Sabotage

It's difficult to believe that Alfred Hitchcock would have turned 100 tomorrow, more difficult still to believe that we've gotten along without him all these years. Fortunately, he has inspired heirs -- such as John Dahl, Steven Soderbergh, the Coen brothers, Bryan Singer and Kevin Thomas Anderson -- whose movies stand as worthy homages to his deep influence.More important, he has left his movies. In almost every one of his films, Hitchcock managed to redefine the grammar of cinema, often in signature scenes that, through their use of psychology, technology and Hitchcock's own ineffable sense of irony, stand as examples of the art at its most pure.

The Maryland AFL-CIO yesterday said it had launched a statewide boycott of Crown Central Petroleum Corp.'s gasoline to pressure the Baltimore company to end a nine-month lockout of workers at a Pasadena, Texas, refinery."

WASHINGTON -- NATO's provisional approval of an allied evacuation plan for Bosnia puts 25,000 U.S. troops on notice that they could be headed for one of the bloodiest trouble spots on earth.U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization commanders are anxious to avoid the sort of ignominious departure that characterized the final withdrawal from Vietnam and are planning a highly organized, carefully coordinated five-stage evacuation.But they also have plans for an emergency extraction, should one become necessary.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Computer sabotage has been discovered in reporting the results of South Africa's first democratic election, further delaying the already stiflingly slow count of votes, the chairman of South Africa's Independent Electoral Commission charged yesterday.Judge Johann Kriegler told a news conference that just after 6 a.m. Tuesday, the computer that was sending results to the news media was altered in a way that gave some parties extra votes."There was some tampering with the data in our main system," he said.

Marylanders Against Handgun Abuse charged yesterday that gun control opponents tried to sabotage a rally scheduled for Monday by tampering with the office's voice mail system.Between 5 p.m. Wednesday and yesterday morning, someone got access to the system and changed a greeting that announced the Annapolis rally, said Vinnie DeMarco, executive director of the group.Mr. DeMarco said the altered greeting, left by a deep-voiced man, told callers, "Thank you for calling Marylanders Against Handgun Abuse.

Susan Threadgill writes in the July/August issue of The Washington Monthly magazine:"H.R. 'Bob' Haldeman's recent diaries are chock full of seamy details about the presidency of Richard M. Nixon."One of the seamiest is the hitherto unknown story of how Nixon tried to blackmail Lyndon Johnson into using his influence with congressional Democrats to help halt the Watergate investigation."Nixon had threatened to reveal that Johnson had bugged him during the 1968 campaign. But Johnson let Nixon know that if Nixon did that, LBJ would release what the diaries then refer to as 'deleted material -- national security.

Maurice Bourges-Maunoury, 78, a leader of the French resistance who later held several Cabinet posts, died Wednesday in Paris. He joined the French army as an artillery lieutenant in 1939, was captured by the Germans in 1940 and was set free the next year. He joined the resistance and made repeated clandestine trips between France and Britain. When the allies launched the D-Day invasion, he parachuted into southern France to organize a sabotage campaign. After the war, he won a parliamentary seat for the Radical Party in 1946 and became deputy budget minister in 1947.

You may have unresolved workplace conflict if:* The most animated discussions take place by the water cooler or in the bathroom instead of at staff meetings.* Workers sabotage ideas because they have no ownership in them.* Your domestic partner is demanding that you change jobs if you can't better handle the pressures of this one.* Nasty, unsigned memos show up on the employee bulletin board.* Employee turnover is high, or workers take many sick days or extended lunch hours.* Your workplace has the collective attitude, "I'll do only what they pay me to do -- and nothing else.

Scapegoats are important. You cannot have a disaster without one. Sometimes that helps, and sometimes hinders, the search for the root causes, the effort to prevent recurrence.Chicago's Mayor Richard M. Daley fired three officials for the April 13 pouring of the Chicago River through a 50-mile tunnel system into downtown basements, knocking Chicago for a loop. He has had the heads of the acting transportation chief, the chief bridge engineer and a project engineer and is seeking removal of two others.

The campaign has entered the nasty stage, leaving questions about what it was before.An 81-year-old bottle of wine sold for $350, and you thought baseball card collectors were frivolous.It's hard to know which would be scarier, that the El Al disaster in Amsterdam was sabotage, or that it wasn't.Angola tried a free election and it was just like one of ours: The loser said it was stolen.

Even before Sunday's fatal accident in which two teenage boys were hit by a Maryland Transit Administration light rail train in Lutherville, a serious crime apparently took place a short distance away. According to the MTA, someone - whose identity is not yet known to the public - placed a large section of highway guardrail across the northbound tracks just south of the station. That act of vandalism - if not outright sabotage - has been overshadowed by the tragedy that occurred about an hour later, but it set in motion the chain of events that led to the deaths of Kyle Patrick Wankmiller and Connor Peterson, both 17. According to MTA spokeswoman Jawauna Greene, the boys were struck by a northbound train as they walked on southbound tracks that had been put into two-way operation because the roughly 10-foot-long guardrail had damaged an earlier train.

Screening of Hitchcock's `Sabotage' The Charles Theatre's six-month retrospective of the films of Alfred Hitchcock continues with 1936's Sabotage, starring Sylvia Sidney as a wife who little suspects that her husband (Oscar Homolka) is an anarchist with murderous intent. Catch an encore at 7 p.m. today and 9 p.m. Thursday. Tickets are $8. Information: 410-727-3456 or thecharles.com.

JERUSALEM - A Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up late last night near a line of people waiting to enter a Tel Aviv nightclub, killing four people, injuring at least 50 others and breaking a two-week-old cease-fire that had brought renewed hopes for peace in the Middle East. Last night it remained unclear who was responsible for carrying out the attack. Israeli news media were reporting that the militant group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the bombing, but later indicated that the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah, which has been attempting to disrupt peace efforts, might have carried out the attack.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Attacks by insurgents to disrupt Baghdad's supplies of crude oil, gasoline, heating oil, water and electricity have reached a degree of coordination and sophistication not seen before, Iraqi and American officials say. The new pattern, they say, shows that the insurgents have a deep understanding of the complex network of pipelines, power cables and reservoirs feeding Baghdad, the Iraqi capital. The shadowy insurgency is a fractured movement made up of distinct groups of Sunnis, Shiites and foreign fighters, some aligned and some not. But the shift in the attack patterns strongly suggests that some branch of the insurgency is carrying out a systematic plan to cripple Baghdad's ability to provide basic services for its 6 million citizens and to prevent the fledgling government from operating.

LEGISLATORS considering an Ehrlich administration bill today to combat witness intimidation need to understand that it won't open the door for all sorts of questionable statements against a defendant by witnesses who don't appear in court. That's because prosecutors will have to convince a judge of several factors before any statement can be used against an accused murderer, drug dealer or other defendant. If lawmakers believe that Maryland judges can't responsibly carry out their duties and properly vet statements that would be introduced under a new hearsay exception, then they should kill the bill.

I gave my company an eight-week notice. I had planned to use that time to look for another job. But after I gave notice, my manager informed me that he would let me know at the end of the week if the company still needed my services. If he lets me go right away, can I collect unemployment? He said I wouldn't be able to collect because I had resigned. He can huff all he wants. But if he dismisses you before your designated quit date, you may well be entitled to unemployment benefits to cover the weeks you expected to work.

THE CLAIM that Iraq might be able to double its oil production and pay for its own reconstruction once Saddam Hussein was removed from power seems surreal a year later. An average of one to two sabotage attacks a week against Iraq's oil pipelines has crippled the country's oil industry, hindering its ability to export crude. As a result, Iraq's exports hardly exceed half of its prewar production capacity, and Iraqis, sitting on the world's second-largest reserves, often find themselves standing in gas lines longer than those Americans faced in the worst days of the 1973 oil embargo.

A Republican candidate entered in the March 2 primary election to unseat three-term Democratic incumbent Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski said yesterday that the state Republican Party has repeatedly attempted to sabotage his campaign. Corrogan R. Vaughn, a Baltimore County resident who ran for Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes' seat in 2000, accused party leaders of withholding access to a computerized list of likely voters (known as "Voter Vault") and favoring state Sen. E.J. Pipkin, a former Wall Street bond salesman also vying for Mikulski's seat.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi officials blamed loyalists of jailed former leader Saddam Hussein yesterday for sabotaging a vital stretch of oil pipeline and blowing up a huge gasoline storage tank in Baghdad. The attacks that set the north-south oil pipeline ablaze in at least four places threatened to worsen a dire gasoline shortage that has angered Iraqi drivers and fomented criticism that the U.S.-led coalition is mismanaging postwar reconstruction. Coalition troops continued raids yesterday through insurgent strongholds along the border with Syria and in the Sunni Triangle, arresting hundreds of Iraqis accused of attacking U.S.-led forces.

HIT, Iraq - An oil pipeline fire possibly linked to sabotage burned out of control near this western city yesterday, as a U.S. soldier was killed and another was wounded in a grenade attack on a military convoy south of Baghdad. Authorities here called the blast that rocked the pipeline Saturday evening a deliberate attack, but the commander of the U.S. garrison in the area said it was too early to tell. "We're working now to get the pipeline turned off," said Lt. Col. Henry Kievenaar, commanding officer of the 3rd Squadron of the 3rd Armored Calvary, based near this agricultural town 90 miles northwest of Baghdad.