Street Children

Stockholm, Sweden. -- Brazilian politicians have united like never before in condemning the murder of eight street children, indiscriminately shot by an ''extermination squad'' in central Rio de Janeiro. More than 4,600 children have been killed throughout Brazil in the past three years, mostly in Rio, where 3,000 or more children sleep on the streets and at least 50,000 beg or run errands around the city. According to Brazilian congressman Paulo Mello, ''It's a lucrative business, this killing.

TEHRAN -- Atefeh is one of the younger members of Iran's merchant class. Her sales territory is the notorious traffic jams of north Tehran. She moves in on potential clients when the light turns red, pressing her face to car windows, cocking her head to one side and putting on a plaintive face. At 12, she isn't as good at plaintive as some of her younger competitors, two boys who are hawking Quranic inscriptions and balloons just up the street. Sometimes her face looks more furious than sad. But she still can clear 55 cents a day selling her packages of pink-and-red strawberry chewing gum to bored and surly drivers.

SALVADOR, Brazil -- Pope John Paul II gave Brazilians a stern lecture yesterday on "the sad situation" of millions of neglected and abandoned children, one of this country's most serious social problems.On the last full day of a 10-day Brazilian tour, the pope spoke in a plaza filled with boys and girls who clapped and cheered, squirmed and fidgeted, sang and waved small flags of white and yellow, the Vatican colors.In his speech, the pope laid down a series of commandments against practices and conditions, including death-squad murders, that afflict alarming numbers of Brazilian children.

The Talent Machine is purring along 42nd Street this weekend. The company's younger cast, ranging in age from 4-year-old Emme Sayers (who studies ballet, tap and jazz) to 14-year-old veterans, opened its super-charged show last weekend with performances continuing tonight, tomorrow and Sunday at St. John's College Key Auditorium. Next month will feature older children in Grease, opening Aug. 4 and running through Aug. 13. The Talent Machine was formed about 20 years ago by dynamic director-choreographer and teacher Bobbi Smith to develop young peoples' dancing and singing talents and provide a performance vehicle for them - something she did for hundreds during her lifetime.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- The street kids who play into the night near Haiti's National Palace run scared whenever the soldiers come chasing them.Still, says 12-year-old Bob, the cool tile floor of a government office-building's gallery is as safe and comfortable a place as any for a homeless child on the capital's tough streets."

BUCHAREST, Romania -- Dan lives in a tunnel beneath a manhole cover on the edge of Bucharest's Gara de Nord railway station. It's a hellish, stifling and dirty space where warm pipes hiss and rats scuttle by. The stench is overwhelming.He shares the space with three other ragged boys, all in their mid-teens. They have spread torn cardboard boxes on the floor. They are grateful to have this warm place for the coming winter. In other tunnels, children have even managed to rig up electricity for makeshift lights.

TEHRAN -- Atefeh is one of the younger members of Iran's merchant class. Her sales territory is the notorious traffic jams of north Tehran. She moves in on potential clients when the light turns red, pressing her face to car windows, cocking her head to one side and putting on a plaintive face. At 12, she isn't as good at plaintive as some of her younger competitors, two boys who are hawking Quranic inscriptions and balloons just up the street. Sometimes her face looks more furious than sad. But she still can clear 55 cents a day selling her packages of pink-and-red strawberry chewing gum to bored and surly drivers.

UNLESS immediate action is taken, by the year 2000 one-third of the world's children between 5 and 16 will be living on the street.Street children and the host of other problems facing children, including those in the United States, have prompted UNICEF, the United Nations children's fund, to organize a "World Summit for Children" this weekend in New York. President Bush is among 70 heads of state (probably the largest gathering of heads of state in history) committed to attend the first-ever PageHuidekoperWilsonworld conference on children.

BERLIN -- From Wales to Turkey, people are falling through thin ice, getting stranded, freezing to death and even giving birth outdoors, as a Siberian cold front has brought Europe days of record-breaking low temperatures and, in some places, paralyzing snow."

London. -- In Latin America, Africa and even in parts of Asia families are breaking up. Under the stresses of urban, capitalist life both the old extended family and the more modern nuclear family are falling apart. In their place is the ''spaghetti family'' with loose strands that link parts of the family but never the whole. It is an ominous and dangerous development.For years as I've traveled from Brazil to Morocco to India I have written occasional columns about street children and child laborers.

Resistance, by Barry Lopez. Alfred A. Knopf. 164 pages. $18. The narrators of these nine linked short stories by award-winning Barry Lopez seem an unlikely group to attract the attention of Inland Security, a U.S. government agency that is "but a few years old" in Lopez's imagined near future, "though already monolithic." They aren't members of a terrorist cell. Most aren't even political activists. Many have moved to the world's margins: the deserts of western China, the Amazon rain forest, the high plains of Montana.

About 40 residents of the Clay Street section of Annapolis last night asked the Anne Arundel County school board to bus their children to Annapolis Elementary School even though they live within a mile of the facility.Jonathan Dean, whose niece will attend the school, said that while the school is closer than Rolling Knolls Elementary, youngsters will be walking through the busy downtown area to reach it."I cannot picture a first- or second-grader trying to negotiate West Street and all that's happening around them at the same time," Dean said.

BERLIN -- From Wales to Turkey, people are falling through thin ice, getting stranded, freezing to death and even giving birth outdoors, as a Siberian cold front has brought Europe days of record-breaking low temperatures and, in some places, paralyzing snow."

London. -- Brazil, the superpower that never was, for the first time in decades has shown its stuff. The outsider may be excused, until this week, for beginning to wonder if the country still had what it takes. Military rule, repression, torture and grandiose overspending including a nuclear weapons' program gave way to parliamentary chaos and inept presidential rule, and then to corruption. All the while, Brazil suffered more economic mismanagement than the rest of Latin America put together.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- The street kids who play into the night near Haiti's National Palace run scared whenever the soldiers come chasing them.Still, says 12-year-old Bob, the cool tile floor of a government office-building's gallery is as safe and comfortable a place as any for a homeless child on the capital's tough streets."

BUCHAREST, Romania -- Dan lives in a tunnel beneath a manhole cover on the edge of Bucharest's Gara de Nord railway station. It's a hellish, stifling and dirty space where warm pipes hiss and rats scuttle by. The stench is overwhelming.He shares the space with three other ragged boys, all in their mid-teens. They have spread torn cardboard boxes on the floor. They are grateful to have this warm place for the coming winter. In other tunnels, children have even managed to rig up electricity for makeshift lights.

Near a gold-encrusted church in Rio de Janeiro's banking district hooded gunmen opened fire last month on sleeping children in the pre-dawn hours. Five boys were killed. The gunmen also murdered two boys who were sleeping in gardens at the city's Museum of Modern Art.Brazilians were outraged. At last.In many Third World cities, castaway kids are a common sight. But in Brazil, which boasts the world's tenth largest economy, their lives are increasingly cheap. "Extermination" is a harsh word, but it is frequently used to describe the deliberate killings of street children in Brazil -- an average of two a day this year, according to one group that works with street children.

About 40 residents of the Clay Street section of Annapolis last night asked the Anne Arundel County school board to bus their children to Annapolis Elementary School even though they live within a mile of the facility.Jonathan Dean, whose niece will attend the school, said that while the school is closer than Rolling Knolls Elementary, youngsters will be walking through the busy downtown area to reach it."I cannot picture a first- or second-grader trying to negotiate West Street and all that's happening around them at the same time," Dean said.

Near a gold-encrusted church in Rio de Janeiro's banking district hooded gunmen opened fire last month on sleeping children in the pre-dawn hours. Five boys were killed. The gunmen also murdered two boys who were sleeping in gardens at the city's Museum of Modern Art.Brazilians were outraged. At last.In many Third World cities, castaway kids are a common sight. But in Brazil, which boasts the world's tenth largest economy, their lives are increasingly cheap. "Extermination" is a harsh word, but it is frequently used to describe the deliberate killings of street children in Brazil -- an average of two a day this year, according to one group that works with street children.

Stockholm, Sweden. -- Brazilian politicians have united like never before in condemning the murder of eight street children, indiscriminately shot by an ''extermination squad'' in central Rio de Janeiro. More than 4,600 children have been killed throughout Brazil in the past three years, mostly in Rio, where 3,000 or more children sleep on the streets and at least 50,000 beg or run errands around the city. According to Brazilian congressman Paulo Mello, ''It's a lucrative business, this killing.