Volcano

Fujimori is an extinct volcano in the Andes. Don't shoot the vote counters. They are doing their best. Remember when "the long count" meant the second Dempsey-Tunney fight of 1927? The University of Maryland, College Park did what any great research university does under severe stress. It fired the football coach. Lucille Clifton for president!

The next peanut-butter-and- banana sandwich you fix for your child, cut it in half for her, then in fourths, then maybe in eighths for a quick, simple lesson in fractions. Her grade-school teacher will thank you come fall. Children savor the do-nothingness of vacation, but some educators warn that students shouldn't be encouraged to shift their brains into neutral for the summer. "There's growing evidence that children's reading and math achievement scores tend to decline over the summer vacation," says Andrea Greenhoot, a developmental psychologist at the University of Kansas.

For two and a half months, the popular hot-springs resort of Banos in central Ecuador was a ghost town. Twenty-five thousand residents of the town and nearby countryside had fled, or were evacuated on Oct. 16 after the nearby Tungurahua volcano came to life. Scientists warned there was an 80 percent chance of an eruption, and that hot gas and ash from Tungurahua -- "Throat of Fire" in the Quechua Indian language -- could overrun parts of Banos. Since then the town has been spared by the tremors, steam explosions and ash clouds that have burst from the shuddering mountain.

COLLEGE PARK -- The scar curls down his right heel, a raised trail mindful of a lizard's scaly tail or a stretch of the Appalachians on a topographical map.Obinna Ekezie runs his finger over the six-inch scar, a keepsake of the injury to his Achilles' tendon that cut short his senior season at the University of Maryland and threatened his hopes for a professional basketball career.Now, with his torn tendon repaired and the NBA draft four days away, Ekezie itches to play. Forced to pace himself during his gradual recovery, he has yet to return to the court, save on a casual basis.

Few American musicians in recent years have captured the popular imagination the way the young American pianist Awadagin Pratt has. Pratt, who became the first African-American classical instrumentalist to win an important international competition when he took first prize in the Naumburg Competition a few seasons back, cuts a striking figure. How many classical pianists have the face of a matinee idol, the body of a prizefighter, wear such unconventional concert garb and have dreadlocks to boot?

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's famed Popocatepetl volcano would not erupt without first telling Don Antonio Analco. He's quite certain of it.Analco is a holy man from the village of Santiago Xalitzintla, which lies just seven miles east of the powerful volcano he calls Don Gregorio. Analco says he talks regularly to the volcano, which he believes to be a powerful deity that controls not only rainfall but the destiny of the people who inhabit the lands around Popocatepetl."The day of the great eruption will come, but it will be forewarned," says Analco, whose thick black hair and dark angular face belie his 52 years.

WHEN DIEGO SOLANO returns to Benfield Elementary School Monday for his first day of third grade and his teacher asks, "What did you do this summer?" he's going to have a great answer.The 9-year-old vacationed in his father's native Costa Rica.Diego went with dad, Rumano Solano, and mom, Kathy Solano, a Maryland native, to visit relatives living near the city of San Jose.They toured an insect museum, where they saw praying mantises about a foot long, and a butterfly farm, where, if they held quite still, the butterflies would land on their arms.

Meet Ivan Rodriguez Catcher Ivan "Pudge" Rodriguez of the Texas Rangers has led the American League in throwing out runners five of the past seven seasons. "I don't even try stealing on him anymore," says New YorYankee Chuck Knoblauch, one of the A.L. 's top base-stealers. Ivan was a short, pudgy kid, which is why a Little League coacnicknamed him Pudge. He grew up to be only 5-foot-9, but he has won six Gold Gloves and is a six-time All-Star! Pub Date: 4/29/98 Tim Hardaway of the Miami Heat once made his elementary school classroom red hot. Why?

Calling the 1996 shooting outside the Volcano's nightclub "a tragedy for the whole community," a Baltimore Circuit Court judge sentenced gunman Kevin Lamont Richardson to 300 years in prison for killing two college students and wounding four other people.Judge Robert I. H. Hammerman said he had no choice but to impose the maximum sentence for the crimes because of Richardson's disregard for human life when he opened fire on a crowd outside the club in the 1000 block of Greenmount Ave. on Oct. 24, 1996, in an attempt to kill an "enemy" of his.Hammerman told Richardson, 25, that he had brought tragedy to the families of six innocent people, and left his three children to grow up without their father.

After three days of jury deliberations, Kevin Lamont Richardson was found guilty yesterday of the fatal shootings of two college students who were killed in a hail of gunfire outside Volcano's nightclub last year.The jury, which appeared to be deadlocked several times during the deliberations, handed up the verdict hours before a deadline the judge had set for a mistrial.The 25-year-old was convicted of second-degree murder in the deaths of Donte P. Young, a 22-year-old student at Coppin State College, and Lori McDaniel, 19, a second-year civil engineering student at Morgan State University, Oct. 24, 1996.