facilities have to offer: forced medication, physical restraints, isolation.

BUSINESS DOW -249.97 13,113.38 NASDAQ -48.62 2,565.70 S&P -25.00 1,453.55 SUN INDEX -6.26 339.32 MARYLAND Craigslist sex ads lead to sting Anne Arundel County police, who have been focused on Craigslist ads and prostitution for more than a year, announced yesterday the arrest of four women who allegedly used the free Web site Craigslist to set up paid sexual encounters with men who turned out to be undercover police. pg 1B Women holding keys to power In a city where African-American women represent the largest bloc of primary voters, the prospect of keeping Baltimore's top four elected offices filled by black women never strays far from the campaign conversation.

With their seductive pitches and colorful language, the ads in the "erotic services" section of Craigslist.org seem out of place on a Web site generally associated with used cars, bicycles and lawn care products. "Fabulous Asian Girl with `Fabulous' Service," states one ad. "Give Spankings For Cash," says another. "I'll be on your mind all day. ... Let's make this happen." The Web site that's rocketed to popularity for enabling users to post free ads for all sorts of goods and services has found a ready market in the sex trade.

In the post-1993 prints that restored five minutes of censored sex-charged material, Elia Kazan's 1951 film of A Streetcar Named Desire, playing Saturday at the Charles Theatre, brings Tennessee Williams' Gothic tragedy to life with all its volatility intact. It screens at noon as part of the Theatre's month-old classic film series. As they play out their antagonisms amid the broken latticework of New Orleans' French Quarter, Vivien Leigh's Blanche DuBois and Marlon Brando's Stanley Kowalski evoke the full complexity of the text.

How you feel about Menopause: the Musical likely will depend on your response to the Chitlin Circuit and the Borscht Belt. Elite America snootily likes to pretend that the theat-uh it patronizes has nothing whatsoever in common with the declasse offerings of the Chitlin Circuit (known alternately as African-American "urban theater") or the Borscht Belt that gave a jump-start to the careers of such Jewish entertainers as Mel Brooks and Buddy Hackett. If you go Menopause: the Musical is being performed in the M&T Bank Pavilion of the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center, 12 N. Eutaw St., through at least Sept.

You know a confident woman when you see one. There's something in her stride, in her lifted chin. Her complexion glows, her posture commands attention. Something about a confident woman makes you want to know her, or at least know more about her. Mary Kay Ash, the late founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, once said, "While clothes may not make the woman, they certainly have a strong effect on her self-confidence - which, I believe, does make the woman." Which is exactly why we wanted to get to know the four fashionable women profiled below.