Homeland

WASHINGTON -- These are tough times for President Bush's director of homeland security, Tom Ridge. Seven months into his assignment to coordinate the myriad homeland security-related government agencies and develop a national strategy for it, The New York Times labels him "a White House adviser with a shrinking mandate." Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat, decries the refusal of "the single figure ... privy to the whole picture" to testify before Congress in support of the administration's homeland security budget.

Annapolis-based PharmAthene Inc. had a new anthrax antidote to offer, and the U.S. government was in the market for one. Francesca Cook, a PharmAthene vice president, recalls that a February meeting with federal officials went well - until the company asked when bidding on the contract would open. The government officials had no answer. They still don't. "These things boggle the mind," says Cook, who is in charge of policy and government affairs for PharmAthene. "No one seems willing to make a decision."

The Villages at Homeland-East -- once one of the best-selling developments in Baltimore -- will be the latest residential community to go on the auction block this summer. Eighteen unoccupied town houses will be offered for sale July 31.The town houses and 66 adjoining lots are being auctioned by Loyola Federal Savings and Loan Association, the lender that earlier this year began foreclosure proceedings against the builder, Homeland Acres Limited Partnership.Atlantic Auctions Inc. is handling the sale, which will begin at 1 p.m. on the premises, off the 400 block of Homeland Avenue.

The "report card" issued by the 9/11 commission this week was a frightening indictment of the administration and Congress for their failure to protect Americans at home. "Scandalous" was the word used by the commission's chairman and vice chairman, former New Jersey Gov. Thomas H. Kean and former Congressman Lee H. Hamilton of Indiana. Scandalous that police and firefighters in the major cities still can't communicate reliably in a major crisis, scandalous that airline passengers still are not screened against a terrorist watch list and scandalous that homeland security money is doled out politically to communities at less risk, rather than to places where the risk is highest.

Got a hot new homeland security idea? You could win $25,000. That's the top prize in a contest organized by Anne Arundel's homeland security business incubator, which hopes to attract proposals from across the country. The launch of the Defend America Challenge commemorates the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but coordinators plan to make it an annual event. "We're expecting a pretty substantial response," said Laura Neuman, interim executive director of the Chesapeake Innovation Center in Annapolis, which dubbed itself the first homeland security incubator in the nation when it formed in 2003.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Dogs have long been used to sniff out things that humans have a hard time smelling, such as drugs, cadavers and bombs. But an Israeli nonprofit believes that it has perfected the art of training dogs to detect explosives. Those highly trained dogs will soon be patrolling the streets of California cities. The state homeland security office is paying $411,000 to an organization called Pups for Peace so that eight handlers from California law enforcement agencies can travel to Israel to learn the bomb-sniffing training techniques.

Pointing to North Point-Edgemere volunteer firefighters as an example of the "first responders" who will suffer from budget cuts proposed by President Bush, Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger stopped by the company's Baltimore County fire station yesterday to criticize the president's 2004-2005 spending plan. Ruppersberger, a first-term Democrat, said he hopes he and his congressional colleagues can persuade the White House to restore a proposed cut of $1.5 billion in Department of Homeland Security grants that could help volunteer fire companies like North Point-Edgemere replace aging equipment.

ORANIA, South Africa -- In the dusty scrub land in the center of South Africa, a village of die-hard segregationists is still planting the seeds of a new fatherland for whites who reject reform.Describing themselves as modern-day pioneers, nearly 400 whites have come to this desolate spot out of opposition to the emerging democracy in which blacks and whites would have equal rights.While other South Africans are debating the subject of a separate homeland for whites, the people here are building one.They hope to secede from South Africa as the black majority comes to power, and they say their plans are more urgent than ever in light of this week's referendum on political reform, which put the country on course toward a racially mixed society.

Tom Greenbaum bought his dream house in Homeland Saturday -- the end-of-group with the sun room -- for $129,000 and proclaimed it "a deal and a half.""This is a prime unit. This is the one I wanted," he said. But then in a passing moment of post-auction reflection, he asked, "What have I done? I don't believe I did this."The 30-year-old architect was among about 75 people -- 40 of them registered bidders -- who gathered under a large green-and-white striped marquee for the auction of 16 mostly completed town houses and 66 building lots in the East Village at Homeland development, off Homeland Avenue in North Baltimore.

As U.S. Marines landed in Somalia, one 24-year-old Somali was getting "three hots and a cot" in the Wicomico County Jail while awaiting deportation to his starving homeland."