Greed

Television is talking money, money, money this spring, and tens of millions of viewers are clearly listening. From network dramas featuring get-rich-quick capers to game shows that are about nothing but a $1 million prize, Hollywood is finding that programming with essentially the same premise - go for the greed - is a big ratings winner. NBC's Deal or No Deal, where contestants choose among briefcases with hidden money ranging from a penny to $1 million, is the most successful series on the network, drawing upward of 18 million viewers a night.

BAGNEUX, France -- She could not stop thinking about Ilan Halimi. And when Marie-Beatrice thought about the young Jewish man tortured to death by her neighbors during 24 days of squalid captivity in the basement a few floors below her apartment, she could not stop crying. "I try not to blame myself, but I can't avoid it," said the weary 46- year-old, wrapped in a purple bathrobe after work Friday. "It happened next door and I can't believe it happened. I would want to tell Ilan that if we'd heard his suffering, we would have reported it. I tell myself that Ilan surely must have thought there was noise; people lived upstairs, and he hoped someone would hear.

Fall of city forest won't end the fight The loss of Woodberry forest to Loyola College is another sad chapter of a pornographic book of city politics and land development ("Fight for woods draws to a close," Dec. 30). The heroes are those who don't give up the fight, even when the odds are against them. But with elected officials pretending to care and mainstream environmental groups in Baltimore afraid to take on their Democratic Party patrons, it is no wonder that Woodberry and the woods will be the loser.

Tea Leoni combines the talents of a crazy comic with those of a gorgeously bent straight gal. She and Jim Carrey, Mr. Malleable, appear made for each other. But they're not the match of your dreams as the storybook man and wife turned suburban Bonnie and Clyde in Fun With Dick and Jane. Whenever they cut loose here - not often enough - they detonate theater-quaking belly laughs. During one modest heist at a cafe, Dick distracts Jane with the prospect of low-fat muffins. She takes a headfirst plunge over a counter, landing in a sprawl off-screen.

It's Jane Austen time again, and we know what you men are doing: Half of you are hiding under the bed, and the other half are pretending to be dead. You just know that your wife or significant other is going to drag you to see the new version of Pride and Prejudice starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfayden. It's a film, you are sure, as fluffy as a gosling. A film in which the hero emerges from a misty wood at dawn with his shirt unbuttoned, exposing his manly chest. A film without a single high-speed car chase.

A Senate proposal to cut funding for the federal food stamp program at a time when poverty rates are climbing is bad public policy and sure to hurt big cities where the majority of poor people live and hunger and food insecurity is more common. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, a Georgia Republican and chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, proposed the cut in an effort to trim $3 billion from the budget of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. His representative says the $574 million cut would be covered by savings under rule changes that now require recipients to regularly prove eligibility or leave the program.

THE KING OF KINGS COUNTY By Whitney Terrell. Viking. 361 pages. Half coming-of-age tale and half tangled history of a modern American city, Terrell's second novel manages to be both intimate and epic. Narrated by a watchful 14-year-old named Jack Acheson, the book begins in the mid-1950s on the brink of a new era in Kansas City, Mo. Jack's father Alton, a schemer with big dreams but little cachet, is determined to cash in on the city's expansion when a new interstate highway transforms the outlying cornfields into suburbs.

SANTA MARIA, Calif. - Ten days after receiving a substantial cash settlement, the mother of the boy accusing Michael Jackson of molestation told welfare authorities she had no outside financial resources, jurors in the pop star's molestation trial were told yesterday. With its case expected to end this week, the defense stepped up its attack on the mother, bringing in four witnesses who questioned her honesty and told stories of her greed for cash. Mercy D. Manrriquez, a Los Angeles County social worker, testified yesterday that the mother applied for welfare and health benefits on Nov. 15, 2001.

THE CAMERA trains in on a bright blue sign atop a stately church in downtown Houston. "Jesus Saves" it reads. As the camera slowly pulls back, a towering glass skyscraper emerges, swallowing the church. It's the headquarters of what was once the world's most famous energy company, the one that became known for its sleazy business dealings, crude corporate culture and spectacular collapse in 2001 - Enron. The irony is clear in the opening scene of Alex Gibney's new documentary, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, which opens in Baltimore May 20th.

MOSCOW - Under different circumstances, the 10-month trial of the businessman who was once Russia's richest man might have been regarded as a triumph of law and order over privilege and power. Instead, human rights campaigners say, the trial of billionaire Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, former chief executive of the Yukos oil company, has been a glaring case of Russian justice warped by greed and Kremlin politics. As early as Wednesday, Khodorkovsky and fellow defendant Platon Lebedev, another major Yukos shareholder, will file into a cramped Moscow courtroom and hear the verdict of the three-judge court.