Tomorrow Night

Chamber Festival The biennial New Chamber Festival Baltimore returns this weekend, and each concert is self-recommending. As in 2002, organizers have engaged top-notch ensembles to play an invigorating cross section of repertoire. The Endellion String Quartet will kick things off tomorrow night with works by Bela Bartok, Bohuslav Martinu and Leos Janacek and wrap up the weekend Sunday night with some more Bartok and pieces by Benjamin Britten and Robin Holloway. The Leipzig Quartet will perform music by Igor Stravinsky, Hans Eisler and Arnold Schoenberg on Saturday afternoon; Nicolai Roslavets, Toru Takemitsu, Charles Ives and Dmitri Shostakovich on Sunday afternoon.

DES MOINES, Iowa - The leading Democratic candidates raced across Iowa yesterday, delivering last-minute pitches and revving up supporters as a new poll indicated the potential for a close finish in tomorrow night's presidential caucuses. Voter surveys have consistently shown four contenders in a virtual dead heat for first place over the past week. A new poll, being published in today's Des Moines Register, showed Sen. John Kerry at 26 percent, Sen. John Edwards at 23 percent, former Gov. Howard Dean at 20 percent and Rep. Richard A. Gephardt at 18 percent.

CORNING, Iowa - They have turned off their answering machines here - otherwise campaign workers fill them up with taped appeals and no one else can leave a message - so every time the phone rings they have to answer it. But even if it's - surprise! - someone calling from a campaign, they'll still listen patiently rather than cut off the caller. "Iowans can be irritatingly polite sometimes," says John McMahon, the pharmacist in this small town in the southwest corner of the state. But every four years, Iowa's civility gets tested.

The Maryland State Ethics Commission has begun a probe of the high-powered developers who have proposed building a mini-city at the former Bainbridge Naval Training Center at Port Deposit, according to Cecil County elected officials. Del. Michael D. Smigiel Sr., a Cecil County Republican, said that a commission member had questioned him about lobbying efforts by the development team, which includes Richard Alter, president of Manekin LLC in Columbia; Clark Turner, president of Bel Air-based Clark Turner Cos.; and John Paterakis, a commercial developer in Baltimore.

Tomorrow and through next weekend we can "meet those dancing feet" at Moonlight Troupers' production of 42nd Street at Anne Arundel Community College's Pascal Center for Performing Arts in Arnold. Having come off what she describes as "the high gear of technical weekend into final dress rehearsals," director Barbara Marder calls this "the quintessential musical comedy, Broadway fairy tale of the little girl from Allentown who gets a chance to star in a new musical when the star breaks her ankle two days before opening night."

COLLEGE PARK - Scott McBrien's football career was over. Done. Finished. He had packed some clothes, tossed away his cleats, called his mom, pointed his car in the direction of his house in Rockville, and stomped on the gas pedal. In his rearview mirror on that April day in 2001, West Virginia University got smaller and smaller until it - along with his dream of being the Mountaineers' starting quarterback - eventually faded into the horizon. He had blown off an evening workout with the team without telling anyone, not even his best friend, convinced he would never get a fair shake in Morgantown.

NEW YORK - No. 1 Kim Clijsters walked the court, spreading her hands skyward and testing the moisture in the air. She wanted to play - oh, how both she and No. 5 Amelie Mauresmo wanted to play. Oh, how the U.S. Open wanted them to play. But the mist - that moist, almost invisible moisture that creeps in under umbrellas to dampen faces and onto the white lines at the National Tennis Center, making them too slippery for U.S. Open play - had its way again. Just three games and 10 minutes after the Clijsters- Mauresmo match began, it was suspended.

With predictions looming of the longest strike to hit the phone industry in a generation - long before competition from cell phones or e-mail - Verizon Communications Inc. and two unions representing tens of thousands of its workers remain at odds over job security issues as the clock ticks down on a contract due to expire at midnight tomorrow. About 79,000 Verizon workers from Maine to Virginia - including 7,200 in Maryland - are poised to strike if the two sides can't reach an agreement by tomorrow night, an outcome that industry analysts contend is very likely.