Parity

If the powers postpone aid to refugees in Zaire long enough, the problem will have gone away.Cheer up. USAir will change its name to US Airways.The city school lawsuit settlement is described in terms that obscure whether it brings funding parity with the rest of the state, which explains how it was reached.Q. Where are the snows of yesteryear? A. Ashtabula, Ohio.Pub Date: 11/15/96

Corey Patterson, Orioles outfielder Is there more parity in baseball now than since you can remember? Yeah, definitely. I was watching the Devil Rays play on Opening Day and they can hit. They were hitting, stealing bases, running a lot. Before, there were teams that you played and it was almost like an automatic win. [Now] it seems like if a team is a little suspect on pitching, they sure can hit. Or if they can't hit as well, they can sure pitch. ... It's very rare nowadays to have teams who do both poorly.

I couldn't help but notice those empty seats in Tampa, Fla., last weekend during the Atlantic Coast Conference championship game. Here's the thing about the ACC. All this parity (mediocrity?) is great for the individual campuses because each school can imagine it has a shot at the title. And most do have a shot. But having no dominant teams - no heavyweights - doesn't play as well on the national stage because there's no compelling story line. ( For more, go to baltimoresun.com/terpsblog)

Baltimore's police union wants to jettison a decades-old contract provision that requires the city to give firefighters the same pay raises that police officers receive, hoping the move will clear the way for larger pay increases. The police union leadership filed a lawsuit against the city last week on grounds that the parity or "me too" provisions of the fire unions' contract puts the police in the position of "indirectly" negotiating for fire wages, according to the complaint filed in Baltimore Circuit Court.

The dispute over the Orioles' parity clause is the most public evidence yet of growing tension between the state's most visible landlord, Maryland Stadium Authority chairman John Moag, and his biggest tenant, Orioles owner Peter Angelos.Publicly, both men say they get along fine. But observers say the behind-the-scenes tension began almost as soon as Moag took over the stadium authority post and supplanted Angelos as the head of the city's NFL effort. Angelos even tried to get Moag replaced last year, sources said.

In a decision that could further burden the cash-strapped city, the Court of Special Appeals ruled yesterday in favor of Baltimore's firefighters, who have been seeking million of dollars in disputed pay raises. The state's intermediate appeals court said firefighters should receive the same average 7 percent pay raises that police officers received this year, under the so-called "parity" clause in the firefighters' contract. Firefighters received a 3 percent raise this year but have argued that the city owes them another 4 percent, retroactive to July 1. Firefighters welcomed the news, but city officials said they would challenge the ruling before the state's highest court, the Court of Appeals.

Here's exciting news for you golfers at Longview in Baltimore County -- or maybe you don't need news this exciting:The foxes are back.That's right, the foxes who used to dart out of the woods and steal golf balls right off the fairways -- a story that was reported five years ago -- are up to their old tricks."

PARIS -- Europe's new currency, the euro, was introduced in January not only as a culminating step in European union, but also with the conviction that it would provide a new and powerful rival for the dollar.Now the euro -- launched at a value nearly 20 percent higher than the dollar -- has fallen to near-dollar parity. It traded yesterday at $1.03 to the dollar, down 11.3 percent for the year. Markets and analysts rumbled with forebodings that the European currency would fall below the $1 barrier, a seeming humiliation for the European Union.

What's being imposed upon you, dear citizen of Maryland, is (( without precedent. A record high price is about to be extracted for watching a football game. In some instances, a spectator will be asked to pay for the same seat three times. That's never happened before -- anywhere on the face of the earth.No. 1, you'll be paying for it via the lottery, which amounts to money raised by public funding. No. 2, there'll be a surcharge, otherwise known as a permanent seat license or PSL (which could be interpreted to stand for permanent seat larceny)

China has been using psychiatry to punish its dissidents -- a shocking revelation. While the punitive resourcefulness of police states is hardly news, this recent report rocked the psychiatry profession, triggering cries for global censure and fears that the entire discipline would be "tarnished." The irony is that psychiatry has always been oppressive -- even in the allegedly enlightened West -- given its imperious mandate to judge, manipulate and medicate what it decrees as undesirable behavior, and its sacrosanct power to lock up those who violate its norms.