Skills

Eight-year-old Kevin Wang waited calmly when his young opponent forgot to hit his time clock after moving. He shared his pencil so they could both "annotate" the match, or write down all the moves. But when his outgunned adversary seemed to be doing his best to steer the match to a draw, Kevin had had enough. He finished the boy off, cornering the king with two rooks. Kevin, a third-grader from Potomac, was one of 320 kids who competed at the Maryland State Scholastic Team Chess Championship yesterday in Cockeysville.

This year's annual J/35 North American Championships took place Friday through Sunday out of the Annapolis Yacht Club.The event drew a healthy fleet of about a dozen local contenders, along with a substantial number from New England, New York and New Jersey, and teams from Illinois, Mississippi, North Carolina, southern Virginia, Canada and Suffolk, England.That made for an impressive group of 31 of the big one-design boats, which are often as aggressively raced as the hottest dinghies.Though a lack of wind on Sunday made racing impossible and shortenedthe planned five-race series to four -- with two races on each of the regatta's first two days -- widely varied results for virtually allcompetitors clearly showed that it was a challenging and highly competitive series.

Less than half of Baltimore's working-age population have jobs, and the city must create more training programs to increase employment, an independent task force has concluded. The nonprofit Job Opportunities Task Force will release the findings of its yearlong study, "Baltimore's Choice: Workers and Jobs for a Thriving Economy," today at the University of Baltimore's Merrick School of Business. "The findings are a wake-up call," said Deborah Povich, executive director of the task force.

When US Airways Group Inc. lays off 11,000 employees in the coming weeks, the out-of-work pilots, flight attendants and mechanics will be cast into a job market suffering from a slowing economy. Compounding the problem, especially for pilots, is that not only are most of the other airlines having similar difficulties, but the workers' skills are so specialized that it will be hard for them to find other jobs for which they are qualified. "There will be thousands of pilots trying to start new careers over this," said Roy Freundlich, a pilot and spokesman for the US Airways unit of the Air Line Pilots Association.

Despite a slowing economy, some industries are still having difficulty filling positions because many American workers don't have the skills to compete in an increasingly high-tech market, U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao said yesterday. Speaking at the Joint Employment and Training Technology Conference in Baltimore, Chao said evidence of the "skills gap" can be seen in monthly unemployment rates, which show a decline in traditional manufacturing jobs and a strong demand for high-skilled workers.

Mike Walters, 17, hopes to follow in his father's footsteps and become a firefighter. Mike Palmer, 16, who also comes from a family with firefighting roots, said learning life-saving techniques - such as running into a burning building to put out a fire - gives him such an adrenaline rush that he can't think of anything else he'd rather do. Both have been members of their local volunteer fire companies since they were 12 and are among 14 students in...

Mike Walters, 17, hopes to follow in his father's footsteps and become a firefighter. Mike Palmer, 16, who also comes from a family with firefighting roots, said learning life-saving techniques gives him such an adrenaline rush that he can't think of anything else he'd rather do. Both have been members of their local volunteer fire companies since they were 12 and are among 14 students in a class that is teaching them the skills they'll need to become...

Chicago -- Bridging the so-called skills gap, which separates jobs that go begging and people begging for jobs, is as complex as the increasingly diverse nature of the work force.Despite the headlines about job cuts and reduced hiring plans, employers in many large and small companies still swear they have jobs but can't find suitable applicants.In Maryland, for example, some insurance companies are having difficulty finding qualified sales agents, even though the state reports that about 140,000 people are pounding the bricks looking for work.

CHICAGO -- Bridging the so-called skills gap, which separates jobs that go begging and people begging for jobs, is as complex as the increasingly diverse nature of the work force.Despite the headlines about job cuts and reduced hiring plans, employers in many large and small companies still swear they have jobs but can't find suitable applicants.In Maryland, for example, some insurance companies are having difficulty finding qualified sales agents, even though the state reports that about 140,000 people are pounding the bricks looking for work.

THIS IS TURNING out to be the Summer of the First R.In Northeast Baltimore, 3,200 teachers are going to summer school to learn how to employ the city's new elementary reading curriculum.Community activist Sally Michel's SuperKids camps open this week for about 1,500 children, some of the more than 4,000 city second-graders who tested below grade level in reading in September.Their instructors, trained over the past few weeks, will work at 19 sites around Baltimore. Most are delightful reminders of the idealistic 1960s -- young college students participating in the America Reads program.