Safe Haven

The 12-block walk home from Lombard Middle School takes Montez Holman past some of the good and some of the ugly on Caroline Street in East Baltimore.There is Dunbar Middle School, whose students sometimes mix it up with Lombard Middle children; the Douglass housing development, where the hazards of drug-dealing persist; and dozens of vacant and boarded homes.Signs of past trouble are plentiful. The large front window of one Caroline Street barber shop is boarded, the pavement is littered with broken bottles.

WASHINGTON -- Appearing in a videotaped message for the first time in nearly three years, Osama bin Laden tells the American people to reject their capitalist way of life and embrace Islam or his followers will "escalate the killing and fighting against you." "This is our duty, and our brothers are carrying it out, and I ask Allah to grant them resolve and victory," the al-Qaida leader said in the video, which aired yesterday on the Internet and TV. The tape was apparently made by al-Qaida's media arm, As-Sahab, to be released for the sixth anniversary of the Sept.

Sens. Benjamin L. Cardin and Barbara A. Mikulski urged President Barack Obama on Wednesday to speed the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Afghanistan. The Maryland Democrats joined a group of 24 senators in declaring the mission in Afghanistan largely accomplished. “It is time to bring our troops home from Afghanistan,” the group, which included 21 Democrats, two Republicans and an independent, wrote in a letter to Obama. “The United States intervened in Afghanistan to destroy al Qaeda's safe haven, remove the Taliban government that sheltered al Qaeda, and pursue those who planned the September 11th attacks on the United States.

WASHINGTON -- A Navy task force with 2,000 Marines aboard is being sent toward the Adriatic coast in case they are needed to evacuate peacekeepers from Muslim-held Bihac, the United Nations "safe haven" under assault by Serbian forces, the Pentagon said last night.Maj. Tom LaRock said the goal of the force is to support United Nations, NATO and U.S. military personnel in the area.The move was announced as the Bosnian Serbs detained more than 200 U.N. peacekeeping troops as hostages to ward off allied air attacks.

Even though a lot of stock analysts are predicting that the market will soon resume a strong upward trend, reaching 3,500 or 4,000 for the Dow Jones industrial average within the next year or so, many investors are uncertain and nervous. They fear a delay in an economic recovery, thus causing a more volatile and scary stock market.However, the long-term performance of the market suggests that investors should own stocks -- that it's in the shares of corporations where their enriched future lies.

The world's globalized economy, with currency in the trillions moving across borders on a daily basis, is once again teaching governments a harsh lesson. Central banks may intervene massively to try to stop the free fall of the dollar or the dizzying descent of the peso and the peseta; they may raise interest rates or attempt to impose stability. All to no avail. Once the speculators get the bit in their teeth, once they start a stampede to safe havens -- currently the German mark and the Japanese yen -- there is no stopping them.

The United Nations should move urgently to set up safe havens within Iraq for a human tide of refugees fleeing the Baghdad regime. Even though it would be unprecedented for the world organization to take such action without the approval of the host government of a member state, the sheer magnitude of the calamity Saddam Hussein has unleashed upon the Kurdish and Shiite people requires collective world action.The United Nations, after all, was founded so that the Hitler horror would never happen again.

NEW YORK -- Money-market mutual funds are showing signs of replacing banks as safe havens for consumer funds.As war clouds gathered this year, assets of the nation's 531 non-bank money funds have swollen as depositors scramble for relief from volatile financial markets.Some types of retail deposits at commercial banks also have grown, but their gains were dwarfed by those of the money-market funds, despite the money funds' inability to offer the $100,000 deposit-insurance protection available to bank customers.

Newark, New Jersey. -- Msgr. William Linder has witnessed scorched-earth devastation and human misery since he moved into Newark's Central Ward 29 years ago.But this graying, soft-spoken Roman Catholic priest turns super-promoter as he escorts a visitor through the spiffy new Pathmark supermarket his New Community Corporation fought for and, against all odds, opened in summer 1990.''Here's the produce department,'' says Monsignor Linder, passing displays of handsome fruits and vegetables.