Two Sides

DALLAS -- Pro football owners left here yesterday without a hoped-for labor agreement, but said they were close and getting closer to a deal with their players.The players, however, suggested it may be time to stop talking and resume slugging it out in court.The owners said they were prepared for that also, and, to prove the point, announced preparations to unilaterally impose a plan governing the movement of players between teams.For Baltimore, a delay in a negotiated settlement would appear to further delay the league's plan to expand.

A new round of spending by Penn National Gaming and MGM Resorts International has pushed the ad war in the referendum over expanded gambling into record territory, eclipsing the $34 million raised for the 2006 governor's race. In a filing posted Tuesday with the State Board of Elections, the ballot committee financed by Penn National reported that its outlay for the effort to defeat Question 7 has reached $21.6 million — $18 million of which has been spent. Meanwhile, a pro-expansion committee reported that it has spent $17.7 million.

Here is what's really important: Do the two sides of the Baltimore Bancorp board struggle have to share the company luxury box at the stadium?Q. How can you tell when the recession is over? A. When you find yourself believing the economists who say it is.

Joe Linta , the agent for Joe Flacco , will meet Saturday with Ravens Vice President of Football Administration Pat Moriarty and team president Dick Cass to begin discussing the framework of a contract extension for the quarterback. Flacco is set to enter the final year of his rookie contract and top Ravens' officials, including owner Steve Bisciotti , have said that it's an offseason priority to extend the quarterback before the start of the season. Linta is taking a realistic approach to the meeting, telling The Sun last week that he plans on discussing the framework for a deal but he doesn't expect to exchange salary figures with Moriarty, who is the salary cap specialist in the Ravens' front office.

News of the dayRepresentatives of the two sides held three bargaining sessions on two different matters but made no progress on the salary cap, the key issue.Games lostFourteen games were canceled yesterday. The total number missed is 385.Quote"I think we're just playing out the string." -- Union director Donald Fehr

NBA games lost yesterday: 7Total games missed: 156.Earliest estimated date that season can start: Dec. 26.Negotiations: The two sides are scheduled to meet Saturday, but a snag developed Tuesday that threatened to cancel the session.Today's best canceled game: Seattle at San Antonio. Two of the top contenders to beat Western Conference champion Utah meet for the first time.Pub Date: 11/25/98

Bell Atlantic Corp. and two labor unions representing 52,000 workers reached a tentative contract agreement yesterday, ending a grueling three-month bargaining marathon between the two sides.The three-year contract still requires ratification by the membership of the Communications Workers of America, which represents about 40,000 Bell Atlantic employees -- 8,500 in Maryland -- and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which represents about 12,000 others outside the state.

WASHINGTON -- Despite the surprise attendance of London Fog Corp.'s chairman and chief executive officer, a meeting yesterday between company and union officials to head off the possible elimination of 700 jobs at three Maryland plants failed to make much progress, a union official said."

Baltimore's teachers and school officials appear close to a tentative agreement in negotiations that have extended past the June 30 contract expiration. The two sides decided last week to extend the contract for a month while negotiations for the new two-year pact continue. Both sides said they expect to have a tentative agreement that could be distributed to teachers and voted on by the board and the system's 7,000 teachers in early fall. The two sides are discussing salaries, benefits and work conditions, including time allotted for teacher training, and teacher evaluations, said Mark D. Smolarz, the school system's chief financial officer.

DENVER - Qwest Communications International Inc., the largest local-telephone service provider in the Northwest, and the Communications Workers of America, which represents 60 percent of its workers, remain at odds on central elements in a new contract more than a day after the old one expired. Contract talks between the company and the CWA are "stalled," said Candice Johnson, a union spokeswoman. She said the two sides are "still very far apart on key issues." Qwest negotiators averted a walkout after failing to reach an agreement before a 12:01 a.m. deadline Sunday, when the old contract ended.

It's unlikely Obama will ever "sell out" Israel. However, he is doing some much-needed consciousness-raising. The American people have been brainwashed for over half a century about the facts surrounding the creation of the state of Israel and its current expansionist policies, such as the settlement push, that have infuriated the country's neighbors. Frankly, I have tired of the Middle East altogether and just wish my tax dollars could be spent elsewhere. I've watched the U.S. shell out trillions to countries halfway around the world when the entire region would have been better off without our meddling.

Osama bin Laden's death in Pakistan last week at the hands of Navy SEALs was a moral and symbolic victory for the U.S., but it complicated the already tense relationship between the Obama administration and Islamabad. The feeling in Washington is that the Pakistanis either were complicit in hiding bin Laden or are simply incompetent. Pakistanis, meanwhile, are furious that the Americans violated their country's sovereignty by mounting a covert mission deep inside their territory without the government's knowledge or consent.

A murdered screenwriter who narrates from the grave. An idealistic script reader who thinks she can work her way up in a studio on smarts alone. A producer who would push a baseball project if he could turn it into a musical for a female star. Those are just the "normal" characters in "Sunset Boulevard," the anchor of the opening-day bill for "You Be Cinema," the University of Baltimore's new film series at UB's Student Center Performing Arts Theater, 21 W. Mount Royal Ave. Billy Wilder's coruscating pop tragedy, streaked with horror and black comedy, is still the ultimate Hollywood movie, 60 years after its premiere.

— After a 21-year-old Baltimore woman testified that Tyrone Hall was neither provoked nor attacked by the two Frostburg State University basketball players he shot last April, four of Hall's friends said that Ellis Hartridge Jr. taunted Hall and lunged at him right before the 21-year-old Glen Burnie man shot Hartridge and teammate Brandon Carroll. The only part of the testimony of Patrice Britton and Hall's friends that matched up was that the former Mount St. Joseph soccer standout fired the shotgun that Britton said he had purchased weeks before at a local pawnshop.

Back in 1999, then-Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke wanted to publish the names and photographs of every man convicted of soliciting a prostitute in order to shame them into staying away from the city. He proposed taking out a full-page newspaper ad. But his plan went awry when he learned that just two men in six months had been found guilty of the crime. The response was predictable. His spokesman blamed State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy: "These cases should be taken the rest of the way and prosecuted.

When the Orioles made Florida high school shortstop Manny Machado the third overall selection in June's first-year player draft, they figured it would get to this point. So as Orioles director of scouting Joe Jordan approaches Monday's midnight deadline to agree to a deal with Machado or lose his draft rights, he says he isn't concerned even though he acknowledges there has been very little dialogue between the club and Machado's camp. "I think the meat of that negotiation is going to happen [Monday]

CHICAGO -- The European Community's agricultural commissioner said it was possible that he and his U.S. counterpart could strike a deal on an oilseeds dispute late last evening as talks between top U.S. and European Community trade officials lasted into the evening.EC Farm Commissioner Ray MacSharry said, however, that the two sides, struggling to break an impasse over EC farm subsidies and unblock world trade talks, were only discussing variations of existing proposals."It's the same old thing," Mr. MacSharry told reporters as he and U.S. Agriculture Secretary Edward Madigan left for a working dinner where they would try to settle the rift over the EC oilseeds subsidies, which threatens to spark a trade war."

Contract talks for some of the NBA's top free agents -- including Washington Bullets forward Juwan Howard -- will get under way tomorrow after the league yesterday briefly imposed a lockout, only to reverse itself later after finally reaching an agreement with the players association.Yesterday's lockout, coming after both sides initially could not reach an agreement in the dispersal of $50 million in profit sharing, forced the cancellation of talks yesterday between the Bullets and Howard that were to take place at the Chevy Chase offices of agent David Falk.

Eric Overmyer is a passionate playwright but a reluctant television writer. In his deepest heart, he would like to say "No, no, no," every time someone waves a proposal for a new TV show in his face. But his loudmouth bank account keeps insisting, "Yes, yes, yes." This is true even of such quality projects as "Treme," a show about New Orleans residents coping with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Overmyer created the 10-episode series with Baltimorean David Simon, and it debuts tonight on HBO. Overmyer, 58, thinks the stage is a much more creative medium than television.