Access

Do you keep important documents and valuables in a safe-deposit box at your bank? That's a smart idea, but you should also think about what would happen to the contents and how they would be accessible if something were to happen to you. Only designated owners of a safe-deposit box can gain access to its contents, so if you are incapacitated for some reason, the same rule applies. You can also designate a power of attorney to have access, but be sure to specify that in your power-of-attorney document.

As Access Carroll celebrates its second-year anniversary, the demand for services at the free, nonprofit medical clinic in Westminster has sharply grown. Uninsured patients and those who can't afford expensive premiums and co-pays came to the clinic for nearly 4,000 appointments last year, Access Carroll's executive director Tammy Black said. "We're actually worried about how we're going to keep up with it," Black said of the demand for services. prospective patients can earn up to twice the federal poverty guidelines, or $20,410 for one person in 2007.

A statewide civil rights group has filed lawsuits against two Baltimore restaurants accusing them of failing to accommodate people with disabilities as required by federal law.More than 40 people -- many of them in wheelchairs or on crutches -- gathered Wednesday in Fells Point to close a five-week statewide campaign by ACCESS Maryland to bring attention to the failure of businesses to provide access to the disabled.As part of the campaign, the nonprofit agency has filed 14 federal lawsuits against hotels, clothing stores, banks, and the restaurants.

Access to real property assessment records, tax maps and sales data from the State Department of Assessments and Taxation can now be obtained on the Internet at www.dat.state.md.us seven days a week, 24 hours a day.The site was originally posted last April and was updated in the fall. It offers access to any of the 2 million real property accounts in Maryland.All that is needed to access the information is the address, the account number or the map parcel on the tax map."We noticed a large demand by people wanting to access property records, so we built this site to make it more convenient than having to call or visit local assessment offices," said Ronald W. Wineholt, director of Maryland's Department of Assessments and Taxation.

It is not nearly as romantic as a message in a bottle, but electronic mail is certainly a much faster and more efficient way to communicate with friends and family back on shore from a ship at sea. For example, passengers on the Norwegian Sky, the first ship to offer 24-hour Internet access to passengers, were able to write home instantly when the ship, on one of its first voyages, ran aground in Canada last month.This inauspicious beginning for this new era of floating e-mail access notwithstanding, nearly every other major cruise line is also going full speed ahead to equip its ships with Internet-connected computers.

WASHINGTON -- Americans pride themselves on leading the world in the digital quest to conquer cyberspace. But Britain, which introduced the first mass postal service some 160 years ago, has leaped ahead by letting anyone with a computer and a phone line access the Internet at no cost.Dozens of Internet service providers now offer Britons free unlimited access to the Internet, along with e-mail and large blocks of data storage space. Earlier this month, giant British Telecom waived all access fees for its online customers.

Wheelchair users can measure the quality of life with a yardstick.That's only 36 inches, but they need every one to pass through doorways or aisles and make U-turns whenever paths to life's pleasures and necessities are blocked.For some wheelchair users, such as Marilynn Phillips of Hampstead, life is a continuing struggle to circumvent obstacles and gain access to dress racks and restrooms, bookshelves and knickknacks.Phillips, 55, is a retired associate professor of English from Morgan State University and an accessibility activist.

TOLCHESTER -- When she was growing up, Trisha Sawicki played in the Chesapeake Bay just a short stroll from the summer cottage that her grandfather built in this once-popular bayfront resort."

The list of candidates who passed the February administration of the Maryland Bar Exam is now available through SUNFAX and SunSpot.To retrieve the list through SUNFAX, you must have access to a fax machine. Call 410-332-6123 and enter document code 5600 when the automated attendant answers.If you have access to the World Wide Web, you can find the list on SunSpot by pointing your browser to www.sunspot.net/news/.Pub Date: 5/13/98

In a move intended to spur local telephone competition in Maryland, the Public Service Commission has ordered Bell Atlantic Corp. to give its rivals easier access to the company's local telephone network.Long-distance companies such as AT&T Corp. and MCI WorldCom Inc. are among the firms trying to enter the local market that Bell Atlantic dominates. However, it would be prohibitively expensive for any company to duplicate an entrenched local phone network such as Bell Atlantic's.Therefore, would-be rivals of Bell Atlantic generally have to buy access to Bell Atlantic's network in order to provide local service.

A quid pro quo on card check bill? I read with interest the columns regarding the card check bill, and I was happy to note that two of the three writers opposed the legislation ("The employee free choice act," Commentary, April 6). Another interesting fact is that our Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, who is one the sponsors of this legislation, along with 18 other senators and representatives, received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions last year from a long list of unions.

When Carroll County resident Donna Hanson went to see a doctor about chronic gastrointestinal pain in October, she discovered that her misery had been triggered by a life-threatening heart condition. Doctors unclogged a right artery that was more than 90 percent blocked and inserted a stent. Then they sent Hanson, who had no medical insurance, away with a new lease on life - and no bill. Instead of going to a doctor or emergency room, the Westminster resident visited Access Carroll - a medical nonprofit organization that offers free health care to county residents with low incomes and no health insurance.

A Maryland Transit Administration employee used keys to improperly open bus fare boxes and rail ticket machines, and $475,000 is missing, according to a legislative audit released yesterday. The audit, which criticized the MTA for failing to track employee access to such keys, said the agency referred the matter to criminal investigators at the attorney general's office in January. The report said that as of last summer, the matter was under investigation by state and federal officials.

China has spent billions of dollars aiming to impress the world when the 2008 Olympic Games open in Beijing next week. But now the world is discovering that this rising giant has decided that it doesn't have to play by the rules. The government repeatedly promised that international journalists would have free access to the Internet as they cover the games. Instead, early arrivers this week ran head on into the sweeping censorship that hobbles Internet access for millions of Chinese. Press center access to more than 100 sites - including Amnesty International, which tracks world human rights abuses, and the BBC's Chinese language service - has been blocked.

Public needs access to more of the bay When I first moved to Maryland, I was shocked at the very limited number of access points to the Chesapeake Bay for boaters, swimmers and anglers who do not live on the bay. What we have, in essence, is a public body of water supported by billions in federal, state and local taxes that a relative handful of developers and landowners are allowed to treat as their own private marina. And while the column "Blocked from the bay" (June 24) is helpful in bringing this pitiful state of affairs to public notice, it also illustrates the meek attitude of state and local officials in their acceptance of the status quo. For instance, according to one planner the column cites, environmentalists who want more public access to the bay must "partner with developers" because the "only alternative ... will be to wait for bridges to be realigned so that old structures can be used as fishing piers."

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court yesterday upheld the government's authority to restrict access to experimental drugs, even if the drugs might help dying patients who have run out of other options. In a one-line decision, the court declined to hear the appeal of terminally ill patients who argued that they had a constitutional right to try unproven but promising treatments. "It's a tragedy," said Frank Burroughs, who has led the fight for expanded access since his 21-year-old daughter, Abigail, died while trying to get an experimental cancer treatment at Johns Hopkins Hospital in 2001.

With water making up two of its boundaries and a big tub separating its eastern and western shores, Maryland takes a back seat to no state when it comes to floating boats. The state has about 7,700 miles of shoreline and contains 623 square miles of water, not counting the Chesapeake Bay -plenty of room for the more than 204,200 registered vessels and countless motorless sailboats, canoes and kayaks. For a lot of people, all that water figured into the "quality of life" equation when they moved here.

My friend can't surf shopping and personal e-mail Web sites at work. No surprise, considering that many companies have policies governing computer usage, including blocking employee access to commercial and inappropriate Web sites. Nowadays, she could also forget about logging onto Facebook, which she recently joined. As the popularity of personal and professional social networking sites grows, employers are taking steps to curb employee use of them in the office because of concerns about productivity and security.

The majority owner of the Sparrows Point shipyard has filed a federal lawsuit accusing Mittal Steel USA Inc. of denying it access to the main shipyard gate, forcing truck traffic into dangerous and time-consuming back routes. The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Baltimore this week seeks actual damages of more than $75,000 plus $500,000 in punitive damages against Mittal, which owns the former Bethlehem Steel complex at Sparrows Point. A Mittal spokesman said yesterday that the company does not comment on pending litigation.

Do you keep important documents and valuables in a safe-deposit box at your bank? That's a smart idea, but you should also think about what would happen to the contents and how they would be accessible if something were to happen to you. Only designated owners of a safe-deposit box can gain access to its contents, so if you are incapacitated for some reason, the same rule applies. You can also designate a power of attorney to have access, but be sure to specify that in your power-of-attorney document.