Georgia

Saturday evening, I sat on the porch of a little shotgun house on Seventh Street in Columbus, Ga., and breathed sweet and spicy air of magnolia and camellia and honeysuckle, the whole orchestra of Southern fragrance out and about, comforting the afflicted, and I thought of words I'd never ordinarily use, such as "suffused" and "redolent," and listened to Georgia friends talk about ancestors and their recipes, and I said to myself, "Well, maybe I should...

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Uncertainty is here at the Women's Final Four, mainly because Tennessee isn't.Last year in Kansas City, Mo., a Volunteers coronation lay beneath the paper-thin posturing from the other three teams, an atmosphere that might have been here this week if Tennessee had not fallen short while seeking its fourth straight title.But until Georgia (27-6) and Duke (28-6) start the festivities today at 7 p.m. EST -- followed by Purdue (32-1) and Louisiana Tech (30-2) -- and maybe until the end of Sunday's championship game, no one will have any idea.

By the numbers3 -- Healthy backcourt scholarship players Georgia coach Ron Jirsa has left, forcing him to use walk-on players in backup roles.4 -- Technical fouls San Francisco coach Phil Mathews received during his team's recent loss at Indiana. Maybe he was auditioning for job at one of Bob Knight's clinics.4 -- Division I teams (of 315 total) that remain unbeaten going into last night.365 -- Shots Penn State's Calvin Booth has blocked in his career, making him the Big Ten's all-time leader.

Final FourAt San Jose, Calif.Friday's semifinalsGeorgia (27-6) vs.Duke (28-6), 7 p.m.Louisiana Tech (30-2) vs.Purdue (32-1), 9: 30 p.m.Sunday's title gameSemifinal winners, 9 p.m. TV: ESPNPub Date: 3/24/99

The two grandmothers of a 9-year-old boy have been charged with kidnapping because they brought their grandson back to Anne Arundel County from Georgia where his mother lay hospitalized.Vivian Franklin of Annapolis and Margaret Jordan of Lothian say through an attorney that they drove to Valdosta, Ga., last week to care for their shared grandchild. They say that nodding through her respirator, the boy's mother, Franklin's daughter Sylvia Ducree, gave them permission to take him to Anne Arundel County.

Two Reisterstown girls gave up their $5 allowance. Politicians sent $100. A California woman wrote, "I'm sending this in memory of all the hurt children -- including myself."The Georgia Fisher Trust Fund, established in May for the sister of slain 9-year-old Rita Denise Fisher, so far has brought in $21,000 from more than 400 donors.The outpouring of gifts -- accompanied by emotional letters from many of the donors -- was a pleasant surprise for Georgia, 17, who lives at Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital and suffers from emotional problems after a childhood of abuse and neglect in Pikesville.

U.N. tribunal moves to speed up trials in '94 Rwanda genocideARUSHA, Tanzania -- Hoping to speed up its work, the U.N. tribunal trying suspects in the 1994 Rwandan genocide opened a third courtroom yesterday and swore in three new judges.The addition brings to nine the number serving the tribunal, established in November 1994 to bring to justice those responsible for the slaughter in which at least 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed.Rwandan authorities and human rights groups have accused the court -- which has completed work on four cases -- of incompetence.

MOSCOW -- At war in Chechnya, Russia has spent the last month ratcheting up the pressure on Georgia, just across the border, with not very subtle hints that the time has come for the little mountain nation to curb its independent streak and fall into line.Georgia better be sure not to provide a haven to militants, Moscow warned, or to let arms pass through to Chechnya. And Georgia's voters were told they ought to think twice about their flirtation with the West -- the election of a new parliament was portrayed in the Russian press as nothing less than a choice between NATO and Moscow.

A longtime fixture in the county's legal arena is heading to the Republic of Georgia to help get the fledgling legal system in the former Soviet state on its feet.District Public Defender Alan R. Friedman is joining the American Bar Association's Eastern European law project as of Oct. 1 for an expected one-year stint, taking his first sabbatical since starting as an assistant public defender in Annapolis two decades ago. His task will be to help Georgians put into practice legal reforms that so far exist almost exclusively on paper in the country that came into its own again only nine years ago. About 95 percent of the trial-level judges have been on the bench less than a year.

By the numbers3 -- Healthy backcourt scholarship players Georgia coach Ron Jirsa has left, forcing him to use walk-on players in backup roles.4 -- Technical fouls San Francisco coach Phil Mathews received during his team's recent loss at Indiana. Maybe he was auditioning for job at one of Bob Knight's clinics.4 -- Division I teams (of 315 total) that remain unbeaten going into last night.365 -- Shots Penn State's Calvin Booth has blocked in his career, making him the Big Ten's all-time leader.

On May 22, 2009, GEORGIA B. BENSON; loving mother of Ellen Lutrey and her husband Mark and John Benson and his wife Diane; cherished grandmother of Megan, Molly, Julia, Kari, Laura and Daniel. The family will receive friends in the Lemmon Funeral Home of Dulaney Valley Inc., 10 W. Padonia Road (at York Road), Timonium, MD, 21093 on (TODAY) Wednesday 5 to 8 P.M. A graveside service will be held in Loudon Park Cemetery on Thursday, May 28, at 11 A.M. Interment Loudon Park Cemetery. Expressions of sympathy may be directed in Mrs. Benson's name to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure, Attention: Gift Management Services, 5005 LBJ Freeway, Suite 250, Dallas, TX, 75244 or the Gilchrist Hospice Care, 555 W. Towsontown Boulevard, Towson,

Two Baltimore men indicted in a Georgia assisted-suicide investigation waived their right to an extradition hearing yesterday morning, hoping to accelerate their release from custody as they await trial. Attorneys for Dr. Lawrence D. Egbert, 81, and Nicholas Alec Sheridan, 60, who were arrested Wednesday in an eight-state probe of the Marietta, Ga.-based Final Exit Network, asked that the men be allowed to transport themselves to Georgia, where authorities say they plan to allow the men to be released on $60,000 bond.

WASHINGTON - Members of a Senate panel rebuked federal health and food safety regulators yesterday for their slow intervention in the nation's peanut-borne salmonella outbreak, demanding that officials find ways to cooperate when responsibility is split among different agencies. "All of this happened because of a failure - the failure of our government to prevent unsafe food from entering the food chain," Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, told officials from the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing.

On January 7, 2009, Lillian Georgia Visiting at the E.F. Lassahn Funeral Home, P.A., 11750 Belair Road (Kingsville) on Friday 3 to 5 and 7 to 9 P.M. Funeral services will be held on Saturday at 10:00 am. Interment Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens.

TBILISI, Georgia - A new front has opened between Georgia and Russia, this one over which side was the aggressor whose military activities early last month ignited the lopsided five-day war. At issue is new inconclusive intelligence that paints a more complicated picture of the critical last hours before war broke out. Georgia has released intercepted telephone calls purporting to show that part of a Russian armored regiment crossed into South Ossetia...

Southern California is now a no-doubt-about-it No. 1 in the Associated Press Top 25, and there's a new No. 2 as Georgia slipped again. The Trojans' resounding 35-3 victory against Ohio State on Saturday night made USC an overwhelming No. 1 in the media poll. USC received 61 first-place votes and 1,596 points yesterday. The Trojans had 33 first-place votes last week. Mark Sanchez threw four touchdown passes and Joe McKnight rushed for 105 yards on 12 carries to lead the host Trojans to a dominating victory.

3 Earthquake devastates southwestern China SHANGHAI - The devastation from an earthquake that struck southwestern China Saturday might be much worse than initially feared, state-run news media reported yesterday, saying that the quake had destroyed more than 100,000 homes and that the death toll had risen to at least 28 and was likely to be higher. The earthquake, which was centered in Sichuan province and had a magnitude of 6.1, damaged highways, reservoirs, bridges and hundreds of schools, and it forced the evacuation of more than 40,000 people in Sichuan and neighboring Yunnan province, reported Xinhua, the state news agency.

IGOETI, Georgia - Even as Russia signed a cease-fire agreement with Georgia yesterday, its troops destroyed a key railroad bridge that links the Caucasus region to the Black Sea coast, effectively cutting off east-west transportation routes through the country, the Georgian Foreign Ministry announced. Russia denied blowing up the bridge, calling the charge "another unverified allegation" in the wake of large-scale fighting over a pro-Moscow separatist republic. A Los Angeles Times photographer traveling in the area yesterday saw explosives attached to the underside of a nearby railroad bridge, but it was still intact.

WASHINGTON - Russia's military offensive into Georgia has jolted the Bush administration's relationship with Moscow, senior officials said yesterday, forcing a wholesale reassessment of American dealings with Russia and jeopardizing talks on issues from halting Iran's nuclear ambitions to reducing strategic arsenals and cooperation on missile defenses. The conflict punctuated a stark turnabout in the administration's view of Vladimir V. Putin, the president-turned-prime minister whom President Bush has repeatedly described as a trustworthy friend.

WASHINGTON - In the early 1990s, the United States began beefing up Georgia's army as the tiny republic gained its independence from the collapsing Soviet Union - an effort accelerated after 9/11 in what President Bush said was a fight against al-Qaida. That "train and equip" program is part of a growing, global American initiative to bolster military forces in such unlikely and unstable places as Ethiopia. Chad, Albania, Kazakhstan, Sri Lanka, Lebanon and Yemen. Cease-fire Russian military reportedly violates truce.