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LONDON -- "Now, if we can," said the Downing Street aide impatiently yesterday, "let's get back to the current prime minister."It was a cozy, background meeting between an anonymous source and the inquisitive media inside London's corridors of power.The problem was that there was more interest in Margaret Thatcher's visit to the United States last week than there was in her successor John Major's meeting with President Bush this week."Former prime ministers can make these statements. The present one has to get on with working out his policies," said the aide.

Maj. Harry A. Sizelove, a decorated Baltimore police commander who helped steer the department through troubled fiscal times in the 1980s, died Saturday at Sinai Hospital of cardiac arrest. He was 52. At the time of his death, Major Sizelove was deputy commissioner of the state Division of Pretrial Detention and Services, and a pivotal figure in the modernization of Baltimore's city jail. "The Harry Sizeloves of the world cannot be replaced," said LaMont Flanagan, commissioner of the division.

An Edgewood defense contractor accused of defrauding the federal government to further his wife's country and western singing career pleaded not guilty yesterday to fraud and conspiracy charges.Authorities say Robert David Leas, 49, funneled more than $90,000 of government money into a company founded by Alicia Faye Major, 30, to promote her career. The money was allegedly used to pay for expenses, including a two-bedroom townhouse in an affluent Nashville neighborhood, a record producer and a $4,000-a-month manager.

BETHESDA -- Much of the hoopla at this week's Booz Allen Classic at Congressional Country Club has centered on a field that boasts four of the top five golfers in the world: Vijay Singh, Ernie Els, Phil Mickelson and Retief Goosen. Adam Scott is ranked eighth and is the tournament's defending champion. At 6 feet, 170 pounds, he has the kind of good looks a Hollywood producer would drool over and the manners to sway any future father-in-law. But the 24-year-old Australian has been getting little buzz from fans and the media.

Baseball commissioner Bud Selig has called club owners together again for a meeting today in Chicago, where they are expected to plot strategy for upcoming labor negotiations, discuss the fallout from their controversial contraction plan and, perhaps, vote to extend Selig's term. The meeting, the second in three weeks at the Chicago O'Hare Airport Hilton Hotel, is not expected to produce any dramatic change in ownership strategy on any front, but it could end with an announcement that Major League Baseball will delay the dissolution of two franchises until after the 2002 season.

When Darnell Wright, 20, declared English as his major, the Chicago State University sophomore knew it would disappoint his parents. "My father wanted me to go into technology and get into a lucrative career," he said. "And when I told my mom, I knew it wasn't what she had hoped for me. At first I felt unsupported, but at the end of the day I had to make a decision on my own." Facing mounting college costs, students and their parents are confronting stark realities as they select their major fields of study.

NEW YORK -- Lost among the economic complexities of baseball's brand new labor agreement was a simple fact that probably had as much to do with preventing the industry's ninth consecutive work stoppage as any revenue-sharing number or luxury tax threshold. They got it. They finally got it. The owners realized that they didn't have to force the Major League Baseball Players Association to turn the clock back to 1972 to get a contract that would enhance competitive balance and solve some of their economic problems.

The rookie Cal Ripken Jr., sitting at the back of the team bus, had an unusual question for the seasoned major-league players: What were they going to do after baseball? At 22, the Harford County native was already wondering what his own answer would be. He had cut a deal to have the Orioles pay for college if he didn't last in the majors, but what really fueled his curiosity was the thought that even stars retired with half their lives ahead of them. "The way baseball is, if you're smart with your money and you make a lot of money, you have choices ... at the end of your career," Ripken says now, just shy of a decade since playing in his record-breaking 2,131st consecutive game.

Two major developments unfolded on Monday's episode of WWE RAW. The first was a big one in many ways - Paul Heyman revealed a new client, Michael McGillicutty, now known as Curtis Axel (Curtis after his father "Mr. Perfect Curt Hennig, Axel after his grandfather Larry "The Axe" Hennig). Though many fans complained about it not being a bigger name (RVD was speculated throughout the day), this is a great move and an even greater opportunity for a superstar to not only have instant credibility being aligned with Paul Heyman (arguably the greatest mouthpiece in pro wrestling history)

Up to half of sexually active young people will get a sexually transmitted disease by the time they are 25, yet many don't seek testing because it may be difficult, costly or embarrassing. Public health officials nationally and in particularly affected cities like Baltimore, however, say they've found a method that seems to address the major hurdles — a website that supplies free in-home testing kits for three of the most commonly reported STDs. "The highest prevalence is in young adults, and we knew we had to reach these kids," said Charlotte A. Gaydos, a professor of infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.