Guinea

The historian specializing in human experiments sees an opportunity to restore confidence in government science. The law professor cautions that radiation experiments of 40 years ago be reviewed in the context of their time. The radiologist wonders if it's possible to determine just how much the patients of yesteryear knew about the medical procedures they underwent.Over the next year, these and other bioethicists, historians, law professors and nuclear medicine specialists on a presidential committee will serve as the nation's conscience on a subject that has brought into question ethical standards of research a half-century ago.What began as an Albuquerque, N.M., reporter's search for the identities of 18 patients injected with plutonium in 1948 has mushroomed into a massive hunt for government files on federally funded radiation research that occurred over three decades.

July kicks off with an Independence Day celebration, so it is easy to associate the whole month with all things American. Why not break the mold this summer? Choose one of these works of foreign fiction to finish off your July with an international flair. "The Shadow of a Blue Cat" by Naoyuki Ii Dalkey Archive, $17.95 Much of the Japanese fiction published in the United States tends towards the offbeat and disturbing. "The Shadow of a Blue Cat" is a different breed entirely.

CONAKRY, Guinea - Whether blessing or curse, this West African country holds the pivotal presidency of the United Nations Security Council. But you would hardly know it walking the streets of its clogged, dilapidated, tin-roofed capital. The daily diplomatic dance going on in the corridors of the United Nations over war on Iraq hardly merits a mention on the tabloid covers here. It's hard to judge the tenor of the television news coverage, as electricity is available only every fourth day, and then only between midnight and 6 a.m. There are no street demonstrations; no political graffiti screams from the walls.

SUNDAY'S TELEVISION HIGHLIGHTS MLB Yankees@Mets TBS1 Orioles@Atlanta MASN, 131:30 Pittsburgh@Washington MASN21:30 White Sox@Cubs WGN-A2 Pittsburgh@Washington (T) MASN5 Dodgers@Angels ESPN8 Orioles@Atlanta (T) MASN11:30 WNBA Seattle@Washington CSN4 Cycling Tour de France: Stage 2 VS.8 a.m. Tour de France: Stage 2 (T)

The children came first, running through the bushes in the darkness with lanterns and flashlights to guide their way. The women and the men followed, then the village headman.Faces beaming, they piled into our bus, which had stopped on the road leading to our lodge 7,000 feet above the town where we had gone for dinner. The villagers extended their hands, eager to get close to us. We were the first black people they were meeting from outside their island world of Papua New Guinea.We were a group of 24 black Americans taking a tour organized by Simmons African Museum in New York, which runs cultural trips to Africa and South America, and were three days into our second South Pacific adventure.

THE CALAMITY in the interior of Guinea is a slaughter of innocents. Civil warfare is invading from Liberia and Sierra Leone. The world community cannot bring aid to refugees of one country without confronting the anarchy of all. The crisis would not wait for the new regime in Washington to name its representative at the United Nations or chief policy-maker for Africa. It faces Secretary of State Colin Powell and President Bush now. Liberia, settled by freed U.S. slaves and modeled on U.S. institutions, sits on the west coast of Africa.

They were the guinea pigs. They were there to make sure that what had been planned and sketched would be good for the masses and that the project would be a success.Thumbs up on larger family rooms. Thumbs down on protruding garages.Spying from behind a one-way mirror, Jim Joyce, Baltimore division president for Ryland Homes, waited for this final moment.The focus group had checked off everything they wanted in a new home planned for an Ellicott City development. He had a price range in mind, but experience told him that focus groups rarely get it right.

Manthia Diawara brought his myriad perspectives to the Maryland Institute, College of Art this week, perspectives forged in a life of contrasts.This is specialist in film and literature is at home in the bistros of Paris and lofts of SoHo. But his first schooling came at age 13 in a West Africa that was taking the first unsteady steps of independence.The second in a series of visiting scholars and authors honoring 20 years of Fred Lazarus' presidency of the institute, Diawara, 46, a professor of comparative literature at New York University, gave a lecture last night after spending two days with students, talking, criticizing, looking, absorbing.

"Salt," by Earl Lovelace. Persea Books. 260 pages. $22.95.In an ideal bookshop, something as fragrant as Trinidadian writer Earl Lovelace's newest novel would come boxed together with a packet of spices, a CD of West Indian music and a string hammock in which to swing as the author's melodious riffs and billows of language propel this lovely, passionate story on its gentle course.As it is, you can almost-almost-sniff the scents of Lovelace's home island in this busy and satisfying story - a "political" novel in which everyday human hubbub speaks as eloquently as any political oration.

Gary Calton believes his tiny Baltimore biotechnology venture, AuRx Inc., has the long-sought-after vaccine for herpes, the viral disease that is infecting Americans at an accelerating pace. If he's wrong, his company could become another of the many that have tried and failed in the quest.But Calton is so bullish on his privately held company's vaccine that he has sunk more than $600,000 of his own money into the project."No one has seen a vaccine that does what ours can do," said Calton.

The hottest table in Baltimore isn't in Baltimore. It's Volt in Frederick. Credit the recent spike in interest to owner/chef Bryan Voltaggio's success on Bravo's "Top Chef" reality show. Suddenly, it's impossible to get a reservation on a weekend unless you call weeks in advance. Suddenly, everyone is telling me Volt is where he or she went for an anniversary or special birthday. Voltaggio was turning out noteworthy New American cuisine in his late-19th-century brick mansion before all the TV hoopla started, but he hadn't become as well known in Baltimore as he was in Washington.

We keep hearing that President Barack Obama is intent on correcting the excesses of the previous administration, whether it's waterboarding or dirty air or international relations. But how about this: There exists the possibility that prisoners in American jails could be used for "voluntary" experiments - clinical trials for drugs, new surgical procedures and the like. It's a troubling piece of Bush-era business that the president could correct with the stroke of a pen. For more than two years, we, as members of a liaison panel advising the Institute of Medicine, have been waiting for an answer from the secretary of health and human services concerning the troubling potential for inmates in American prisons to be used for experiments.

LANSANA CONTE President of Guinea Guinea President Lansana Conte, who had ruled the African nation with an iron hand since seizing power in a coup nearly a quarter-century ago, died after a lengthy illness, the president of the National Assembly said yesterday. Aboubacar Sompare, flanked by the country's prime minister and the head of the army, said on state-run television that Mr. Conte died Monday evening. He was believed to be in his 70s, but the government has not disclosed his birth date.

Jose Canseco: Last Shot 10 p.m. [A&E] At one time, A&E was known as the Arts and Entertainment channel, notable for its programming a cut above normal network fare. And now the channel serves as an enabler for someone who has an apparent publicity addiction. Here's the show's description from the A&E Web site: Canseco "has used steroids himself for the past 24 years. Now, Jose wants to finally get clean, but he's terrified about what may happen when he goes through the process. There has been no medically documented case of someone quitting steroids after using them for so long, and the doctors have different opinions about what Jose will go through physically and mentally.

The zebras made a run for it. Spotting a door ajar, three striped members of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus broke out yesterday from their temporary home in Baltimore's 1st Mariner Arena. But they didn't get far. Evidently bewildered by the bustle on Hopkins Place downtown, Mali, Giza and Lima -- geldings born in Missouri seven or eight years ago -- allowed themselves to be corralled by trainer Karin Houcke and two handlers within half a block of their exit point. No need for a lasso, since each animal wore a bridle.

Oh, Chloe, was it just your time? One minute you're happily nosing around, mussing through the hay, a furball on the sniff. The next, you've gone on to the big guinea-pig cage in the sky. When your owner, Cecilia Wright, saw you so still in your cage and then gave you a little poke and you didn't move, she knew. That was last Saturday. On Wednesday, the day after Christmas, Wright was at the Towson Pet- Smart, bending down and peering into the small animal cases, looking for your replacement, if there could be one. See, after the holidays, Wright's preschool class at Father Kolbe, a Catholic elementary and middle school in Canton, will expect to see both you and Claire - the white one and the black one, the shadow and the light, the yin and yang of class pets.

Do you know? Can porcupines throw their sharp quills? Answer: No, but if you touch one, it will hurt. Learn more! Visit the African porcupines at The Baltimore Zoo. Read "A Porcupine Named Fluffy" by Helen Lester. 1. The milky eagle owl is one of only a few birds in Africa that can successfully hunt porcupines. 2. Porcupines are related to rodents, guinea pigs and chinchillas.

According to his attorney, Darius Spence was the perfect mark: a heroin addict so desperate for a fix that he would "test" the product for his longtime friend before the drug dealer would buy the goods in New York City. His unusual role as a human "guinea pig" for a major drug organization led to his appearance in federal court yesterday. Spence, 35, of Baltimore was sentenced to more than 11 1/2 years in prison for heroin possession. Chief' U.S. District Judge Benson E. Legg said that the length of the sentence could be attributed in large part to Spence's designation as a career offender.

Bruce Beehler has enshrined the moment in August 1959, when he first glimpsed the future perching in a tree at Lake Roland. Picnicking with his family in Baltimore County, the 8-year-old boy happened to look up and spot a red-bellied woodpecker. "At the time, I didn't know what the hell it was," he says. "I just knew it was the most beautiful thing. And it's been all downhill ever since." As it turns out, the Baltimore-born naturalist was meant not only to marvel over birds, but to infect others with his passion.