Summit

Republican Senator Mitch McConnell deigns to attend President Obama's bipartisan health care meeting ("New Obama health plan could block rate hikes," Feb. 20) while claiming Democrats are "arrogant in their refusal to throw out current legislation and start from scratch." In other words Republicans would agree to participate "in good faith" by writing their own version to replace the one already approved by the legislature. What a travesty! This nation has endured eight years under a Republican administration when obviously necessary reforms were simply non-existent, except for the much-vaunted Medicare prescription drug plan which seniors have found contains a fatal flaw known as the "doughnut hole," which negates much of its so-called benefits.

Students and adults will start selling tickets next month for a Jan. 20 bull and oyster roast to raise money and awareness for the second annual Youth Drug and Alcohol Summit March 6.The summit, first done last April, is designed to raise students' awareness about the dangers of drugs and alcohol.Tickets for the bull roast will be $20 for adults and $10 for students, with a maximum cost of $50 per family. Children in kindergarten or younger get in free.At a meeting of the Prevention Planning Committee chaired by Commissioner Jeff Griffith, the students, educators and community volunteers working on the summit set a goal of raising at least $1,000 from the bull roast to cover materials at the summit.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush has dropped his previous objection to a meeting between Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and leaders of the seven major industrialized democracies at next month's economic summit in London, a Bush administration official said yesterday.Mr. Bush's decision clears the way for the unprecedented meeting, at which the Soviet leader is expected to plead for extensive Western assistance to shore up his country's crumbling economy and to advance his embryonic economic reform program.

Students of Carroll County's five high schools will hold the fourth annual Drug and Alcohol Summit for 120 students of the county's middle schools March 25 at Martin's Westminster.The purpose of the conference is to persuade attendees and their peers to stay away from drugs and alcohol.Joanne Hayes, anti-drug coordinator for the public schools, and other officials have coordinated the event, allowing the students to plan and conduct the summit.Paul Engle, an instructor at Mount Airy Middle School, will be keynote speaker at the conference, which will start at 8:30 a.m. and conclude at 1:50 p.m.The 120 students, who will form into three groups, will be bussed from their schools to Westminster for the summit and returned that afternoon.

The trampling of Baltic freedoms is producing a backlash in Washington. By a 417-0 vote, the House of Representatives has condemned Soviet violence and called on President Bush to work toward "a coordinated approach on economic sanctions," if the Kremlin continues to suppress popularly elected governments in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The European Parliament, for its part, already has suspended $1.5 billion in food and technical aid to the Soviet Union.These are understandable gestures of disenchantment and ire. They are based on the assumption that while the Soviets may shrug off verbal protests, they have to consider the impact of economic penalties.

If world trade talks are to succeed this year where they failed last year, there may have to be a special Group of Seven economic summit to knock heads together and force negotiators to closure. This was proclaimed at the London summit last week. It is an excellent idea, and it would have made big news if Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev were not on the premises rattling his tin cup.What the leaders of the world's richest industrial democracies were facing on the trade issue was nothing less than a crisis in credibility.

MOSCOW -- Russians are slowly beginning to get the hang of President Bill Clinton. Perhaps a splashy summit will complete the job.Most Russians feel about Mr. Clinton's predecessor, George Bush, the way most Americans feel about Mikhail S. Gorbachev. To the average Russian, Mr. Bush was a great world leader who was tossed aside by his countrymen inexplicably and without any warning whatsoever."How does being governor of Arizona prepare him for world politics?" one Russian expert on U.S. politics blurted out the day after Mr. Clinton's election.

Washington -- WITH MORE than 120 world leaders and more than 13,000 delegates in attendance, the U.N. summit in Copenhagen this week is the largest such meeting in history. It is widely called the "social summit," although some are calling it the "stealth summit," since it has seemed to be such a well-kept secret.The intentions of the summit, if benign, are unquestionably grandiose: Set dates for each country to totally "eradicate poverty!" Do away with unemployment! Make the developed countries devote 20 percent of their foreign aid to social development programs!

Postponement of the Bush-Gorbachev summit in February had almost nothing to do with the few technical difficulties that still have to be ironed out in negotiations on a Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. It had everything to do with the reactionary political turn in the Soviet Union, Moscow's crackdown on the Baltics and other rebellious republics and, of course, President Bush's preoccupation with the war in the gulf.Is the postponement justified? Absolutely not. It is contrary to U.S. national interests.

Unbridled development, whether urban density or suburban sprawl, can destroy something people need to have around them: nature.Restoring nature in built-up areas, redeveloping older neighborhoods to make room for nature, and considering nature when planning growth are topics that will be discussed at a summit in Annapolis on June 3.The summit is the third in a series begun last fall by the Alliance for Sustainable Communities, a preservation organization focusing...