Year In Baltimore

Ethiopia steps up attacks Ethiopian troops seized towns throughout southern and central Somalia yesterday and bombed the international airport at Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, in a rapid escalation of a two-day-old offensive against Islamic fundamentalists who've controlled most of Somalia for the past six months. pg 1a Movement in the Mideast Israel has agreed to remove some military roadblocks in the West Bank and streamline checkpoints to strengthen the position of moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

The notes were written by hand on orange, blue and yellow slips of paper, jotted down after a prayer during a New Year's Day church service to honor the dead children of Baltimore. The parishioners were called on to record their commitment to help a child, to stop the killings, to heal a city that seems beyond repair. No names were signed, but the papers were placed in the offering plate, a covenant with God and the people who attended the service nine days ago at the Episcopal Cathedral of the Incarnation on North Charles Street.

Mediterranean Shipping Co., a global steamship line based in Geneva, will add a weekly stop in the port of Baltimore next month, giving a boost to the container cargo business that local officials have struggled to maintain in recent years.The Swiss company will add Baltimore to its service connecting the U.S. East Coast with the west coast of South America. The first ship is to call here Nov. 26."This is really very good news for us," said Jim White, executive director of the Maryland Port Administration, which manages the state's public marine terminals.

In Baltimore City Struever Bros. hires departing chief of east-side coalition Michael V. Seipp, who announced last week that he was resigning as executive director of the Historic East Baltimore Community Action Coalition, will begin work Nov. 20 in the rental housing division of developer Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse, a company principal said yesterday. "He brings nonprofit and public experience to the table," partner Ted Rouse said of Seipp, who ran the nonprofit east-side redevelopment effort for the past five years.

As her plane touched down outside Baltimore this week, Aileen Mercado felt overcome with gratitude. A year ago, she arrived in this airport on her own, having left her husband and three young children in the Philippines to teach in one of the city's toughest schools. This time, her family was at her side. They entered the United States on Thursday, the day of a high-risk terror alert. Before takeoff on their connecting flight from Atlanta, Mercado would recall, a man who appeared to be Middle Eastern was asked to leave the plane and he quietly complied.

Positive economic signs are everywhere, from solvent governments to insolvent -- but gainfully employed -- consumers. But for striking evidence that the national prosperity is real, seeping even into bare corners, look at Baltimore and some other older cities.They're adding substantial numbers of jobs for the first time in nearly a decade.In November, the most recent month for which data are available, about 419,000 people were working in Baltimore. That's 6,000 more than in November 1997, closing in on almost a full year of substantial job gains for the city.

In Baltimore City U.S. agency awards city $14 million to finance two projects A federal agency awarded Baltimore more than $14 million to help finance two economic development projects, city officials announced yesterday. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development provided a $13.3 million loan and a $975,000 grant to the city's Department of Housing and Community Development. The loan will be used to acquire 26 acres in Carroll Camden in Southwest Baltimore and in Rosemont in West Baltimore, two urban-renewal areas.

A POTENTIALLY contentious election year in Baltimore -- with a lame-duck mayor and contests for City Council -- may not be the ideal time to execute a major redevelopment program. Yet a downtown revitalization strategy has to be implemented this year. Any delay may doom the city's best chance in decades to remake the old Howard Street retail corridor."Westside" is something of a misnomer for the Westside Master Plan, financed by the Weinberg Foundation. When it was released in June it involved 18 downtown blocks.

LONDON - Around here, the word Baltimore conjures up a city with English roots located somewhere around Washington. It's known as the home of John Waters, Anne Tyler, Cal Ripken, the cop show "Homicide," the Ravens and Wallis Warfield Simpson, who fell for the Prince of Wales, the future though short-reigning King Edward VIII. But Baltimore's image is about to get a big boost in Britain courtesy of a stunning exhibit poised to open at the Royal Academy of Arts in the heart of London. "Ingres to Matisse: Masterpieces of French Painting" is drawn from the collections of the Walters Art Museum and the Baltimore Museum of Art. The show displays a different side of Baltimore, one not as well understood or publicized in Europe.