Relief

Armed with missiles and heavy machine guns, a menacing French naval frigate appeared recently off Somalia's coast, providing cover as two heavily loaded ships piloted toward this sun-bleached village. By dawn the next morning, an onslaught was in full swing involving scores of small boats and hundreds of young men, who charged through the surf like soldiers at Normandy. But rather than guns, this brigade raced up the beach with heavy sacks of U.S.

The Bush administration's plan to provide relief to homeowners facing steep interest-rate resets on their sub-prime mortgages has gotten mixed reviews. The plan calls for lenders to voluntarily freeze rates for certain homeowners with adjustable-rate loans. We spoke with two experts about their differing views on the program. David C. John is a senior research fellow for the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at the Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Foundation.

Panembahan Senopati Hospital was designed for 140 patients. On Monday, it had 1,200. Even so, the wards were nearly empty. No one wanted to stay inside. Instead, the patients lay in rows in the open-air reception area and in the sprawling hospital's exterior corridors. These were survivors of Saturday's earthquake, which measured 6.3 in magnitude and had killed 5,427 people as of today.

China mobilized more than 20,000 soldiers and paramilitary police officers for relief efforts after Typhoon Saomai, the strongest storm to strike the country in 50 years, killed at least 104 people, blacked out cities and wrecked more than 50,000 homes. An additional 190 people were missing after the storm's 170-mph gusts battered areas where more than 1.6 million people had been evacuated before Saomai hit Thursday.

Hezbollah started handing out stacks of crisp $100 bills Friday to residents who lost their homes to Israeli bombs -- $12,000 to each claimant at a school in south Beirut. There were no lines and no waiting at the Shahed School in the Bourj al Barajneh neighborhood. Applicants who had signed up for the aid this week simply showed up at the school, showed identification and had only to sign a receipt.

Your article on itching captured well the misery and often resigned agony suffered by those of us with chronic itchy spots ["The Relentless Itch," April 2]. However, like most pieces on the subject, you focused on drugs and chemicals and did not even mention the only 100% effective relief I've ever found: a cold, wet compress. Not a long term solution, but enough to get to sleep -- and that's a blessing. ROGER WALTON \o7North Hills \f7 A couple of years ago, I suffered from widespread persistent and severe itching.

Andrew Jakabovics is associate director for the Economic Mobility Program at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C. Question: You have criticized the administration's plan. What's wrong with it? Andrew Jakabovics: This plan is going to target a small tip of the sub-prime iceberg. Basically, if you qualify for these narrow criteria, the loan servicers have agreed to freeze the interest rate on your adjustable-rate mortgage for up to five years. So you end up with a very small pool of folks who are going to be helped by this program.

Authorities in Philadelphia will suspend foreclosure sales of homes whose owners have fallen behind on adjustable-rate sub-prime loan payments -- potential relief for tens of thousands of struggling debtors. The Philadelphia City Council on Thursday called on Sheriff John Green to stop the sales to give borrowers more time to seek a settlement that would prevent them from losing their homes. Philadelphia becomes the first U.S. city to halt foreclosure sales in the current crisis, although Cleveland and Baltimore are considering similar measures, said ACORN, an advocacy group for low-income families.

It started on the first opening day, in Japan, when A's closer Huston Street gave up a ninth-inning homer to blow a 4-3 lead, then forked over two more runs to lose in the 10th. It happened on yet another opening day, the one in Washington, when Nationals reliever Jon Rauch gave up a top-of-the-ninth run (albeit unearned) to Atlanta, which was followed by a game-winning homer in the bottom half of the inning off Braves reliever Peter Moylan. It was all over the place when most teams opened the season on March 31. Closers for the two best teams in the NL Central -- Milwaukee's Eric Gagne and Chicago's Kerry Wood -- allowed three ninth-inning runs each.

The United Nations' World Food Program said it would cut food rations by half for up to 3 million people in Sudan's Darfur region starting next month because attacks on its trucks had reduced stocks. The agency said 60 of its contracted trucks had been hijacked since the start of the year, with 39 still missing, 26 drivers unaccounted for and a driver killed last month. The U.N. program said trucks should be delivering nearly 2,000 tons of food daily to supply warehouses.