Kazan

Lawmakers: Do right thing on tobacco taxI will be going home to see my mother this weekend. For the past two years, she has suffered from the pain and treatments associated with lung cancer caused by smoking. As a family member watching this horrible disease progress, I feel compelled to plead with our lawmakers to vote the right way when it comes to the governor's $1 tobacco tax proposal.Senators Edward J. Kasemeyer and Martin G. Madden, as well as Delegates Elizabeth Bobo, Shane Pendergrass and Frank S. Turner all signed pledges to support even a higher $1.50 tobacco tax proposal before the election.

Cigarettes will kill you. Asbestos will kill you. But as doctors have known for more than 30 years, neither will cripple or kill you faster and surer than asbestos and smoking together.Now, to reach into the deep pockets of the tobacco industry, some asbestos victims have formed an unlikely coalition with the asbestos manufacturers they have battled in court for years.They are demanding that Congress set aside $20 billion over 15 years from any national tobacco bill to compensate people whose cancer or lung disease was caused by both asbestos and smoking.

MOSCOW - One day after Russian President Vladimir V. Putin criticized human rights groups in a speech, two masked men in the city of Kazan, 450 miles east of Moscow, entered the offices of the Kazan Human Rights Center. "Don't move," one of the intruders ordered the lone employee left in the office late Thursday afternoon, according to an account by a lawyer for the group. Then the masked men smashed two computers, a scanner, television and printer. And left. The attack is highlighting the precarious position of human rights groups in Russia.

Hollywood can have Grauman's Chinese Theater and Steven Spielberg, because Baltimore has the Senator Theatre and John Waters. And every few years, when the two join forces for a gala premiere, it's a beautiful thing. Tickets for the Senator's Sept. 14 U.S. premiere of Waters' A Dirty Shame, a tale of sex-crazed concussion victims who take over the Harford Road corridor, go on sale today at $100 a pop. For that C-note, lucky Baltimoreans will be among the first to see Waters' latest (it gets its world premiere two days earlier, at the Toronto Film Festival)

For years, she watched mothers and infants die in her care, knowing they might have survived at hospitals outside Russia.The medical science, the sophisticated hardware, the team concepts and the art to combine them were not available to her. She knew of the advances, but Communist authorities would not allow her to visit hospitals in other countries.Why should she wish to? The Soviet medical system was second to none, of course.Dr. Alevtina Kuznetsova would not accept the political bravado.

Andy Griffith, 81 a week from tomorrow, confides that "when my wife, Cindy, and I go someplace, and I don't want to be recognized, she says, `Don't talk!'" Hearing him boom across the phone lines from his hometown of Manteo, N.C., you know what she means. Griffith's weathered face has been part of America's pop-culture Mount Rushmore for half-a-century, whether as Mayberry's comic philosopher of a sheriff or the wily cornpone lawyer Matlock. But his rich and loamy voice can open up pockets of memory like a down-home audio version of Marcel Proust's madeleine.

NOTE: This is a 2007 story from The Baltimore Sun's archives. Andy Griffith, 81 a week from tomorrow, confides that "when my wife, Cindy, and I go someplace, and I don't want to be recognized, she says, 'Don't talk!'" Hearing him boom across the phone lines from his hometown of Manteo, N.C., you know what she means. Griffith's weathered face has been part of America's pop-culture Mount Rushmore for half-a-century, whether as Mayberry's comic philosopher of a sheriff or the wily cornpone lawyer Matlock.

In the year of the little movies that could, one of the littlest, "Shakespeare in Love," outfoxed and outcharmed "Saving Private Ryan" at the 71st Academy Awards last night."

HOLLYWOOD -- Lee Remick, the alluring actress who gained fame and empathy as the haunting alcoholic in "Days of Wine and Roses," died yesterday at her home here of cancer.The versatile performer, who was known for her talent in blending the innocence of youth and the sensuality of womanhood into a single dramatic commodity, was 55.Tumors had been found on her kidneys and lungs in 1989 after she fell ill while making a film in France.Ms. Remick's diversity as an actress was evident throughout what proved a lengthy career for a woman who died so young.

TUESDAY'S TELEVISION HIGHLIGHTS MLB Yankees@Orioles (T) MASN9:30 a.m. Washington@Atlanta MASN7 Toronto@Orioles MASN27 Yankees@Boston MLB7 Cubs@San Francisco WGN-A10 Washington@Atlanta (T) MASN11:30 B. bask. Under Armour Dunk Contest (T) ESPNU4:30 Boost Mobile Elite 24 (T) ESPNU5:30 H.S. foot. Cocoa (Fla.)