Paradise

Everything at Paradise in a Teacup -- from the tables to the teapots -- is for sale, but there's a genuine sweetness to the place that can't be bought or sold. We didn't buy anything except lunch, but, after a long, stressful workweek, we were delighted to relax and enjoy a long, rainy afternoon indoors and all the gentle spirit the place could muster.Paradise is the perfect place to bring your grandmother or to have a birthday tea for children, who will delight in its sweet treats, flowery china and the teddy bears -- there must be hundreds -- that fill the restaurant.

Ruby's idea of paradise may not be your idea of paradise but it does go to show that paradise, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.Here's her idea: a little house. Nobody to tell her what to do. A job at which she can work hard and in which she can take some pride. And, most important, the freedom to reflect. "Ruby in Paradise," the award-winning film opening today at the Charles, watches as she fights her way toward just such bliss.It is possibly Ruby's spirit of reflection that accounts for much of the charm of the film.

LIKE MANY OF US, Mary L. Bowman wanted a yard that she could turn into her idea of paradise. She chose an exclusive development in Baltimore County's Greenspring Valley, with covenants designed to prevent some neighbor's shed or privacy fence from spoiling her vision.That vision included stands of trees -- woodland habitats for wildlife. It never occurred to her that anyone might object to so beneficient an addition to her property.But one person's paradise is another's poison. Dr. Onkar N. Singh moved next door with his own idea of Shangri-la -- a house with a view.

Palestinian filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad has a simple reason for making a film about suicide bombers. "I think it is a story that has not been told," he says. Indeed. In American media, it is rare that a suicide bomber has a name or a face. Those who do are the few who attack in the West, flying planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or setting off bombs on the London subway. Those who kill and die in other parts of the world usually remain anonymous. The handful who do get identified are rarely depicted as anything other than one-dimensional figures.

Its fabled pink beaches, crystal waters and balmy temperatures have made it one of the world's most popular resort destinations, yet for all its renown, most people know precious little about Bermuda.Often mistakenly identified with the Caribbean Basin, this small cluster of 150 limestone islands and inlets is, in fact, the northernmost coral reef formation in the Atlantic Ocean.Built on the summit of an extinct volcano, its foundation took form more than 70 million years ago. Today, a chain of seven islands connected by a series of bridges and causeways comprises Bermuda proper, about 22 square miles of real estate that measures 15 miles in length and 2 1/2 miles wide at the widest point.

Where are all the Europeans? The Japanese? The people who, since the first resort opened in 1972 in the Maldives Republic, have been making the tiny nation of 1,200 islands one of the world's great tourist pamperers? The travelers are not coming, at least not in force, not since the tsunami in December. Tourism, the Maldives' No. 1 moneymaker, usually accounts for more than a fifth of the national income, and it's down by 49 percent so far this year. The government had expected tourism tax revenues to come to $43 million by December's end; new projections put the figure at $31 million.

Amid the strip malls and megastores dotting Baltimore County, there's an oasis of small-town life, a place where business is still a mom-and-pop concern. It's a community known as Paradise. Just five blocks from the city line on Frederick Road, you can buy a used car at Paradise Motors, have a beer down the block at the Paradise Tavern, do your laundry across the street at Paradise Suds and buy crabs around the corner at Paradise Seafood. Residents like it this way -- convenient, dependable and just a little worn around the edges.

When you eat at Cheeseburger in Paradise - or write a review about it - you're bound to get the Jimmy Buffett song stuck in your head. So let's deal with it at the start and all sing together: "I like mine with lettuce and tomato, Heinz 57 and french-fried potatoes." The Pasadena location, which opened in March, is the first Maryland restaurant in the growing chain, but others are expected to follow soon in California, Md., and in Waldorf. The bigwigs behind Cheeseburger in Paradise - a partnership between Buffett's Margaritaville Holdings and Outback Steakhouse - have their work cut out for them trying to convince Cheeseburger patrons they're in paradise, not a shopping center on Ritchie Highway.

XIANGGELILA, China - The people of this mountain town live in paradise. They know this because the Chinese government has told them so. It's not a paradise of the Communist, workers-of-the-world variety. Rather, local officials insist that this area, high up on the Tibetan plateau, is none other than Shangri-La, land of myth and beauty, source of the fountain of youth. It's the heaven on earth described by James Hilton in his classic novel Lost Horizon and immortalized by Frank Capra in the movie of the same name.

When house hunting, it's hard to overlook an area called Paradise. For Bob and Michele Evans, their first day of home shopping with a Realtor in the southwest Baltimore County neighborhood turned up the perfect place for them. "This house made the best impression on us," said Michele Evans, 40, of their brick, two-story rowhouse in the Catonsville neighborhood of Paradise. "We knew where we wanted to be," added her husband, Bob, born the same day as his wife. "We wanted an end-of group [house]