Pause

It's hard to unravel all the wheeling-and-dealing the government says Tommy Bromwell was up to, and those FBI transcripts of him cussing and drinking and bragging are almost too entertaining to shed light. But I think I?m onto his central scheme, and as someone who can?t afford HBO, it thrills me to report it involves Comcast. No, I'm not talking about the part where the former Democratic state senator and current RICO defendant is caught on tape saying that he saved the cable giant $75 million through a late-fees bill, and that "If I run for county executive and lose, I've got a job with Comcast Cable."

AMERICA has witnessed an explosion of legalized gambling in the past quarter-century. All but three states permit legal wagering of some kind, from lotteries to animal races to jai alai to casino games. Total wagering in the United States reached $638 billion in 1997, a fivefold increase in just 15 years. What happens when Internet gambling Web sites proliferate?A national commission has recommended that officials "pause" from future gambling expansion to examine the social costs. It even suggests "gambling impact statements" be drafted before government approves enlarged or added games of chance.

Jan Brett, author of "The Mitten," recalls: "I remember the quiet times when, as a child, I felt I could enter my beautiful children's books. One of the joys of reading is that you can pause whenever you wish to think, imagine, dream, and then return with the turn of a page."-- "Valerie & Walter's Best Books for Children," by Valerie V. Lewis and Walter M. Mayes

MIAMI -- Do you pause in the Pledge of Allegiance?You could be violating a proposed Miami-Dade County Public Schools rule.Irked for years by people who pause in the Pledge of Allegiance, longtime school board member Holmes Braddock wants a new zTC rule that schoolchildren be taught to say "one nation under God" in one breath during their voluntary morning ritual.Braddock believes it's incorrect to pause, as many do, between "one nation" and "under God.""When you read it, there's no comma there," said Braddock, 72, an insurance underwriter who has been on the board for 36 years.

Couch potatoes need no longer wait for the commercials.A new VCR-like device will let TV watchers literally stop time: Replay Networks is rushing to shelves in November a black box that lets TV watchers pause live television.The 15-employee, 1-year-old Silicon Alley upstart is betting that its $999 Replay TV controller box will appeal to a broad base of TV addicts."People want more control over their TV-watching experience," said Jim Plant, Replay's marketing director.The box houses a 7-gigabyte hard-disc drive that starts recording when users hit the pause button on a special remote control.

SHE WAS a vision of speed and power, glamour and beauty. Of which, the last two were the most surprising. One does not expect to come across dazzle and loveliness in the world of track and field. It's a fish-out-of-water surprise, not unlike a red rose found blooming among wildflowers at the side of the road.Me, I was never a big fan of the sport. But I'd always pause -- you simply had to pause -- when Florence Griffith Joyner was running. Not just because she won races and set records, but because she did so with long, painted nails, sexy track suits, and a silky mane flowing behind her, all serving to accentuate a compelling native beauty.

The summer fades and passes, and October comes. We'll smell smoke then, and feel an unsuspected sharpness, a thrill of nervousness, swift elation, a sense of sadness and departure.-- Thomas Wolfe, ''You Can't Go Home Again''We fall to rise, are baffled to fight better.Sleep to wake.-- Robert Browning, ''Asalando'' SUMMER LIGHT FADES in an October afternoon the way love is often lost. It disappears over a hillside that, only moments before, seemed green and verdant, but now is dark and sere.

It's sometimes said that composers are the best conductors of their own music. It's much less often the case that composers make superb conductors of other people's music.Nevertheless, that was exactly the case last night in Temple Oheb Shalom when Krzysztof Penderecki conducted the Warsaw Sinfonia in a concert presented by the Gordon Charitable Trust.Penderecki, one of the world's best-known living composers, took a fresh approach to Mendelssohn's "Italian Symphony." In the first and fourth movements, Penderecki led his splendid young orchestra at an exhilarating pace, but there also was an affecting lightness of touch, close observation of details and consistent expressiveness.

AS AN INDICATOR of investor confidence in the economy, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is sending a rosy signal. In just nine months, the Dow average eclipsed the 4000 level and -- with hardly a pause -- surged past 5000 on Tuesday and pushed on to 5041 at Wednesday's close.It always helps to keep matters in perspective, though. The stock market is a contrary animal, often falling on good news that disappoints expectations. In fact, the market is more a barometer of analysts' expectations than a true reflection of the economy's strength.

Washington -- IT WAS PROBABLY inevitable that the "Connie Chung question" would come up, even at last Thursday's gala inaugural salute to the new Senate leadership at the gorgeous Corcoran Gallery.The discussion among journalists started when Cable News Networks' press show moderator Bernard Kalb asked several of us whether we would have done what Connie Chung did. Would we have told Newt Gingrich's mother that she should "whisper it to me, just between you and me," as to what "Newtie" really thought of Hillary Clinton?

JERUSALEM - Israel and Hamas scaled back their fighting in the Gaza Strip yesterday and considered a cease-fire proposal from Egypt and France, even as Israeli leaders weighed a deeper assault into the Palestinian militant group's urban strongholds. Fighting on the 12th day of the air, land and sea offensive all but halted for three hours during a unilateral Israeli pause. Israeli officials said they wanted to give diplomacy a chance, but they indicated that a decision to end or intensify the operation, aimed at halting rocket fire into Israel, could come by week's end. "From Israel's perspective, there's no contradiction between pursuing the military targets in Gaza and working in parallel on the diplomatic track," said Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev.

It didn't take the bad guys long. It was only minutes after Tim Russert's death was announced that someone apparently posted something so unpleasant on The New York Times' Web site that it was taken down almost immediately by somebody in the control room. I didn't see what was said, but some of those who posted afterward did, and they were outraged. By last Monday, pundits and bloggers were criticizing Russert's shocked and sad colleagues at NBC for their "overblown, self-congratulatory and self-indulgent" coverage of his death.

BAGHDAD -- Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates endorsed yesterday the idea of a pause in the American troop drawdown this summer for the first time. . Gates' comments followed a meeting with the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, who favors a temporary break in the troop reduction after the last of five extra brigades leave as planned in July. The brigades were deployed in 2007 to quell Iraq's bloodshed, and their departure will bring troop levels down to about 134,000, the lowest since January 2007.

Good morning -- Brenda Frese -- Someone has to say it: Those California games you missed are just a pregnant pause.

Be warned. If you are a pedestrian on O'Donnell Street in East Baltimore, the vast majority of the drivers there would rather run you down and kill you dead, dead, dead than slow down even a smidgen to let you use the crosswalk in which you have the legal right of way. This is not hyperbole. I spent several hours last week observing the behavior of the drivers in the vicinity of the midblock crosswalk linking the old National Brewery with the building that now houses Elder Health. I crossed and recrossed O'Donnell Street dozens of times to see whether drivers would stop for foot traffic.

It's hard to unravel all the wheeling-and-dealing the government says Tommy Bromwell was up to, and those FBI transcripts of him cussing and drinking and bragging are almost too entertaining to shed light. But I think I?m onto his central scheme, and as someone who can?t afford HBO, it thrills me to report it involves Comcast. No, I'm not talking about the part where the former Democratic state senator and current RICO defendant is caught on tape saying that he saved the cable giant $75 million through a late-fees bill, and that "If I run for county executive and lose, I've got a job with Comcast Cable."

WASHINGTON -- A weaker-than-expected employment report for July might be all the Federal Reserve needs to take a pause from raising interest rates after 17 straight increases. That was a conclusion in financial markets yesterday after the Labor Department reported that payroll jobs rose 113,000 last month, about 37,000 below the consensus figure. The national unemployment rate rose to 4.8 percent in July from 4.6 in June. Central bankers have been looking for the right moment to bring its interest rate increases to a halt-- and analysts said that moment appears to have arrived as a result of the less-than-robust employment picture.

To pause or not to pause, that is the question facing the Federal Reserve today. For 10 straight meetings, Chairman Alan Greenspan's central bank has gradually increased short-term interest rates in a campaign to bring them back to a more "neutral," or normal, level. Another increase had been expected before Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast - and sent gasoline prices soaring and consumer confidence sinking. But now, the Fed finds itself besieged by pressure to wait until its Nov. 1 meeting before boosting interest rates again.

Officially, Katie Crowley was at the Baltimore Summer Antiques Fair to sell, not to buy. But, on a break from her duties at her father's antique stand yesterday, the 19-year-old wandered through the 545 stalls set up at the Baltimore Convention Center. She paused at a stand dedicated to vintage eyeglasses, where a hexagonal pair of 1950s gray French frames caught her attention. "They're really unique," she said, with a big smile as she tried them on. But they cost $150, so Crowley of Milford, Mich.

IF AUSTRALIA, one of the few countries backing U.S. military action against Iraq, decides not to send its elite swimmers to Indianapolis on April 6 for a United States vs. Aussies duel in the pool, people would understand. There's the question now about being a terrorist target. There's also the inclination to rethink priorities. Yesterday, Australian swim officials said they would decide later this week whether to allow their athletes to make the trip, thus putting into question a rare opportunity for Australia's Ian Thorpe and North Baltimore Aquatic Club's Michael Phelps to circle each other in a supercharged atmosphere before the world championships this July in Barcelona, Spain.