Hamper

A day after concluding that it would be best for troubled slugger Rafael Palmeiro to stay away from the team for the rest of the season, the Orioles and Sammy Sosa decided that Sosa's season is officially over. Sosa has been at home in Miami since Sept. 7, rehabbing a toe injury, and he'll remain there while the Orioles finish out the season, his agent, Adam Katz, said yesterday. "He is doing well and, basically, he's ready to go back to work, but by the time he got game ready, there might be a couple of games left," Katz said.

WASHINGTON - The Washington Nationals can scrap. That much seems clear. They seemed to face a terrible mismatch yesterday against the division-leading Atlanta Braves. Throwing for the Braves: John Smoltz, a borderline Hall of Fame candidate who's still near the top of his game with an assortment of pitches among the most devilish in the sport. Throwing for the Nationals: 23-year-old Jason Bergmann, a rookie who had never started a game in the big leagues. And it was a mismatch. Smoltz pitched an efficient seven innings and was followed by five relievers, while the Nationals ended up using eight pitchers.

TOKYO - Were it not for the Internet, Takafumi Horie might not have become the richest, brashest Japanese entrepreneur of his generation. And were he not so rich and brash, he might never have caught the eye of Junichiro Koizumi, Japan's prime minister, and become a celebrity candidate for Parliament, running as an ally of Koizumi in today's election. But the T-shirt-wearing, spiky-haired founder of Livedoor, a Japanese Web portal and huge e-commerce site, can't use the Internet or any other digital technology to make his case.

PUT YOUR OWN troubles aside and extend a hand to help a needy neighbor. That's life in the agriculture community. In that spirit, a top official with the state Department of Agriculture has called his counterparts in hurricane-ravaged Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama and asked: "What can we do to help?" Secretary of Agriculture Lewis R. Riley said that Deputy Secretary John R. Brooks has been busy doing the phone work. "He left messages on their machines," Riley said. "He didn't get a chance to talk to them.

One of the nation's largest developers of apartment buildings agreed yesterday to spend an estimated $20 million to correct design and construction flaws in its complexes in 15 states, including Maryland, that made life more difficult for disabled residents. The plaintiffs - the Equal Rights Center, the American Association of People with Disabilities and the United Spinal Association - described the settlement of the federal housing discrimination lawsuit filed in Baltimore as the largest of its kind.

WASHINGTON - Despite extensive efforts to improve security in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, the nation's seaports remain highly vulnerable to terrorists, a congressional investigator told senators yesterday. Poor planning, communications lapses and a lack of clear goals are hampering efforts to make U.S. ports safer, said Margaret Wrightson, the Government Accountability Office's director of homeland security and justice issues. Testifying before a Senate committee, Wrightson warned that seaports represent a possible conduit for terrorist groups to smuggle weapons of mass destruction into the country.

He shuffles into his seat near the back of the House of Delegates chamber, a quiet, eccentric man, occasionally rising to explain a bill in his gravelly, barely comprehensible voice. Low-profile, he may appear, but Del. Joseph F. Vallario Jr., chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee, is single-handedly holding up Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s witness-protection initiative. "Chairman Vallario, it appears at this point, is not willing to enter into an agreement," said Ehrlich in a phone interview yesterday, adding that he believes an amended version of the bill could easily pass the committee -- and full House -- if Vallario would let the committee vote.

In a season that seems to have as many subplots as the team has players, the Los Angeles Lakers don't appear to be suffering too much in their newfound and certainly unwanted role as NBA Western Conference wannabes. At the close of a recent practice at Cleveland's Gund Arena for a game the next day against the fast-improving Cavaliers, the Lakers were loose and loud and apparently not lamenting a 22-point loss in Detroit two nights earlier. Lamar Odom and Chucky Atkins were in the midst of a friendly half-court shooting contest, with Odom walking off with his arms raised in triumph as his final attempt swished cleanly through the net. Kobe Bryant, on the verge of playing again after missing a month with a sprained ankle, worked on repairing his tattered image by talking freely with the media.

Carroll County's 14 volunteer fire companies have joined to oppose a draft of national guidelines that would increase the minimum requirements for paramedics and emergency medical technicians, making it harder, they say, to recruit for those positions. Members of the Carroll County Volunteer Emergency Services Association - a group that represents firefighters, ambulance personnel and fire chiefs - recently voted to oppose any measure that would raise the training level of their overburdened mobile medical teams.

Coppin State men's basketball coach Fang Mitchell announced yesterday that his thymus gland was removed nine days ago during major surgery, and he will continue to conduct his athletic director duties from home until the doctors clear him to return to work. The thymus gland, in the chest near the top of the breastbone, is closely related to the immune system, helping white blood cells recognize and destroy invading bacteria, virus, abnormal cell growth such as cancer, and foreign tissue.