Pact

Baltimore County officials have reached tentative agreements with unions representing the county's 1,600 firefighters and blue-collar workers that provide pay increases of up to 6.5 percent.The proposed contracts, slated to be ratified next month, are not as generous as the pay package for county police but offer pay and benefits similar to those in neighboring jurisdictions, county officials say."We feel this keeps our people competitive," said Robert J. Barrett, a special assistant to County Executive C. A. Dutch Ruppersberger.

IS GEORGE W. Bush what some of his critics say he is -- a squishy, establishment Republican, whose heart is not in matters of the soul like abortion or in lowering taxes, shrinking government and toughening our foreign policy so our adversaries will again respect us?Who better to answer that question than the governor himself?Mr. Bush called from the road the other day. I ask him what signal can he send to anxious conservatives that he will not, if nominated and elected, disappoint them?He begins by talking about his faith in Jesus, but for the moment I am less interested in how he's getting to heaven than in how he plans to get to Washington and what he intends to do there.

Members of two Annapolis municipal unions overwhelmingly approved new one-year contracts last night that give 2 percent pay raises to police officers and blue-collar workers.Both unions will see the increase in their paychecks starting July 1 even though the city council has yet to approve both contracts.Under their contract, police officers will contribute 1 percent less to their pensions, similar to a provision in the pact that firefighters approved earlier this week. The city will assume the 1 percent.

The nation's biggest aerospace companies could be stuck in orbit through October because NASA has delayed deciding the winner of a landmark contract for taking over management of its unmanned satellites.Competing teams led by Bethesda's Lockheed Martin Corp. and Boeing Co. of Seattle originally expected to learn the winner by July 1. NASA slipped the date for several weeks, and finally decided that it needs up to 90 more days to pick a winner.A spokesman for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said officials have asked for so much detailed additional information from the contractors that they need more time to to weigh their responses.

WASHINGTON -- As President Clinton prepares for a summit meeting in Beijing this month, the United States and China are trying to negotiate an agreement to no longer target nuclear missiles at each other, senior U.S. officials said yesterday.The officials also said that Washington is pressing China to codify its promises earlier this month to further restrict the supply of missile technology to Pakistan.The Asia director of the National Security Council, Sandra Kristoff, is in Beijing trying to complete work on the substantive agenda for Clinton's visit, the first by a U.S. president to China since the crackdown on demonstrators in Tiananmen Square nine years ago this month.

With fierce criticism from public health officials ringing in their ears, negotiators for a comprehensive tobacco settlement reconvened in New York yesterday to iron out details on several thorny provisions, including the regulation of nicotine and the future liability of tobacco companies.Despite opposition to the deal, aired in a meeting of physicians and anti-smoking activists in Chicago Wednesday, the negotiators are determined to grind out a "term sheet" within the next 10 days that spells out details of the pact.

GENEVA -- More than 60 countries endorsed a landmark agreement in Geneva yesterday to open their telecommunication markets to all rivals.The pact legally commits governments to unlocking the state telephone monopolies that still control more than half of the world's communications business.The agreement came after weeks of bruising negotiations in which the United States pushed for greater liberalization and slowly coaxed concessions from countries around the world.The United States did not get everything it wanted.

BY PUTTING an important treaty banning chemical weapons on hold, Sen. Jesse Helms, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is putting President Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Senate majority leader Trent Lott on the spot.By April 29, this arms pact will come into force -- even if the United States has failed to ratify it. Washington would have no part in staffing or implementing the treaty's enforcement. The American chemical industry would be put at a competitive disadvantage.

The Empower Baltimore board of directors approved a $514,000 job-placement contract yesterday that includes a provision to spend a substantial amount on support services ranging from family counseling to abuse prevention.The agreement with the Historic East Baltimore Community Action Coalition, which is likely to be duplicated in the city's other empowerment zones in West and South Baltimore, will include mandatory monitoring designed to show whether the program is working."There is no disagreement this is needed," said board member Robert C. Embry Jr., noting that some residents of the empowerment zone are not ready for jobs and need support services to get and hold them.

WASHINGTON -- "Insulting to the dignity, injurious to the interests, dangerous to the security and repugnant to the Constitution of the United States" was how the treaty was described in Richmond, Va."A cage constructed to coop up the American eagle" was the denunciation in Boston, where burnings in effigy were common.They weren't talking about the Chemical Weapons Convention, though the rhetoric was familiar last week when the Senate debated and approved the pact to ban the production, storage and use of poison gas.It was the Jay Treaty of 1795 they were talking about, a treaty that made suspicious Jeffersonians think that the Federalists were trying to establish an American monarchy.

BAGHDAD - Iraq's parliament approved a three-year timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops yesterday, a pact that supporters call a path to sovereignty and opponents say could be used to keep Americans on Iraqi soil indefinitely. The pact is the first step taken by Iraqi legislators toward ending the U.S. presence in their country since the American-led invasion in March 2003. It is expected to be ratified by Iraq's three-member presidency council. The vote, held above the din of detractors shouting, "No!"

U.N. to send 3,100 more troops to Congo GOMA, Congo: The U.N. Security Council unanimously agreed yesterday to send 3,100 more peacekeeping troops to Congo, while rebels said they remained committed to a pullback from the front lines despite an army attack. British Ambassador John Sawers said the 15-nation council wants to help contributing nations "as best we can in getting troops on the ground rapidly" once they decide to help out. "Exactly how many weeks it will be, it's not clear. But this is a matter of urgency," Sawers said.

NAACP chairman Bond won't seek new term BALTIMORE: Veteran civil rights activist Julian Bond will not seek another term as chairman of the NAACP's national board, saying the time is right to "let a new generation of leaders" take over the century-old organization. Bond, 68, has served as chairman since 1998. He announced yesterday that his current one-year chairman's term, which expires in February, will be his last, although he plans to remain on the board. "This is a time for renewal.

U.S. declares Iraq security pact final BAGHDAD: The U.S. responded yesterday to Iraqi proposals for changes in the draft security pact that would keep American troops here for three more years, saying it now considers the text final and it is up to Iraq's government to push the process to approval. U.S. and Iraqi officials would not release details of Washington's response, which was contained in a letter from President Bush to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. But a senior Iraqi official familiar with the negotiations said Washington accepted some proposals and rejected others, presumably an Iraqi demand for expanded legal authority over American troops and Defense Department contractors.

BAGHDAD - Followers of the anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr took to the streets yesterday in a demonstration against the proposed security agreement between the U.S. and Iraqi governments, now being reviewed by Iraqi political leaders. In a message to the assembled marchers, one of al-Sadr's senior clerics read a statement from him warning that "whoever tells you that this pact gives us sovereignty is lying," according to news services. A leading Sadrist cleric at the rally, Hazim al-Arraji, said: "This is the voice of the Iraqi people from all over Iraq: We need the invaders to leave our country; no one wants them to stay.

Marc Clarke, host of 92Q's Big Phat Morning Show, was having considerably less than a big phat morning. Clarke stood in the foyer of one of the Charles Theatre's several movie houses, wondering if he'd been out of line and gone too far with some comments he had made only moments before. The movie house was packed with scores of boys -- nearly all of them black -- who had been brought to a screening of The Pact, a documentary about three doctors from Newark, N. J. That's just part of the story.

ELKTON -- Ed Hoffman says he stood over the bed of his sleeping wife for a half-hour, a loaded shotgun in his hands, watching in the pre-dawn darkness as she tossed and turned in her nightgown. When she nestled into just the right position, he put the barrel against her head and pulled the trigger, killing her instantly. Then it was his turn to complete what he says was a murder-suicide pact between him and his wife of 44 years. But first he had to take care of some details. He went to his computer and composed and sent an e-mail to 70 friends and relatives, a matter-of-fact recounting of their loving marriage and desire to take charge of their own deaths.

Awards Andre J. Downey, president/chief executive of EEC Inc.; Stella M. Miller, president of Stella May Contracting Inc.; and Deborah L. Stroman, CEO of Soulful Golf Inc., have been named among Maryland's Top 100 Minority Businesses for 2006 by the Governor's Office of Minority Affairs and The Daily Record. Baltimore Junior Association of Commerce named David W. Stambaugh III, general manager of the Baltimore Maritime Exchange Inc., as the 33rd recipient of its Port Leader of the Year award.

WASHINGTON -- For weeks, the Bush administration resisted international pressure for a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah, insisting that only disarming the terrorist organization would cure a "root cause" of hostility and prevent yet another failed peace agreement. But the truce that took effect yesterday - coming without the destruction of Hezbollah's military threat and an unclear path to its disarmament - marks a far less dramatic conclusion than many in the Bush administration had hoped for when the fighting began last month.

A former Western Maryland principal denied at her federal trial yesterday that she falsifed invoices and defended herself against charges that she took more than $18,000 intended for classroom books and travel reimbursements. Diane L. McFarland testified for more than three hours in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, choking up as she relayed details about her personal finances. McFarland, 52, who was making $72,000 a year as principal of Cash Valley Elementary School in LaVale, said she had two credit cards and a mortgage to pay off in 2004, and that she always "paid ahead on the mortgage."