Peat

County Comptroller Eugene Curfman had two pieces of bad news for the County Commissioners yesterday when discussing his $1.6 million operating budget request for the coming fiscal year.The county soon may have to switch to a new bank that could charge higher rates to guarantee the county's investments, Curfman said.NationsBank, which guarantees the county's investments, "has put its trust division up for sale," Curfman said at yesterday's hearing on department budget requests for fiscal 1998, which begins July 1."

NEW ORLEANS -- Line In The Sand captured the $200,000 Louisiana Derby yesterday after Colony Light was disqualified for interference in the stretch.Line In The Sand, the 4-5 betting favorite in the Grade III race for 3-year-olds, closed ground in the stretch under Pat Day, but fell about two lengths short of Colony Light, which went off at 9-1 under Julie Krone.Colony Light took command in the stretch after the early pacesetter, West Vermont, faded.However, Colony Light drifted inside near the eighth pole and stewards at the Fair Grounds ruled Krone interfered with Hill Pass, which finished third.

The race is wide open for the MSL All-Star goalkeeper position in the Eastern Division. Here's how the division's top keepers size up the competition.* SCOTT MANNING, Blast: "You know my feeling about stats. To use a goals-against average is a joke. I look to see if a goalkeeper is doing the things he needs to do to win -- timely saves, calling timeout, setting his defense. Kris Peat doesn't impress me. I like Mike Dowler, even though we've beaten him. [Jim] Gorsek never plays away from home.

LONDON - The office of Charles, the Prince of Wales, announced last night that it would investigate allegations about the royal intervention that ended the trial of Princess Diana's butler, Paul Burrell, Nov. 1 and subsequent charges that the prince covered up an alleged homosexual rape by a top aide and that his courtiers sold royal gifts. The rare look into the goings-on behind palace doors appeared to be an attempt to stem the tide of charge and innuendo against the royal family in recent weeks that has threatened to wash away the goodwill earned during the jubilee celebrations of Queen Elizabeth II's 50 years on the throne.

It was organized chaos.Grown men huffing and puffing as they pushed wheelbarrows full of mulch up a trail at Centennial Park. Small boys flailing rakes and shovels at anything in their path.One child stood apart, arms akimbo, looking disgusted."Why don't you just borrow the other fellow's rake?" an adult asked him."Watch your head!" the adult shouted. A dozen rake handles were pushed in the child's direction."My arms are tired," said one of the young rakers. "I've never seen so much mulch."

North Dakota is calling me. "Come on up!" it says. And then it adds: "Bring thermal underwear!" This invitation resulted from a column in which I poked fun at North Dakota for wanting to drop the word "North" from its name, so that people will stop thinking of it as a cold, frigid, freezing, subzero, arctic, polar, wintry place characterized by low temperatures. My column also made fun of Grand Forks, N.D., and East Grand Forks, Minn., for marketing themselves as "The Grand Cities" and proclaiming that they are "where the earth meets the sky."

They're the employees who can't seem to get organized, don't finish the paperwork, always miss deadlines. They're the workers who can't make it through that long-range project, are easily distracted, can't sit still.They're people like Joshua Gottesman, a certified public accountant who upset his bosses because he couldn't focus on stacks of income tax returns, though his supervisors described him as "brilliant."Lazy good-for-nothings? Not necessarily, researchers say. They may, like Mr. Gottesman, have attention deficit disorder (ADD)

LONDON -- While both sides of the Atlantic are gripped in recession, Dr. Lynne Agress' small but profitable Baltimore-based company, Business Writing at its Best Inc., is busy dotting its i's and crossing its t's.The recession has motivated Dr. Agress to "reach out more" for clients. In the decade she has been in business, the former college English professor has expanded about half of her business beyond the Baltimore region. She is hiring two managers, one for New York and one for Washington, D.C., where they will hire instructors and sell the program.

Second National Bancorporation said yesterday that it lost $20.2 million during the last three months of 1991, wiping out the capital boost it got from restructuring its debt last year."

Mike Stankovic's knee injury proved to be more serious than first believed, but don't count out the veteran Blast midfielder returning next season."I understand from talking to Dr. [Joseph] Ciotola that everything went well and obviously, that makes me very happy," said Stankovic, who suffered a complete tear of two ligaments in a collision with Wichita's Terry Rowe Saturday. "I will probably be back and give it another shot."Yesterday, Ciotola surgically repaired the medial collateral ligament and then performed reconstructive surgery, using a patela tendon graft, on the anterior cruciate ligament.