Frightening

WASHINGTON - In the aged film clip, a string of adults in hospital gowns makes its herky-jerky way along a lawn in the shadows of a grand stone mansion. Everything about them seems exaggerated and unnatural, from their contorted grins to the capering way they move. They are meant to be seen as grotesqueries. The German narrator resumes his ominous message, the words translated in subtitles for present-day, English-speaking museum visitors: "Idiots and the feeble-minded ... live in palaces," the voice intones, diverting "[d]

WHEN MYRNA BLYTH LEFT the business of editing women's magazines, she didn't just burn her bridges. She blew them up. The former editor of Ladies Home Journal and More magazines is now the author of Spin Sisters: How the Women of the Media Sell Unhappiness and Liberalism to the Women of America. (St. Martin's Press, $24.95) And she isn't just telling secrets out of school, such as how advertisers have co-opted the editorial content to such a degree that it's hard to tell the ads from the news items.

HOUSTON - Texas approved one of the nation's most sweeping abortion "counseling" laws yesterday, requiring doctors, among other things, to warn women that abortion might lead to breast cancer. That correlation, however, does not exist, according to the American Cancer Society and federal government researchers, and critics say the law is a thinly veiled attempt to intimidate, frighten and shame women who are seeking an abortion. Proponents say they are merely trying to give women as much information as possible, and argue that research into the alleged link between abortion and breast cancer remains inconclusive.

THERE IS an exquisitely sorrowful scene in the movie It Runs in the Family when Kirk Douglas, grieving the loss of his fictional wife (played by his real former wife, Diana Douglas), rasps to his movie-screen middle-aged son (played by the authentic version, Michael), "I can barely breathe without her." Right then, in our neighborhood theater, I could barely breathe myself. Next to me sat Pat, my wife, quieted in the cloak of her Alzheimer's disease, without a clue that the Spartacus of my boyhood had just pierced her husband with his words.

When Randy Fogle returned to his job in January, it made headlines around the country. He was among nine coal miners trapped underground last summer for more than three days. Fogle is back underground again in the Quecreek Mine near Somerset, Pa. "It's like a car wreck; you have to go forward," Fogle told the Associated Press, adding that he tries not to think about the 77-hour ordeal that riveted the nation in July: "You can't keep going over it in your mind or you'll drive yourself crazy."

WASHINGTON - I suppose I get as scared as the next person. But I hate to let it show. So it is with some dismay that I watch my fellow Washingtonians stocking up on duct tape and plastic sheeting. Even if such measures were prudent, I would not want to give al-Qaida the satisfaction of knowing they had scared us. And make no mistake, they are gloating. Even from his hole somewhere in remote Pakistan or wherever he is, Osama bin Laden has exulted that suicide killers have struck more fear into Americans and Israelis than anything else.

WASHINGTON -- One of the most shocking sights from the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks was not a building crumbling, a crowd fleeing or a woman caked in dust. Rather, it was a headline crawling across the bottom of the screen on an all-news channel. In the face of a coming war against Middle Eastern terrorist groups, it said, the U.S. government was looking to hire Arabic speakers. Even measured against the unremitting fear of those days, that headline was like a splash of cold water.

Kenneth Branagh is the comic wild card in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Each time the moviemakers flip him into a scene as blowhard wizard Gilderoy Lockhart, he rouses mirth with everything from his dippity-do hairstyle to his gleefully smug tone of voice. Lockhart turns his new position as the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry into an opportunity to promote his already best-selling books, including his new autobiography, Magical Me. And when Lockhart realizes that his students will include the celebrated Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe)

Police arrested two more teen-agers yesterday in connection with three armed robberies that terrorized residents of North Baltimore a week ago. Kendall Alexander, 16, and Branston Lewis, 17, surrendered to authorities yesterday and have each been charged as adults with three counts of armed robbery, said Officer Troy Harris, a police spokesman. Dorean Jackson, 16, was arrested Monday and charged as an adult with armed robbery. Addresses of the three suspects were not available, police said.