Admitted

Historically, October has been the month for big financial busts. But this year, October could come early. Investors and ordinary citizens have good reason to worry about a perfect economic storm: a deepening loss of confidence in the dollar leading to higher interest rates; the higher rates bringing a crashing end to a hedge-fund, private equity and merger binge that has depended heavily on cheap borrowed money; the boom in bait-and-switch mortgages ending...

Hold up on that diet this weekend -- the Maryland Seafood Festival opens tomorrow at Sandy Point State Park.The smells seafood will mingle on the beach as visitors peruse dozens of dishes for sale. When not chewing they can buy arts and crafts, play or watch a beach volleyball tournament, cheer contestants in a crab soup cook-off, see Clydesdale horses and hear nonstop music.Admission will be $6 for adults and children older than 12. Younger children will be admitted free with a paying adult.

YEARS FROM NOW, the linkage between Diane Zamora and the U.S. Naval Academy may be forgotten -- as it should be. Before and after the 20-year-old was sentenced last week to life in prison for the December 1995 murder of Adrianne Jones in Texas, the academy sought to place as much distance as possible between it and her. The school's motivation was understandable, but it need not apologize.The horrendous crime had nothing to do with the institution in Annapolis, where Zamora was enrolled for two months.

YOU might think the United States was a moral society, based on the effort to drum President Clinton from office for a furtive affair with a young woman and conventional efforts to disguise it.It should not escape attention that this is the first such effort in U.S. history. Presidents Johnson, Kennedy and Harding are now widely believed to have been more active sexually, and more reckless than anything Kenneth Starr suggests about Mr. Clinton.But the FBI never sent 50 agents to pin any of their affairs down.

Police Blotter is a sampling of crimes in Baltimore and Baltimore County.Central DistrictShooting: A 22-year-old man was admitted to Sinai Hospital after he was shot in the back while sitting in his car in the 400 block of W. Dolphin St. at 2: 55 a.m. yesterday.Northern DistrictShooting: A 25-year-old man was admitted to Maryland Shock Trauma Center after he was shot in the shoulder when he left the Hard Times Bar in the 2800 block of Huntington Ave. to make a telephone call at 12: 15 a.m. yesterday.

A Baltimore County man who operated a sports information service has been sentenced to 2 1/2 years in federal prison after being convicted of wire fraud and money laundering in defrauding his clients.U.S. District Judge Andre M. Davis also ordered Marc Neal Robert Berman, 36, of the 8500 block of Arborwood Road in Stevenson to pay $100,000 in restitution and forfeit property in Randallstown and $189,000 at Friday's sentencing hearing.Berman pleaded guilty in November to using interstate wire transfers to commit a scheme to defraud, and laundering the proceeds, the U.S. attorney's office said.

WASHINGTON -- The media would have you believe that the greatest challenge to this week's NAACP convention in Pittsburgh is an old debate over busing and the integration of public schools. A far bigger problem, in my view, is how to reverse the damage done by the media on issues of affirmative action.Even the best newspapers in the land distort every discussion of the issue with headlines and other references to ''race preferences,'' indicating that they have already bought the line that through racial favoritism incompetent blacks and Hispanics are getting scholarships, jobs, teaching posts and other things that should go to more deserving whites.

PHILADELPHIA -- A former Army clerk at Fort Meade admitted through tears yesterday that he sold state secrets to the Soviet Union three decades ago in a case equal parts Cold War intrigue and slapstick farce.Robert S. Lipka, 51 and seeking to avoid the possibility of life in prison, pleaded guilty to one count of espionage in exchange for a jail term of no more than 18 years.Federal prosecutors said they agreed to the deal in order to protect the anonymity of a witness who would have had to testify in disguise if the case had gone to trial.

Staff Sgt. Delmar G. Simpson yesterday became the first Aberdeen Proving Ground drill instructor to publicly admit having sex with female students, pleading guilty to 16 counts of violating Army rules that prohibit relationships between soldiers of different ranks.Simpson, 32, denied raping any of the women, but his testimony portrayed Aberdeen's Ordnance Center and School as a hormone-rich college dormitory than an elite Army training post.In often-lurid detail, he recounted having sex with recruits on his office sofa, in his on-post quarters and at an Andrews Air Force Base hotel.

I was admitted to the emergency room with extremely low blood pressure and an altered heartbeat. They thought I might be in shock, and they treated me with antibiotics although no infection was ever found. If I had died, as several doctors and nurses thought I might, no one would have known the cause of my death.It wasn't until I was out of the hospital that I read about grapefruit juice interacting with Procardia. That clicked, because I had consumed more than a quart of grapefruit juice the day I was admitted.

New York Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez made an unexpected visit to 500 students at a Baltimore County school to deliver an anti-steroid message Tuesday, months after admitting publicly that he used performance-enhancing drugs earlier in his career. At the time of his admission, Rodriguez vowed to turn his past transgressions into a positive lesson for young athletes, and he appears to be attempting to uphold that promise by discreetly speaking to select students this season. It's part of the agreement, however, that the talks not be covered by the news media.

A second teenager has admitted to having a role in the firebombing of a Piney Orchard townhouse, a crime that was intended as retaliation for the May 30 homicide of a Crofton youth. In an Anne Arundel County Juvenile Court hearing last week, the boy, 15, made the equivalent of a guilty plea to conspiracy to commit arson. Like the other back-seat passenger who admitted to participating, he agreed to testify against any of the others. He is scheduled to be sentenced later this month. He was released with electronic monitoring to relatives who do not live in the community, according to Kimberly DiPietro, assistant state's attorney.

GREENBELT -One by one, five watermen admitted yesterday in federal court that they poached more than $2.1 million worth of striped bass from the Chesapeake Bay and Potomac River as part of a black market. With wives and relatives watching, the men - four from Maryland and one from Virginia - pleaded guilty to falsifying catch records to exceed their annual quotas and selling illegal fish to dealers who supplied them to shops and restaurants across the country. Individually, they also admitted to crimes ranging from fishing out of season to conspiring with wholesalers to lie about the species they caught to cover up their activity.

There's clearly a struggle going on as Dave Grohl attempts to meld the best of two musical worlds. On his past two albums with the Foo Fighters (2005's In Your Honor and last year's Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace), the singer/songwriter/guitarist/powerhouse drummer showcased more of his melodic pop leanings alongside the thrashing, riotous "rawk" that cemented his fame more than a decade ago. In Your Honor was explicit in its display of the two styles: One disc was loud with screaming vocals and screaming guitars.

If only this were really about second chances. I have little doubt that Maryland's athletic director and its men's basketball coach spend most of their time operating on the same page. They both want to win. They want athletes in class. They want them to stay out of trouble. For the better part of 14 years, whatever battles they had remained relatively minor. As long as shared goals, expectations and standards remained consistent, life at Comcast Center rolled on. But what we have this week doesn't feel like a simple misunderstanding or just another blip in the relationship.

MONTCLAIR, N.J. - It's rare these days to read a newspaper or watch the evening news without hearing about an athlete who used steroids, a team that spied on another team's training camp, or kids who cheated on a standardized test, sometimes with the aid of teachers trying desperately to meet their No Child Left Behind benchmarks. According to one survey, 60 percent of high school students admitted to cheating on a test over the past year. We're swimming in a sea of cheating - so I decided recently that I'd better talk to my kids about it, before they get the idea that everyone in the world cheats and it's pointless to resist.

Football fest The lowdown -- It may be the off season, but M&T Bank Stadium will be humming with activity. Saturday, the stadium hosts the Spring Football Festival, where Ravens fans can celebrate this year's NFL draft. The draft plays live on screens throughout the stadium, as fans explore the locker rooms, get players' autographs and enjoy live entertainment. If you go -- The event is 2 p.m.-7 p.m. Saturday, at the stadium, 1101 Russell St. Tickets are $10-$15. Children 2 and younger admitted free.

The Carroll County school board member who acknowledged using a racial slur offered to resign, but the board instead told him to apologize, school officials said yesterday. Jeffrey L. Morse made the offer during the board's closed session last Wednesday, when members addressed a complaint filed against him, said Edmund O'Meally, an attorney for the Board of Education of Carroll County. The complaint, made by a school system employee, concerned a remark Morse made about rock that was causing problems for workers at a school construction site.

A 25-year-old man who admitted watching an associate push an 18-year-old into the Patapsco River in South Baltimore and then fatally beat him in the head with a stick as the victim tried to stay afloat pleaded guilty yesterday to assault and conspiracy to commit assault. Under the terms of a deal with prosecutors, John Linton is to testify against Gary Froneberger, 23, whose first-degree murder trial began yesterday before Circuit Judge Lynn K. Stewart. Testimony from Linton and Froneberger's girlfriend, whom prosecutors said also witnessed the beating, is crucial because a Baltimore Fire Department dive team never recovered the victim's body from near the Baltimore Rowing Club off the 3300 block of Waterview Ave., in the Middle Branch.

TAMPA, Fla.-- --Andy Pettitte didn't have to call a news conference and answer questions for nearly an hour about his use of human growth hormone or his entanglement in the illegal drug controversy surrounding his former teammate, Roger Clemens, and his former personal trainer, Brian McNamee. Give Pettitte, the New York Yankees veteran left-hander, credit for not hiding behind a blanket statement and some "no comments" now that the whole world knows he used hGH. Give him credit for accepting the spotlight and for a professional, well-delivered apology to his teammates, fans and family.