Ben

While visiting a friend who had recently been adopted, Ben, 11, was astonished to hear her complaining about something that he considered small and insignificant. "What's in your head, girl?" he asked. "You have a permanent home, a bed, and nice clothes. " Then, he added quietly, "I don't have a family. " But recently Ben was moved into a foster home, where he finally has something else he has always wanted - his own room. The first day, he spent the whole day in his room, enjoying his surroundings.

SO MUCH Ben and J.Lo news for a soggy holiday weekend: Imdb.com reports that the "Sexiest Man Alive" is going to promote L'Oreal shampoo. Affleck's sudsational deal is worth approximately $1.5 million. Why? Because he's worth it. As if their constant cooing wasn't indication enough, the New York Post's Page Six says the twice-married Lopez is finally happy. And J.Lo mom Guadalupe loves her future son-in-law. "Ben is like Jennifer," Guadalupe said. "Generous to a fault.

By William C. Kashatus Ben is a mischievous 10-year-old with a contagious smile. When he's happy, he spontaneously skips around the house. He can also be disarmingly affectionate, offering a big hug after stirring up trouble with his older brothers. But Ben can be difficult to understand, speaking only in sentence fragments. He's shy outside the family. And his frustration with crowded places can lead to a "meltdown. " In case you haven't already guessed, Ben is among as many as 1.5 million Americans with autism-spectrum disorders, a population that has risen in recent years to one in every 110 births.

When USX Corp. decided this year to pay a $1.8 million penalty for polluting the air and water around its Clairton Coke Works, the steel manufacturer became BEN's latest victim. BEN is not the Environmental Protection Agency's stripe-suited enforcer, a man with pitiless eyes and a suspicious bulge just above the spot where his heart ought to be. But it might as well be. BEN is a formula the agency uses to determine how much companies or municipal agencies, universities and others have to cough up if they have failed to install pollution-control equipment - and it has proven to be as effective as any sociopathic enforcer could ever hope to be. In EPA's view, BEN - short for benefit - is the epitome of economically fair enforcement.

Four-thirty in the morning, John Alessi was asleep in a Syracuse, N.Y., hotel room, away on business, when the phone rang. It was his son's best friend, Tyler. "Mr. Alessi, I'm real sorry, but I think Ben's dead. " Ben wasn't dead, but he was badly hurt. A car had hit him as he and several friends crossed Delaware Avenue outside the Roxxy nightclub. The impact - he went through the windshield, then into the air and onto the pavement - broke his jaw and several ribs and vertebrae, and left a deep gash in his scalp.

As he was helping to put up the tents, Ben kept anxiously asking, "Are we really gonna sleep there?" He had never gone camping in the woods, and he was pretty sure a bear lurked behind every tree, waiting for him to have breakfast. In the morning, Ben, who is 11, marveled at the way the food was cooked, with a grill rack and holes punched in aluminum foil. He ran to get more wood and then sat eating the fried potatoes, bacon and eggs as if they were a feast for the gods. When the squirrels started throwing nuts on his head, his laughter brought happy smiles to his foster parents' faces.

The contrast between the idealism of blacks involved in the civil-rights movement and the selfishness and lack of morality of some of the current generation contains the germ of an effective drama. In The Old Man and the Room, playwright Ali Wadud passionately outlines the contrast, but his play is too clumsily constructed and exaggerated to be a satisfactory treatment. He makes his point so blatantly that the play becomes not so much a clash between those who have ideals and those who do not as a simplistic, lurid struggle between good and evil.

Volunteering can be a wonderful way to make a difference in someone's life, including your own, and to weave together the bonds of community that are too often frayed. This year, I decided that my son Ben, at 5 1/2, is old enough to learn firsthand about volunteer service. Martin Luther King's Birthday presented an appropriate time to begin, since Dr. King's family and others have called upon people to volunteer on that day as a way of honoring him and furthering his work. My own volunteer work - co-chairing a committee on public interest law, going to meetings - is too abstract to be meaningful to a child.

Ben and Andrew go way back, but can they go all the way? That's the question posed in Humpday , Lynn Shelton's droll and startlingly funny portrait of men testing the limits of friendship while negotiating the pressure to appear cool. The college pals haven't seen each other much since Ben got married to Anna and Andrew decamped Seattle for Mexico and other points south. Ben's a Jason Bateman type, clean-shaven and tucked in to pleated trousers. He likes the rhythm and comfort of marriage, knowing what will happen tomorrow, next week, and next year.

My husband and I both have wonderful memories of cross-country trips with our families as children. The idea of taking our three boys - Glenn, 11, Danny, 9, and Ben, 6 - on this kind of trip had been brewing for years. Besides all of our concerns about car trouble, getting lost and the time in the car, we were worried that our youngest son, Ben, would not be able to handle such a trip. Ben was diagnosed with autism at 2 1/2, and like many children with this disorder, he likes structure and routine.

When Ben Simons was born at Chester County Hospital in May 1994, the doctor who delivered him told his parents he would be a soccer player - for a practical reason. Simons was born without his left hand and forearm. His mother, Katie Simons, initially thought she might leave her job to tend to her son full-time. "For the first few months I was home with him, I thought, 'This is ridiculous,' " she said. " 'Look at this kid. He's just smiling and growing; there's nothing else wrong with him. He can do whatever he sets his mind to.' And he's continued to prove that to us throughout his life.

When Ben Simons was born at Chester County Hospital in May 1994, the doctor who delivered him told his parents he would be a soccer player - for a practical reason. Simons was born without his left hand and forearm. His mother, Katie Simons, initially thought she might leave her job to tend to her son full-time. "For the first few months I was home with him, I thought, 'This is ridiculous,' " she said. " 'Look at this kid. He's just smiling and growing; there's nothing else wrong with him. He can do whatever he sets his mind to.' And he's continued to prove that to us throughout his life.

PARIS - Algeria's first post-independence president, Ahmed Ben Bella, 95, died Wednesday. He was a charismatic revolutionary who fought alongside the French during World War II before becoming a hero of his own country's liberation struggle. Mr. Ben Bella was born in the town of Maghnia on the Algerian/Moroccan border in December 1916, when Algeria was a French colony. He was called up for military service during World War II, serving first in Marseille, where he briefly played with Olympique Marseille soccer team, and later in Italy, where his bravery saw him decorated by Gen. Charles de Gaulle.

How could he choose her? That's been the refrain this week as people question Ben Flajnik's choice of Courtney Robertson as his "forever" on The Bachelor . With two dozen lovely women to pick from, why select a lady so high-maintenance you need a tool chest to take her out for coffee? A personality so volatile that Doppler radar can't keep track of her moods? Call it the Case of the Bachelor's Revenge. (Disclaimer: This is a theory. Cast member's actual motivations may vary.)

Bio: 48; born in London; came here at 13; lives in South Philadelphia. Training: Baking apprenticeship and chef training at London's Dickens Inn. Philly restaurant connections: The Garden, St. Stephen's Green, Dickens Inn, Monte Carlo Living Room, New Wave Café, Isabella's, Dark Horse Pub. What's new: He's the new executive chef at 18-month-old Philadelphia Bar and Restaurant (120 Market St., 215-925-7691, philadelphiabarand restaurant.com)....

Gossip sites went nuts Tuesday with news that the rumored secret marriage between Natalie Portman and Benjamin Millepied (conducted in a super-secret bunker deep in the bowels of NORAD in Cheyenne Mountain?) had been confirmed. The couple's jeweler, former ballerina and Ben friend Jamie Wolf , issued a press release saying she designed the couple's wedding bands - the same rings they wore to the Oscars. The eco-friendly rings "were made with recycled platinum and conflict-free diamonds," Wolf told Us Weekly How that actually confirms anything is beyond us. We're holding out till the chimney sweep weighs in. (No word yet from the happy couple.)

DEAR ABBY: At this time of year I have seen letters in your column from couples describing how they met. I hope you will print ours. During a study break one evening in April 1937, I walked to Bruckner Boulevard Park in the Bronx to sit on a bench. A cyclist whizzed through the center walkway, then stopped and slowly backed up to where I was sitting. "Hello," he said. I responded. "Who are you?" he asked. "I'm Queen Elizabeth the First," I told him without batting an eye. "Well," he replied, "I'm Sir Walter Raleigh - unfortunately, I don't have a coat to place at your feet.

NEW YORK - Ben Gazzara, whose powerful dramatic performances brought an intensity to a variety of roles and made him a memorable presence in such iconic productions over the decades as the original "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" on Broadway and the film "The Big Lebowski," died on Friday. He was 81. In 1955, he originated the role on Broadway of Brick Pollitt, the disturbed alcoholic son and failed football star in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. " In 1965, he moved on to TV stardom in "Run for Your Life," a drama about a workaholic lawyer who, diagnosed with a terminal illness, quits his job and embarks on a globe-trotting attempt to squeeze a lifetime of adventures into the time he has left.

LONDON - Time stands still for no one. In London, it doesn't even stand straight. Big Ben, perhaps the most iconic structure in all of Britain, is leaning, and lawmakers who work in the shadow of the famous clock tower are trying to figure out what to do about it. Members of Parliament gathered at the House of Commons on Monday to discuss a report containing some drastic solutions to deal with the problem, even though it will be thousands of...

What if you became sick - violently, seriously ill - everytime your children uttered a word? That's the nightmare world unleashed by Ben Marcus in his stunner of a novel The Flame Alphabet (Alfred A. Knopf, $25.95), due out Tuesday. The novel tells the story of Sam and Claire, an ordinary Jewish couple from Rochester, N.Y., who realize to their horror that the mysterious illness that has gripped them is caused by their daughter, Esther. Or, rather, by her words.