Invasion

PANAMA CITY, Panama -- At noontime the hot Panama sun cooks the fetid pools of mud in the vacant lots that were once the bustling slum of Chorillo. Outside the three high-rise cinder block buildings that survived the U.S. invasion, men sit idly, staring at the few cars that chance down the barren road.Across the street workmen race to complete three other U.S.-funded structures that will house some of the 1,800 people still living in a U.S. Air Force hangar a year after Panama City's poorest neighborhood was shattered by the Dec. 20, 1989, U.S. assault on Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega's nearby headquarters.

WASHINGTON -- In darkness, Army Rangers, their faces blackened, parachute onto the airfield. Navy SEALs, in scuba gear, emerge from the waters around the port.The clandestine Delta Force slips through the streets of Port-au-Prince to the homes and offices of the military dictators.Marines leap from helicopters and landing craft to seize command and communication points in the capital. And the 82nd Airborne paratroopers descend from the night sky to join the attack.That is how an invasion of Haiti would start, according to experts inside and outside the Pentagon.

A 43-year-old Baltimore man has been sentenced to 37 years in federal prison for bank robbery with a dangerous weapon and brandishing a firearm during a crime of violence, according to the U.S. attorney's office. Maurice Young had pleaded guilty to the charges July 8, on the fifth day of his trial in U.S. District Court. In his plea agreement, Young had admitted to being involved in the October 2006 armed home invasion in Pikesville of a family that he and his co-conspirators had believed was involved in the jewelry business.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Odette Caidor was there the last time the United States invaded Haiti -- 79 years ago, when she was 10 years old.And for all the powerful suspicion and hostility the invasion has bred here, she has strangely sweet memories of the July day that U.S. troops landed on the docks of her southern home town of Jeremie."

SOUTHAMPTON, England -- Southern England is mobilizing again for D-Day, this time for the invasion of 50th-anniversary tourists.From Dorset to Hampshire to Sussex, guides are being trained, tours booked, itineraries mapped, museums spruced up, parades planned, monuments polished, profits projected. About150 separate events are listed in the "official" D-Day guide.President Clinton and Queen Elizabeth II are expected to come with full panoply of ceremony, and so are the heads of 11 other countries and up to a half-million more prosaic visitors.

A 24-year-old woman was raped Tuesday evening during a home invasion at a Woodlawn apartment, Baltimore County police said. About 11:15 p.m., six men wearing masks or bandannas entered the apartment in the 2000 block of Summit Ave., police said. Electronic items were stolen during the incident, police said. Two men - ages 23 and 24 - were in the apartment at the time of the attack, according to police. The woman, who was not a resident of the apartment, was taken to Greater Baltimore Medical Center and treated for her injuries, police said.

Apparently cooked up by a squad of Oxford-educated chimps and edited by a team of Iron Chefs soused on sake, the fourth version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers has nothing going for it except the smashing good looks of Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig. Set mostly in present-day Washington, with a long stop in Baltimore, The Invasion is even worse than the forgotten 1993 version, Body Snatchers, and that was set on a boring military base. Even if you sense the movie dead-ending at the close of every sequence, the pull of the central idea may keep you hooked for a while.

Turns out it was aliens who got rid of the dinosaurs, because the critters weren't smart enough.Who would've thought it?Robin Cook, that's who, the man responsible for the ludicrous, much-hyped ratings-blockbuster-to-be miniseries "Robin Cook's 'Invasion.' "If this one lives up to its advance billing, it won't be because it's any good.Luke Perry, who perfected brooding on "Beverly Hills 90210," stars as a "likable young man" (in NBC's words) who has the misfortune of picking up a shiny black stone while standing outside a Phoenix diner.

Denver C. Blackwell, who participated in the D-Day invasion and was the last of the six Blackwell brothers who served in the Army during World War II, died Wednesday of lung cancer at Harbor Hospital Center. He was 76 and lived in Cherry Hill. Born in Elberton, Ga., and raised on McCulloh Street, Mr. Blackwell attended Frederick Douglass High School. In 1943, he was drafted into the Army and trained as a "duck driver" for an amphibious vehicle. He served with the 817th Amphibious Truck Company, an all-black unit that participated in the Normandy invasion on June 6, 1944.

DHAHRAN, Saudi Arabia -- The invasion of Kuwait was part of a war plan drafted as many as five years ago by President Saddam Hussein that had as its goal the seizure of eastern Saudi Arabian oil fields, according to U.S. officials.Newly gathered intelligence indicates that the Iraqi plan envisioned no more than a strategic pause in Kuwait before Iraqi forces continued southward into Saudi Arabia.Administration officials have said the intelligence community provided adequate warning that Iraq was capable of attack.