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WASHINGTON - -The Washington Wizards had taken two steps forward, then took a huge step back Saturday night at Verizon Center, forgetting all the good things that they had done to record wins over the Philadelphia 76ers and Miami Heat and losing, 92-76, to the Charlotte Bobcats. The Wizards (5-10) just avoided matching their season low in points with a performance that might rank just north of putrid. Caron Butler led the Wizards with 19 points and Brendan Haywood had 10 points and nine rebounds, but no one on the Wizards could be pleased with his performance.

A man and a woman, both 27, were in custody Friday following their arrests in the killing of Lamont Kareen Blackston, 35, a football coach whose wife found him shot to death in his home in Granite before dawn on Tuesday, Baltimore County police announced. James S. Tanner was charged with first-degree murder and was jailed without bail. Terell Vaughnette Spencer was charged with conspiracy to commit murder and with being an accessory after the fact; she was held in lieu of $150,000 bail.

Calling climate change "the greatest challenge of our day," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi credited young voters yesterday with pressuring Congress to finally craft a national response, and she predicted that the United States would join other countries this year in an international pact to reduce planet-warming pollution. Pelosi, speaking at commencement ceremonies for the Johns Hopkins University's arts and sciences and engineering graduates, called climate change a national security, economic, environmental health and moral issue.

The quarterback took the snap, rolled to his right and set to pass. From nowhere, a 300-pound lineman barreled into Rob Ambrose, shattering his hip and ending his playing days at Towson State. As it turned out, the lineman might have done Ambrose a favor that day at practice in 1992. Finished as a player, Ambrose turned to coaching, launching a career that has now brought him back to Towson University as head football coach. "Your alma mater is like your mother. When momma calls, you come home," Ambrose said yesterday at a news conference introducing him as the fourth head coach in Towson's 40-year football history.

On a dark night, in a dark theater, on a dark stage, an 11-year-old girl is drowning in a sea of white. She languidly flaps her arms in a lazy backstroke as yards and yards of silky, swirling parachute fabric is whipped into tidal waves by a cast of eight circling dancers. Alice is drowning in her own tears. Cockeysville Middle School sixth-grader Caroline Cohen, who plays Alice, is the youngest dancer in this troupe earnestly rehearsing danceRINK's version of Alice in Wonderland at the Theatre Project.

In Baltimore and across the nation, officials are bracing for new waves of war veterans to return home - amid worries that federal and state budget cuts will threaten programs that offer a lifeline for those facing health and career problems. Demand for jobs and mental health services among veterans is swelling as public and nonprofit organizations struggle to build and maintain a support network to address issues that might not emerge for months or even years. More than 1.8 million Americans have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, creating a need for veterans' services not seen since the World War II generation came home six decades ago. There are 480,000 veterans in Maryland, and their ranks are growing as troops return from the two battlegrounds.

A year and a half ago, Conjus the cat stalked out of Jennifer Daniel's home and, it appeared, out of her life forever. For weeks, Daniel drove slowly through the streets near her home in Fort Meade, searching for the small gray-and-black tabby. Eventually, she decided the cat had met an untimely end and gave up. This week, she got a phone call: Conjus had been found and identified by a microchip implanted in the scruff of her neck. Daniel, 27, was astonished and delighted. Conjus appeared unfazed.

Parbadee Ann Bisnath is finally going home. For 24 days - since a judge ruled that her ex-husband had threatened to kill her with a knife in front of their children but declined to order the man to leave the house they share - the Owings Mills woman, her son, two daughters and their Jack Russell terrier have been living with her attorney. They left their own home in late September after Baltimore County District Judge Bruce S. Lamdin refused to order Gordan Bisnath to stay away from his ex-wife and their house, even though the judge found that the man had previously abused Ann Bisnath and vowed on Sept.

Brittany Banks says she's tired of missing out on a normal adolescence. She never went to a prom, never had a first date. Ever since seven boys allegedly attacked and sexually assaulted her at a Baltimore middle school six years ago, she's been through dozens of psychiatric wards and residential facilities for troubled youths. She had hoped to find freedom on the night of Sept. 10, when she jumped out a window of an Upper Marlboro group home where she was supposed to have been under 24-hour supervision.

NEW ORLEANS - A Federal Emergency Management Agency official says Hurricane Gustav evacuees whose homes remain uninhabitable can have their hotel costs paid by FEMA. David Garratt, a deputy assistant administrator for the agency, said last night that the aid won't be available for short-term evacuees who fled the storm, spent a few nights in a hotel and then returned home. Rather FEMA's program pays for "extended stays" in hotels for people who can't return to their homes because of power outages, damage or for other reasons related to the storm.