Keep your fingers crossed and your water dish full. Nipper, the 14-foot RCA mascot who once sat atop a building on Russell Street, could be back in Baltimore for the Thanksgiving parade. In fact, Nipper is slated to be the grand marshal, and Nancy Brennan, departing executive director of the City Life Museums, is hoping for an entourage of real fox terriers to march with him. Brennan says generous donors funded the buy-back of Nipper from the collector who took the city landmark to Virginia in 1976. What is still needed is money for the Selastic (fiberglass) pooch's new home, somewhere within view of motorists on the Jones Falls Expressway. Watch this space.
Case of the 'lost' luggage
Here's one we haven't heard before: A Silver Spring man has been accused of filing more than $30,000 in false insurance claims for lost luggage. "This is a highly unusual type of fraud," says William Bokel, a Maryland State Police corporal assigned to the state insurance commissioner's office.
Divine Elung Nkumbe has been charged with making false reports of lost luggage, most in the range of $4,000 to $5,000, with one about $7,000. To make such claims, Nkumbe had to betray an expensive taste in clothes. "Each time it was for designer suits and the O. J. Simpson shoes," says Bokel, referring to the pricey Bruno Magli's linked to a certain California criminal case.
Nkumbe is alleged to have concocted documents to show that he was on certain flights of Continental or American airlines and that handlers had lost his luggage. Police could find no evidence that he was actually on the flights. Each count against Nkumbe carries a penalty of 15 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Conflicting signals
Go figure this one. The governor of Maryland cuts millions of dollars in assistance to the disabled poor, then holds an awards ceremony to honor people who have to deal with the mess that results. One of the honorees is Ann Ciekot, acting director of Action for the Homeless. She has persistently warned of increased homelessness due to the slashing of the state's program to aid poor people with medically certified disabilities. "The last thing you want to see, we are seeing: People are becoming homeless," Ciekot said this summer. "Marylanders should be outraged that Governor Glendening balanced the state's budget on the backs of its vulnerable citizens . . ." Last Wednesday, the governor's advisory board on homelessness staged an awards ceremony at St. John's College. Ciekot was among more than 20 honorees from around the state. The governor did not attend.
