Paradise

ST. JOHN'S, Antigua -- Nobody here wants to talk to strangers about the yacht that was towed into the harbor 10 days ago with four cadavers aboard, seated as they were when they were murdered -- an American couple and two English crewmen.This is the height of the tourist season. Images are important.The England vs. Leeward Islands cricket matches. The harbors that attract some of the world's most expensive sailing yachts. The hundreds of soft, white-sand beaches.Those are the images they want.

SHIMOTSUMA, Japan - Teruo Araki wheezes as he glances down at the oxygen tanks that accompany him everywhere. "This is what smoking did to me," he says. "And I hold the Japanese government responsible." The fist-sized tumor removed from his lung is hardly uncommon in a nation where half the adult male population smokes. What is rare is the 75-year-old Araki's willingness to speak out - and file the first smokers' lawsuit against Japan's major tobacco interests. Japan's slow-moving wheels of justice are expected to deliver a verdict early next year, five years after the case was filed, in a nation where courts rarely rule against the government.

If you ever doubt that America is the land of opportunity, look no farther than Ricky Williams, the running back who is on his fourth or fifth chance at a pro football career with his recent return to the Miami Dolphins. Williams looks different. He's clean-shaven, from dome to chin. And he sounds a bit different. He's not utterly the vague, navel-gazing guy we had come to know. Last week, he said he wanted to be a football player and that he realized it was what most fulfilled him. "Someone asked me a question.

"Trapped in Paradise" feels trapped in nowhere. It's set in some weird alternate universe in which violence is funny, guns don't kill and all's well -- including exceedingly traumatic and invasive criminal assault -- that ends well. It's set in Never Ever Land, not Pennsylvania.A modest comedy that does indeed stir a few chuckles out of its knuckleheaded trio of bad boys, it grows almost shockingly disturbing when it portrays armed robbery as amusing and the implicit death threat of the firearm as a joke.

I first came to like Edward Abbey's writing when I encountered a passage that explained he loved the godforsaken Southwestern desert not despite the rattlesnakes, but because of them. What a cranky, irritable soul! As he explained in his 1968 classic "Desert Solitaire":"Now when I write of paradise I mean Paradise, not the banal Heaven of the saints. When I write 'paradise' I mean not apple trees and golden women but also scorpions and tarantulas and flies, rattlesnakes and Gila monsters, sandstorms, volcanos and earthquakes, bacteria and bear, cactus, yucca, bladderweed, ocotillo and mesquite, flash floods and quicksand, and yes -- disease and death and the rotting of the flesh."

If any subdivision fits the description of a suburban paradise, it is Howard County. One of the most affluent counties in Maryland, and the nation, Howard boasts a clean environment, excellent public schools, amenities galore and a median household income of nearly $64,000.But all that glitter can blind us sometimes to the bleaker side of county life. As the Maryland Food Committee reports, hunger has worsened markedly in Baltimore's suburbs over the past few years. The increases in the demand for social services have been more dramatic in Baltimore City, Anne Arundel and Baltimore counties.

This picture of Paradise Bay was taken last November during an Antarctic cruise. Dwarfed by the gargantuan mountains and glaciers of the Antarctic Peninsula is the Argentine base Almirante Brown, one of the few places where it is actually possible to set foot on the continent. Anne-Marie Sack Parkville The Sun welcomes readers' submissions for "My Best Shot." Photos should be accompanied by a description of when and where you took the picture and your name, address and phone number. Submissions cannot be individually acknowledged or returned, and upon submission become the property of The Sun. Write to: Travel Department, The Sun, 501 N. Calvert St., Baltimore 21278, or e-mail Travel@baltsun.

WASHINGTON -- Close your eyes and come to paradise -- to a place where federal income taxes are forgiven and corporate taxes are slashed, where schools actually educate students, and grand boulevards and city streets are safe to stroll at night.No, it's not Monaco or Hong Kong. It could be Washington, until recently the murder capital of the country and now flat on its financial back, knocked out by relentless crime, fumbling city politicians and a fleeing middle class.But if an unlikely coalition of die-hard Republicans and left-wing Democrats has its way, Washington would no longer be called "A Capital City."

The Way to Paradise, by Mario Vargas Llosa. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 384 pages. $25. Mario Vargas Llosa's historical novel, The Way to Paradise, takes its title from a children's game, much like hide and seek, in which one child asks the other players, "Is this the way to Paradise?" The response is always "try the next corner;" but as the child runs to the next corner, the others reconfigure themselves so that "paradise" can never be found. In this fluid melding of Vargas Llosa's usual biting socio-political commentary with actual history, he metaphorizes the concept of an elusive Paradise through the novel's main characters, French social reformer and feminist Flora Tristan and her grandson, painter Paul Gauguin.

It takes courage to do a tear-jerker today, but apparently Mary Agnes Donoghue has that kind of courage. Her ''Paradise'' is a weepie.Donoghue wrote the scripts for ''Beaches'' and ''Deceived,'' but this is her first job as director, and she's done quite well. If you like tear-jerkers, this one has been very tastefully and artfully managed.It has a French feel that comes naturally. ''Paradise'' is an American remake of the 1987 film ''Le Grand Chemin.''The principal character is a 10-year-old boy whose mother is about to have another baby and wants to be free of complications because she already has enough.