Sanitation

Bruce Hart, 68, who wrote lyrics for Sesame Street and Free to Be You and Me, died of lung cancer Tuesday at his home in New York City's Manhattan. Mr. Hart and his wife, Carole, were among the first writers on "Sesame Street" when it began in 1969 as a children's show that tried to be equally entertaining and educational. To shake up the creative process, its producers hired people new to children's television. Mr. Hart, who had written for Candid Camera and composed the lyrics to "One Way Ticket," a hit for Cass Elliott, was hired to write sketches and help with the theme song.

Little reported outside of show-biz trade publications and the Los Angeles Times, Hollywood's hometown newspaper, the U.S. Senate on Feb. 1 passed legislation that includes the Family Movie Act of 2005. It permits the manufacture, sale and home use of certain technology that enables a viewer to skip or mute objectionable portions - nudity, for instance, or graphic violence - of a movie on DVD. It made executives at ClearPlay Inc., which makes precisely that sort of content-screening device, very happy.

I have become obsessive about washing my hands. All the news reports about the shortage of flu vaccine stress the importance of washing hands. Now they are red and rough and getting worse by the day. My work requires that I shake a lot of hands, and I can't always get to a bathroom to wash up. How effective are waterless hand sanitizers? This might come as a surprise, but alcohol-based hand sanitizers are less irritating than liquid soap. They are as effective as soap and water and do not require wetting hands or drying them off. They work best if you put a dime-sized dollop in your palm and rub vigorously until the alcohol has dried and disinfected your skin.

Charles W. "Snook" Grace, a retired city sanitation worker and former Morrell Park resident, died of a heart attack Monday at his son's home in Milton, Fla. He was 68. Mr. Grace was born in Baltimore and raised on Hollins Ferry Road in Southwest Baltimore. He attended city public schools. He was a sanitation worker for 25 years for the city Department of Public Works Bureau of Solid Waste until he retired in 1998. He also had worked part-time as a night watchman. Mr. Grace, who moved to Pensacola in 1999, enjoyed raising exotic birds.

Saying that the conditions in Baltimore's jails pose a danger to inmates' health, two watchdog groups contend in court papers that state officials have violated the terms of a 1993 legal order that required them to clean up the facilities and revamp the way medical services are provided. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Public Justice Center asked a federal judge last week for a hearing, alleging that people who are jailed awaiting trial in Baltimore have inadequate access to medical care and are forced to live in unsanitary conditions.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - After days of nearly round-the-clock discussions, bleary-eyed negotiators at an international summit here reached agreement last night on a broad plan to bring clean water, sanitation and energy to the world's poor without further degrading the planet. The hard-won consensus plan, which has decidedly weaker language than many delegates and environmentalists had hoped on increasing the use of renewable energy sources such as wind or solar power, is expected to be ratified today or tomorrow by more than 100 heads of state or government assembled here at the World Summit on Sustainable Development.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- The people of the world will use nearly 3 trillion gallons of water today for drinking, sweeping away waste, recreation and such commercial applications as farming. More than a billion people are without access to safe water supplies, and more than 3 billion lack adequate sanitation services. These conditions often lead to severe water contamination in many parts of the globe and have been estimated to contribute to billions of illnesses and millions of deaths each year.

LOS ANGELES - There is one certainty the first anniversary of Sept. 11 will bring: a plethora of memorial films and TV specials built around the still-stunning images from that day. And there will be a second level of films that use the imagery not just to retell the story but to explore ideas and attitudes in an attempt to get below the surface of the initial horror. Here is another certainty: As filmmakers veer from the familiar news images and begin to explore the deeper aspects of the event, we will be accused of exploiting the nation's pain and sensationalizing a tragedy.

Morse B. Solomon thinks he's found a great steak recipe: several pounds of tough, low-grade meat, several gallons of water, the equivalent of a quarter-stick of dynamite. Mix carefully and explode. "Not exactly something you'd try at home," said Solomon, a scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Beltsville Research facility who has spent the past decade working on his special dish. Solomon, a devoted carnivore, isn't trying to destroy the meat. Instead, he's tenderizing and sanitizing it. Early test results show that when the meat and charge are submerged, sound waves produced by the explosives rip through the meat, leaving it unchanged to the naked eye but making the cut more tender as well as killing much of its bacteria, such as E. coli.

Say you were an empty Doritos bag, dropped in the street in the outskirts of the city. The first heavy rain would send you on your way: along the gutter, down the nearest storm drain and through miles of twisting concrete pipe until, at last, you were flushed out - either into the Inner Harbor, or a stream that would lead you there. And that is where you'd meet Joe Finnerty. Casually working a series of throttles and levers, he would pilot his slow-moving vessel toward you. Its mechanical arms would spread, as if preparing to embrace you. Its angled conveyor belt would dip into the water, slowly carrying you up, until you fell through a few feet of air and landed, most indecorously, into the pile of glop he's already snagged - a reeking heap that might include plastic pop bottles, foam containers, errant Frisbees, tree limbs, diapers, gum wrappers, tires, cigarette butts and the occasional bloated animal carcass.