Guinea

Charles A. Cusumano told his children of the hardships he experienced during World War II, but he had never called himself a war hero until now.More than half a century ago, Cusumano spent three months repairing war planes in New Guinea, suffering a lack of food, bouts of malaria and dengue fever, and an enemy attack that left him with three fractured vertebrae.Yesterday, Cusumano received the Bronze Star his war buddies there got in 1944.Wearing a light blue sport coat and a tie decorated with the stars and stripes, Cusumano stood at attention before a battery of flags in the office of Col. John D. Frketic, garrison commander at Fort Meade.

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.

Here is a list of the most popular books among first-graders surveyed by Reading Today, the bimonthly newspaper of the International Reading Association:* "Guinea Pigs Don't Read Books," by Colleen Stanley Bare* "Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel," by Virginia Lee Burton* "The Very Busy Spider," by Eric Carle* "The Very Hungry Caterpillar," by Eric Carle* "The Sunflower That Went FLOP," by Joy Cowley* "Clyde Monster," Robert Crowe* "Animal Tracks," by...

Charles A. Cusumano told his children of the hardships he experienced during World War II, but he had never called himself a war hero until now.More than half a century ago, Cusumano spent three months repairing war planes in New Guinea, suffering a lack of food, bouts of malaria and dengue fever, and an enemy attack that left him with three fractured vertebrae.Yesterday, Cusumano received the Bronze Star his war buddies there got in 1944.Wearing a light blue sportcoat and a tie decorated with the stars and stripes, Cusumano stood at attention before a battery of flags in the office of Col. John D. Frketic, garrison commander at Fort Meade.

Ever wake up feeling like the Tin Man after a damp night sleeping outdoors?Your knuckles ache, your elbows, your knees, every other place where bone is joined to bone squeaks with pain?If so, you might want to think about honeybee venom. Some people believe it relieves the pain of arthritis. The evidence for this is anecdotal. That means it's never been proved that the chemicals and enzymes and whatnot that make up honeybee venom can actually ease the agony of arthritis, or anything else.

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.

You cannot properly appreciate the art of the Baga peoples of West Africa unless you see it in full dress and in action. Among the many virtues of "The Art of the Baga" at the Baltimore Museum of Art is that it allows you to do both.Walk into the first gallery and there are two serpent headdresses of impressive height -- brightly colored and sinuously curved, they alone reach more than 7 feet. But like other important Baga figures, the serpent sculptures are used with costumes of cloth and grass in dance rituals.

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.

WITH THE DECLINE OF ARMIES after the Cold War, and the end of white rule in southern Africa, trained troops went on the market, only too available for hire by whoever might pay.Mercenaries from Europe were conspicuous in the Croatian-Bosnian militia in the early '90s, and others from the mujahedeen of Afghanistan in the Bosnian forces. A quixotic brief seizure of the Comoros Islands two years ago, by a French senior citizen who had invaded a half-dozen countries in his career, raised the specter of government by mercenary in one weak country after another.

"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.

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.

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.

WASHINGTON - The best country in the world in which to be a mother is Sweden, according to Save the Children, a global relief and development organization. The worst is Niger, at No. 117. And the United States is only No. 11, ranking just above Costa Rica. With Mother's Day approaching, Save the Children published its annual State of the World's Mothers report this week, basing the index on 10 measures related to the health of women and their children, their education and political status.

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.

Viola Hughes was an honor-roll student at Dunbar High School whose family was desperate to escape from the drug dealing and shootings of Baltimore's Lafayette Courts public housing high-rises. So when her mother responded to an ad in the paper and moved the family into a $450-a-month rowhouse in West Baltimore, Hughes was thrilled to have fled that dangerous environment. What she didn't know was that moving into the home at 1713 N. Monroe St. would make her family guinea pigs in an experiment that a panel of judges compared last week to the infamous Tuskegee syphilis studies from 1932 to 1972.

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.

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.