Unattended

WASHINGTON -- The Clinton administration is attempting to solve a looming $18 billion financial crisis involving federal rent subsidies on low-income apartments, but the proposed fix might end up costing taxpayers several billion dollars, federal officials said yesterday.Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry G. Cisneros acknowledged for the first time yesterday that owners of nearly 1 million low-income housing units could default on $18 billion worth of federally backed mortgages if the government does not increase already inflated subsidies on those units or take other steps to address their problems.

Police logKings Contrivance: 10500 block of Pilla Terra Court: An officer responding to a report of a suspicious subject stopped a man in his car Tuesday morning. Stolen property from a truck in the area was found inside the man's vehicle. Ronald Lynn Burris of Delaware was charged with theft and was being held at the Howard County Detention Center on $25,000 bail yesterday.Oakland Mills: 5800 block of of Thunder Hill Road: A maroon 1994 Isuzu Trooper with Maryland tags 655460M was stolen Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, police said.

A man and woman robbed a Holiday Inn hotel restaurant in the 3400 block of Fort Meade Road in Laurel of an undisclosed amount of money Saturday afternoon, but no weapons were used and no one was hurt, Anne Arundel County police said.The pair opened an unattended cash register and stole $20 bills, police said.They fled west on Route 198 in a gray sedan with out-of-state license plates, police said.Pub Date: 8/12/96

Anthony M. Juliano sends Baltimore his deepest apologies.The Connecticut resident had a wonderful time touring the city in a rental car with his wife and two friends. And then, when he left, he unknowingly sent Baltimore-Washington International Airport into a panic Sunday when he left the car unattended and a bomb-sniffing dog apparently mistook a blown-out tire in his trunk for explosives."I feel worse than anybody," said Juliano, 36, of North Branford, Conn. "I should have taken more responsibility."

Police logPasadena: Someone stole two leaf blowers from a sidewalk at Leeds Drive and Abbey Court between 12: 45 p.m. and 1: 30 p.m. Tuesday when landscaping workers left them unattended. The blowers were valued at $800.Pub Date: 11/22/96

It's one of those frigid winter mornings that push you closer to the belief that living in Mississippi wouldn't be so bad after all.It's a morning you dread sitting inside your car like a package of Birds Eye peas while waiting for the engine to get warm. So, you rush out to start the car and leave it running as you rush back to the comfort of your home.You even gain a bonus: A few extra minutes to down that last cup of coffee.Convenient for you, sure. But this also happens to be the stuff of every car thief's dreams.

The day after 16-month-old Derrell Lovett died in a Northeast Baltimore apartment fire, neighbors mourned the toddler, who, with his 3-year-old brother, had been left home unattended. But amid the sadness yesterday came a tale of heroism that may have prevented an even greater tragedy.Samuel Thomas, a neighbor, said he was returning from the store Monday evening and saw thick smoke pouring from the Lovetts' ground-floor home in the Lorelly Apartments.He ran into his home, dialed 911 and ran next door.

POLICE LOG* King's Contrivance: 8700 block of Carriage Hill Drive: Fire caused $8,000 damage to a house when food was left unattended while cooking on a stove at about 6 p.m. Thursday.

Have you ever cranked up your car on a frigid morning and left it unattended while the engine warms? Well, you broke the law, and it's punishable by a $40 fine and a point on your driving record.Section 21-1101 of Maryland's Vehicle Law says: "A person driving or otherwise in charge of a motor vehicle may not leave it unattended until the engine is stopped, the ignition locked, the key removed, and the brake effectively set."A random survey of Maryland State Police and some Baltimore-area police departments shows that the law is spottily enforced.

POLICE* Harper's Choice: 6300 block of Cedar Lane: Someone stole $20 from a purse that was left unattended in a lounge area between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. May 25.

At the end of a particularly spirited night, one in which nearly 90 percent of the more than 60 patrons packed inside the Southside Saloon would puff away hour after hour on cigarettes, owner Stuart Satosky would make it all of about two steps inside his South Baltimore home before the stench would hit his wife, who demanded the immediate removal of his smoke-filled clothes. "I'd have to put them in another room," said Satosky, a nonsmoker who has owned the bar in the 400 block of E. Fort Ave. for eight years.

Some Maryland lawmakers want to require a new kind of cigarette that goes out by itself when unattended - a measure that backers say could save more than a dozen lives a year. Sen. Mike Lenett, a Montgomery County Democrat, said the technology has long been available and is in use in six other states. The cigarettes don't cost more, and smokers can't tell the difference, he said. "This isn't an anti-smoking bill. This is a public- and firefighter-safety bill," he said at a news conference yesterday.

Heavy vehicle and pedestrian traffic was disrupted for two hours last night while the city police bomb squad investigated a suitcase left unattended across the street from the Pratt Street Pavilion at Harborplace. Arriving at the scene at 6:47 p.m., police blocked eastbound Pratt Street from Light to Gay streets, Commerce Street between Pratt and Lombard streets and westbound Lombard Street between Commerce and South streets. Police blasted the suitcase and knocked it over with a remote-controlled high-pressure water gun. When officers opened it, they found clothing and traffic resumed at 8:45 p.m., police said.

After reports that the floor of the Baltimore County Women's Detention Center where a Randallstown woman committed suicide was left unattended for about 40 minutes before her death, detention center administrators have stopped the longtime practice of ordering staff to leave their posts. However, the administrator of the county's two detention centers said yesterday that he doesn't believe the lack of an officer could be blamed for the suicide July 19 of Sommer Brooks, 23, who was accused of torturing and beating her mother to death in January.

Bars and restaurants throughout Carroll County will soon serve words of caution about date rape along with beverages. Following the lead of a program established in Florida, land of the spring break drinking party, an advocacy group for rape victims is distributing tens of thousands of cocktail napkins imprinted with a message. "Who Else is Watching Your Drink?" it says in red letters. "Watch out for date-rape drugs!" "A beverage napkin is a different way to reach all kinds of people of all different ages," said Jo Ann Hare, executive director of the Rape Crisis Intervention Service of Carroll County.

Bars and restaurants throughout Carroll County will soon serve words of caution about date rape along with beverages. Following the lead of a program established in Florida, land of the spring break drinking party, an advocacy group for rape victims is distributing tens of thousands of cocktail napkins imprinted with a message. "Who Else is Watching Your Drink?" it says in red letters. "Watch out for date-rape drugs!" "A beverage napkin is a different way to reach all kinds of people of all different ages," said Jo Ann Hare, executive director of the Rape Crisis Intervention Service of Carroll County.

WHEN THE column started, I asked you to let me know your pet peeves - and you did! Oh, sure - I got an earful about drivers hanging out in the left lane and cell-phone yakkers. Those bug me, too. But I also heard some peeves that gave me the chills. "In the wake of the Sept. 11 tragedies, it amazes me that people continue to treat fire lanes [and handicapped parking spaces for that matter] as personal convenience spaces where the laws and regulations that govern our society do not apply to them," says Jon T. Merryman of Ellicott City.

My advice to aspiring humor columnists is: Never make fun of North Dakota. Because the North Dakotans will invite you, nicely but relentlessly, to visit, and eventually you'll have to accept. When you get there, they'll be incredibly nice to you, treating you with such warmth and hospitality that before long you feel almost like family. Then they will try to asphyxiate you with sewer gas. I found this out when I went to Grand Forks, N.D., in January. I had made fun of Grand Forks and its sister city, East Grand Forks, Minn.

CHICAGO - Donna Spinozza of Gurnee, Ill., admits to occasionally leaving her three youngsters buckled in their car seats while she runs into a bagel shop. She would never leave them in the minivan for more than a few minutes, she says, and she's certainly not the only well-intentioned parent who is reluctant to unload sleeping babies and haul them into the cold during a quick errand. The key is she always keeps a nervous eye on the kids through the store window, she says. Under a new Illinois law, parents who leave their children unattended and out of their view can face child endangerment charges that carry a penalty of up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine.

This is an edited excerpt of a San Francisco Chronicle editorial, which was published yesterday. IT may be way too late to save the public image of the tobacco industry, but the Phillip Morris Co.'s development of a safer cigarette could save lives. The new technology, to be tested initially in the Merit brand, is designed to slow down the combustion rate and reduce the heat level to reduce the chances that an unattended cigarette will cause a fire. Tobacco industry critics say the company's own documents show that it had developed a less-flammable cigarette in the 1980s.