Admitted

A 16-year-old Columbia boy has admitted involvement in a rock-throwing incident that injured a Sun deliverywoman last summer. The teen-ager, who was charged with three counts of reckless endangerment, admitted involvement as part of an agreement with prosecutors Jan. 27, said Juvenile and Domestic Master Nancy L. Haslinger. The boy told police he threw a "baseball-sized" rock and heard a "thud" Aug. 26. Lynn McKissic was struck in the head through an open window. McKissic suffered head and eye injuries, and has problems with her vision.

An Annapolis man who admitted sending a threatening letter from his prison cell to an Anne Arundel County judge who'd sentenced him to serve 10 years for armed robbery had a year and a day added onto his sentence Friday. "I will send a firebomb into your workplace and destroy you if you become more resistant," said the letter that Richard Glenn Parker Jr., 26, acknowledged sending to Circuit Court Judge Paul A. Hackner after Hackner sentenced him in 2010. The letter was signed Jesus Christ, according to Anne Arundel prosecutors.

A 23-year-old Gwynn Oak woman pleaded guilty yesterday to attempting to intimidate a 14-year-old witness in her brother's murder trial. Entering an Alford plea, Nikole Keona Young did not admit wrongdoing but acknowledged that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict her of going to the home of a girl who had seen Andre Michael Young fatally shoot an acquaintance Oct. 28. Nikole Young told the girl that her brother's friends would intimidate her...

At times, Ben DeLuca is like so many opposing defensemen who are caught watching Cornell fifth-year senior attackman Rob Pannell's wizardry. Unlike those defensemen, however, DeLuca, who is the head coach of the Big Red, is not tasked with guarding Pannell. “Sometimes I definitely catch myself watching in awe some of the things that he does and some of the plays that he makes,” DeLuca said after Pannell recorded a game-high seven points on four goals and three assists in the team's 16-8 upset of sixth-seeded Maryland in the first round of the NCAA tournament Sunday.

An accountant for an Eldersburg car dealership admitted in Carroll Circuit Court yesterday that he stole more than $625,000 from the business since 1988.Stephen Clifton Sheeler, 47, of Rosedale, Baltimore County, pleaded guilty to one count of felony theft. Sheeler admitted writing more than $625,000 worth of checks to himself from Jeff Barnes' Chevrolet-Geo.In exchange for Sheeler's guilty plea, prosecutors agreed to drop 12 other felony theft charges.Carroll Circuit Judge Luke K. Burns Jr. ordered a presentence investigation of Sheeler and set sentencing for March 24.Sheeler could receive up to 15 years in prison, but prosecutors said yesterday they will wait to see the presentence investigation report before they recommend a sentence to the judge.

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.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Security officials of the African National Congress committed 'extraordinary' acts of brutality and torture at the organization's military camps outside of South Africa, an ANC report admitted yesterday.The report, ordered by ANC President Nelson Mandela in March, detailed cases of torture, neglect and detention without trial at ANC bases in several African countries.The ANC fought a low-level guerrilla war against the South African government from the 1960s until its campaign was suspended in 1990 in response to the government's political reform program.

After maintaining his innocence for 13 years, Baltimore native Paul B. Luskin admitted yesterday to the federal judge considering reducing his prison term that he helped plan the murder-for-hire plot against his former wife. U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz responded to Luskins' dramatic courtroom confession by cutting almost 10 years off his 35-year sentence. That change, opposed by federal prosecutors, will make Luskin immediately eligible for parole, which Motz urged prison authorities to approve.

LONDON -- The British government has admitted that six men who had been in jail for 16 years for the terrorist bombings of two pubs probably were innocent and should go free.With yesterday's admission, the government appeared to accept what the men always have alleged -- that police faked the evidence against them and beat their confessions out of them.The men, known as the Birmingham Six, are expected to be freed at a hearing next week. The case only intensifies the debate over British justice and, especially, the handling of cases involving alleged members of the Irish Republican Army.

An investment broker who worked out of an office in Timonium has pleaded guilty to charges of income tax evasion and mail fraud for bilking money from his clients, the U.S. attorney's office said.Russell S. Farb, who lives in Baltimore and Tucson, Ariz., admitted Tuesday to diverting more than $1.5 million from four limited partnerships he operated that invested in tax lien certificates.Farb, whose office was on York Road in Timonium, admitted to skimming between $1.5 million and $2.5 million from the limited partnerships.

Your article on Coppin State University's new science building truly boggles the mind ("Science center may help Coppin close the gap," May 3). The state is spending $80 million for a building the university admits it does not have sufficient funds to operate or maintain. That is a staggering admission. May I suggest one of two other possibilities for that $80 million. For a four-year university with a six-year graduation rate of 15 percent - one of the lowest in the country - how about requiring higher academic standards?

Speculation persists that in order for Loyola to repeat as national champion, the team must defeat No. 13 Johns Hopkins on April 27 or win the Eastern College Athletic Conference tournament (May 3-5) to qualify for the NCAA tournament. Charley Toomey is refreshingly candid in admitting that he has begun thinking about the No. 8 Greyhounds' tournament profile. “I try not to, but it's kind of hard not to look at your own resume and look at resumes that are out there,” he said Wednesday morning.

College freshman Daniel Zablocky recently received his appointment to the U.S. Military Academy. A Patterson Mill High School graduate, Zablocky is the son of Paul and Barbara Zablocky of Bel Air. Attending Marion Military Institute in Alabama, he will report to West Point this summer to join the class of 2017.

An Edgemere man pleaded guilty Wednesday to having sexual contact with a teenage boy, in a plea deal that allowed him to avoid trial on a rarely used charge of exposing a victim to the HIV virus. Steven Douglas Podles, 36, was charged after police said he engaged in sexual activity with a 13-year-old outside the teen's home in February 2012. Podles had been treated for HIV, prosecutors said, but the boy did not contract the disease. The two met on Grindr, an adult dating app that requires users to be 18 or older.

The primary motivation among environmentalists for developing wind energy is legitimate concern about the effects of climate change. Wind is alleged to provide important relief from the emission of carbon dioxide from electricity production. But without this alleged benefit, wind's unpredictability, cost, environmental damage and intrusiveness would make it a poor choice. The Maryland General Assembly has debated offshore wind's merits for two sessions but has not been persuaded to approve a way to finance a facility, and is about to debate it once again.

With all the moaning coming from the Tea Party Express and their loyalists in the House Republican Caucus, you would think conservatives had lost everything, including their virtue, in the fiscal cliff parlay with President Barack Obama because taxes are going up on the wealthy. However, if they could just get past their prudish sensibility about backroom compromises, they might recognize that their side actually did rather well in the dead-of-night deal making. Yes, Democrats can claim some good results in the last-minute bargain that was struck to avoid the immediate across-the-board tax hikes and budget cuts that were set to begin on January 1. The Bush era tax cuts for people making more than $400,000 a year were eliminated, and capital gains taxes and estate taxes were raised, providing new revenue sources that Democrats insist are necessary.

Aided by a scholarship program targeting Baltimore students, the Johns Hopkins University has admitted its largest group of city public high school students in decades, university officials said yesterday. Thirty students - most of them from top city magnet schools Polytechnic Institute and City College - were offered full scholarships under the prestigious university's new Baltimore Scholars program. Three other city students were admitted to the university but did not qualify for the scholarship because they didn't meet residency requirements.

Two 17-year-olds admitted in Baltimore juvenile court yesterday that they were involved with an attempt to rob an off-duty police officer in Federal Hill in November. One admitted to first-degree assault and attempted armed robbery before Master Gregory Sampson. His punishment will be determined at a hearing July 8. The other admitted to second-degree assault; his punishment will be determined in December. Both had originally been charged as adults, but the cases were sent to juvenile court - a decision that has angered many city officers who believed that the boys should have stayed in the adult system, where penalties are stiffer.

We know that universities often use forgiving admissions criteria to admit top athletes who wouldn't otherwise get in. But what happens to these football and basketball players once they arrive in their college classrooms? Do their grades ever catch up to those of other students? Do they get degrees? Six months ago, I started filing open-records law requests to try to find out. I filed with Maryland, Georgia Tech, North Carolina, N.C. State, Florida State and the other public schools in the conference - as well as some in the Big Ten. The findings - that special admits tend to maintain worse college GPAs, graduate at a lower rate and leave school at a higher rate than other athletes - raise more questions.

Rachel J. (Seawell) Vogel of Baltimore, formerly of Forest Hill, passed the July 2012 Maryland Bar Examination and was sworn in as a member of the Maryland Bar on Dec. 13 at the Court of Appeals in Annapolis.