Plight

They've been unlikely allies fighting the Schaefer administration's budget cuts -- uniformed state police and an eclectic band of drug addicts and alcoholics.For a few days last week, they stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the State House in Annapolis, hoping to catch the conscience of legislators.While the troopers' plight -- layoffs, barracks closings and reduced Med-Evac helicopter service -- has caught the public's attention, many officials say the massive cuts to drug- and alcohol-treatment programs pose the greater threat to public safety.

FOR THOSE who think Sidney Ponson has (in four good months) morphed into the second coming of Mike Mussina, let's remember: Things could be worse in terms of contractual conundrums. The Orioles could have the fleet-footed, home run-robbing Carlos Beltran playing center field for them and not be able to sign him to a long-term contract, just like the American League Central-leading Kansas City Royals can't do. At least Ponson is not represented by baseball super-agent Scott Boras, whose main client, Alex Rodriguez, is currently in town.

Lifelekoaneng, Lesotho-- --She sat staring at me, her gaze more vacant than hard. Numb, maybe. Her feet were a dirty whitish, as if caked in chalk. A breeze rushed through the broken windows of her little house, billowing the tattered curtains. Her last meal, a bowl of porridge eaten the previous afternoon, was but a memory. It was almost noon. "Are you hungry?" I asked Itumeleng Ntsane, an AIDS orphan who had just turned 13. The answer was obvious before she nodded and quietly said yes. How could this happen, I wondered.

After a few years of making strides in improving their pay, members of area teacher unions may not get pay raises this year.Even the rhetoric typically waged during spring negotiations has been somewhat muted. Baltimore's mayor and the suburban leaders have asked teachers and other employees to forgo raises, including some already negotiated, to forestall layoffs. In turn, the teacher union representatives have acknowledged a local government's plight -- in some, but not all, cases.Teachers and other local government employees also were taken aback yesterday by news of a move in the state legislature to penalize any jurisdiction that increases its workers' pay, on the theory that state workers aren't getting pay raises next year.

"Power resides where men believe it resides. It's a trick, a shadow on the wall. And a very small man can cast a very large shadow. " -- Varys, talking to Tyrion.  Westeros is a pretty cruel place to be a child. The third episode in HBO's second season of "Game of Thrones"began and ended with the slaughter of youths: First, with the wildling Craster (Robert Pugh) offering up one of his incestual sons to some weird gods (and Commander Mormont defending this behavior as an evil worth tolerating)

Hollywood is a town that has always known how to feud. You do it behind closed doors or, if you must go public, you spend huge legal fees to do it in courtrooms or for free with angry words and nasty insinuations in gossip columns. (See: Eisner vs. Katzenberg, Ovitz vs. Everyone.) So what is it with the twentysomethings these days? The feuding of Young Hollywood has taken a tawdry turn lately, combining the nastiness of middle-school Queen Bee behavior with an ugly, menacing physical element.

Baltimore children's author Jane Leslie Conly doesn't necessarily believe in happy endings, for herself or for her characters. But she does believe in handy ones. She'd never devise a sunny finale just to make the lives of the children and animals in her books easy. Instead, she believes in endings that function like fine tools. She believes in taking materials that are splintered or corroded and crafting them into something useful, sturdy and, therefore, beautiful. "I don't write happily-ever-after," Conly says, from the kitchen of her home in the Radnor-Winston neighborhood.

The National Commission on Children has come to the unanimous conclusion that this nation is collectively guilty of child abuse.Not child abuse in the usual sense of physical or sexual assault, although that is bad enough, but child abuse through parental neglect, poverty, poor health care, homelessness, divorce, child birth out of wedlock, inadequate pre-schooling, violence-oriented entertainment and, implicitly, the diversion of resources from the youngest...

With the final results of Mexico's Aug. 21 election now a matter of record, it is increasingly clear that the political left suffered a devastating defeat not only in the numbers but even more in expectations. Its candidate, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, won only 16.6 percent of the large turnout vote, compared with the 30.90 percent he received in the highly tainted elections of 1988. All this in spite of a rebellion in Chiapas, the assassination of the ruling party's first candidate and what was perhaps the cleanest vote count in Mexican history.

Americans should hardly be surprised that Germany and Japan rebuffed President Bush's personal appeal for a concerted worldwide reduction in interest rates. That's just how creditor nations habitually deal with debtor nations.Not so long ago the United States was the biggest creditor nation. Now it is the biggest debtor due to the profligacy of the Reagan era. So we had better get used to all kinds of slights from better managed countries that like tight money, not easy money.Mr. Bush has good reason to appeal for help from U.S. trading partners, especially if soft demand in foreign countries short-circuits the current rise in exports.