Omar

With staccato regularity, guns are killing children. Epidemic. Public health crisis. Tragedy. By whatever name, these deaths bring profound loss to families and communities. This series attempts to capture the look, the sound, and the feel of this loss. Omar ("Lil O") Rodriguez was too scared to go to school. The walk from his eighth-grade classes at Roberto Clemente Middle School to his Kensington rowhouse - along a volatile route where kids from Clemente, CEP Allegheny, Edison, and Olney High Schools often collide - had become a bruising gauntlet.

It's not easy being Omar. The miles pile up on his Nissan Sentra. There's the challenge of finding the right touch of eyeliner and eye shadow. Some nights, his bum knee throbs with every twist and turn. And then there are the women. Oh, the women. Sometimes they get carried away, as Omar may find out when he gets undressed later.. No, it's not easy being Omar the belly dancer - one of the few male belly dancers in America and the only one dancing regularly in the couscous circuit, the local round of Middle Eastern restaurants and clubs.

Everyone is a friend in Omar's life, even passing motorists. Omar, 4, will help load the car to go on a picnic, check the seat belts of the two little ones who live with him, and station himself by the window. Then, as they travel along the road, Omar waves at every car. When the mail-carrier arrives, Omar will chat pleasantly with him before going back in the house. And he's delighted when he hears noisy trash trucks. The men working smile and exchange hellos with Omar before going on their way. Omar is a healthy and active.

The paid informant who infiltrated a group of men accused of plotting an armed attack on Fort Dix was convicted of federal bank fraud in 2001 and sentenced to six months in prison. Mahmoud A. Omar pleaded guilty just weeks after his arrest and agreed to testify against the ringleader of a counterfeit-check-cashing scheme who recruited him. Omar, an Egyptian national who said he entered the United States illegally through Mexico, was released from prison in February 2002, according to the federal Bureau of Prisons.

"My Beautiful Laundrette. " A comedy-drama starring Daniel Day Lewis, Gordon Warnecke and Saeed Jaffrey. Directed by Stephen Frears from a screenplay by Hanif Kureiski. Photographed by Oliver Stapleton. Edited by Mick Audsley. Music by Luedies Tavalis. Running time: 93 minutes. An Orion Classics release. At the Ritz Five, 214 Walnut St. Atmosphere is the lifeblood of movies. This is what separates film from the stage and from television. If a movie has ambiance, it really doesn't need anything else.

Omar, 6, is drawing a wavy box with circles inside. "Is that a tooth with cavities in it?" he's asked. "No!" he answers. "It's a refrigerator, with the door open. That's cheese, a hoagie and a glass of grape juice. " Leaning over, he peers at a tree with a blue trunk, and shakes his head. Then the woman fills in the leaves with green and adds heart-shaped apples. When he looks in her face, she says, "I eat an apple every day, and that's why I'm absolutely gorgeous. " A snort of laughter escapes him before he can get a grip on it, and he draws his chair closer so that he can hand her more crayons.

The phrase senseless killing has, tragically, become a journalistic cliche, but if ever there's a death that shouldn't have happened it's the drive-by shooting of a teenage boy in the opening minutes of the potent and incendiaryIsraeli film Ajami . It's a sunny day, and the kid is bent over a car in front of his family's house when a vehicle rolls by and gunmen shoot him in the back. The bullets were intended for the boy's teenage cousin, Omar (Shahir Kabaha), an Israeli Arab who stood up to some Bedouin mobsters and is now on their hit list.

Omar, 10, and his brother, Maron, 9, want to be together. They live in different foster homes and don't get to share their similar interests very often. They like riding bikes, going on the swings and slides at the park, and playing football, basketball and computer games. Both were born with drugs in their systems and were "failure-to-thrive" babies. There are neglect, abuse and deprivation in their backgrounds, and Omar receives therapy and medication for hyperactivity. Maron is in fourth grade and enjoys spelling.

Omar, 10, is walking around the bookstore, pausing the longest to look at children's stories that have happy faces on the cover. He seems amazed at books with reproductions of paintings and he murmurs, as he carefully turns each page, "That's pretty. That's wild. I like that one. " Then on to the sports books and pictures of football players he can identify. Gold-colored wrapping paper catches his eye. He stands in front of it with a thoughtful expression. "I could get 10 rolls of this and paper my wall," he announces.

Rapper-turned-Rocky-impersonator Will Smith returned to Philadelphia yesterday to shoot some scenes - including this one on the Art Museum steps - for the season finale of "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air" (Channel 3, 8 p.m. Mondays). The plot of the May 23 episode has Will (Smith) coming home to visit his mom (Vernee Watson Johnson) and settle an old score with Omar (Jacques Bolton), the bully described in the series theme song.

This must the be the Golden Age for baseball senior citizens. Jamie Moyer is turning back the clock in Colorado and Omar Vizquel, who turned 45 on Tuesday, started a pair of double plays at second base for the Toronto Blue Jays on Sunday. Now in his 24th major-league season, Vizquel made his debut on April 3, 1989. George H.W. Bush was barely two months into his presidency, Rain Man was the No. 1 movie at the box office and future author Jose Canseco was the reigning American League MVP. Vizquel, a native of Venezuela has played in four different decades with six different teams, has 11 Gold Gloves, 2,842 career hits and is a three-time all-star.

Sharif Omar, 32, has been appointed chief executive officer of Pottstown Memorial Medical Center, effective immediately, the hospital announced today. He has been chief operating officer since 2009 and interim CEO since March. A new COO is to be announced shortly. Omar replaces John Kirby, who left to take another job. Omar had previously worked in administrative positions at Tulane University Hospital & Clinic and Southwest Medical Center and at Medical Partners International.

The Eagles are not pursuing their 15 free agents as NFL business resumes, and will almost certainly not bring any of them back, including starters such as linebacker Stewart Bradley and punter Sav Rocca and backup running back Jerome Harrison. Safety Quintin Mikell, long expected to depart, agreed to a deal Tuesday with the St. Louis Rams. Kicker David Akers also has been expected to leave ever since the Eagles drafted kicker Alex Henery in the fourth round. Other free agents expected to be allowed to depart include cornerback Dimitri Patterson, guards Nick Cole, Max Jean-Gilles and Reggie Wells, and linebackers Ernie Sims, Omar Gaither and Akeem Jordan.

CANASTOTA, N.Y. - Mexican icon Julio Cesar Chavez was one proud papa when the older of the two sons following in his pugilistic footsteps, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., won his first world championship last weekend by dethroning WBC middleweight titlist Sebastian Zbik on a hard-fought majority decision at Los Angeles' Staples Center. The baby-faced Chavez Jr., trailing on two of the judges' scorecards, had to win the last three rounds to get the nod, and did. As they embraced in the center of the ring after the decision had been announced, the six-time world champ, in three weight classes, whispered something in his son's ear, whereupon both broke into wide smiles.

KABUL, Afghanistan - If the latest reports of Mullah Mohammed Omar's demise are greatly exaggerated - as Mark Twain once quipped about his own premature obituary - they nonetheless offer a glimpse of the zeitgeist in Afghanistan and Pakistan after the death of Osama bin Laden. A Taliban spokesman Monday vehemently denied assertions that the movement's spiritual leader had died or been killed, even as Afghanistan's main intelligence service said the reclusive cleric had disappeared from his alleged Pakistan hideout.

"The Office" meets al Qaeda in "Four Lions," a movie that applies the British talent for institutional satire to a U.K. terror cell. Making comedy from very real, palpably looming terror is probably a doomed enterprise, but writer-director Chris Morris keeps "Four Lions" going for an impressively long time (while also reaffirming that the British curse so much better than we do). Morris is working with the same writers (Simon Blackwell, Jesse Armstrong) who satirized the war on terror in "In the Loop," and here satirize terror itself - a comparison that shows that the terrorists and their adversaries in western governments have the same internal problem.

DEAR ABBY: I'm a teen mom who feels like I am being taken advantage of by my newborn's grandmother. (I'll call her "Liz. ") My baby's father, "Todd," lives with her. They provide no financial support. Liz puts me on the spot constantly and makes me feel bad if I tell her she can't have the baby that day or take her to a certain place. Since day one, she has wanted to take my baby out of town. That bothers me because I don't want my daughter going out of town unless I am with her. I feel obligated to let Todd's mother see the baby all the time to avoid the drama she would cause in my life if I don't.

A 22-year-old prisoner charged with homicide escaped with two others from a Philadelphia police van on the way to a prison Saturday afternoon, injuring an officer and prompting a citywide manhunt, police said. Omar Roane was one of three prisoners who forced their way out the back door of the van at 2:38 p.m. while it was stopped at Cottman and Frankford Avenues. The two others were apprehended within 20 feet of the van, police said. One officer suffered an ankle injury. Roane has a long rap sheet and was charged with the murder of Kyree Young, 17, during an alleged drug robbery in Southwest Philadelphia on June 9, 2009.

AN OMAR BROADWAY FILM. 8 tonight, HBO2. OMAR BROADWAY and Buddy Randolph once believed that the truth would set them free. And might even make them rich and famous. Armed with a smuggled-in video camera, the pair, cellmates at Northern State Prison, in Newark, N.J., spent six months back in 2004 shooting footage of themselves, their fellow inmates and those inmates' sometimes violent interactions with correctional officers in hopes of, as Broadway put it at the time, showing "the world exactly what goes on within the confines of these buildings.

From utility guy to all-star The Phillies' string of sellouts at Citizens Bank Park stretched to 78 games Monday night. Philadelphia baseball fans no doubt wanted to be the latest to catch a glimpse of Atlanta Braves all-star Omar Infante before he goes to Anaheim, Calif., next week as part of manager Charlie Manuel's National League squad. Manuel sat on a wooden bench in the Phillies' sauna-like dugout before the game and opened the media session for questions. The leadoff query came from Carroll Rogers of the Atlanta Journal-Constitu-tion.