Ballistic

Howard County Del. Neil F. Quinter called on state officials yesterday to support the continued use of ballistic or bullet "fingerprinting" to help solve crimes. At a news conference yesterday, Quinter said state police want to stop use of ballistics in favor of DNA testing to help solve crimes. Quinter said he believes both tools are helpful. A hearing on repeal of the ballistic fingerprinting law is scheduled tomorrow before the House Judiciary Committee.

A year has passed since a man apparently upset at the workers running the food pantry at an Ellicott City church gunned down a minister and an office worker, police say, before taking his own life. St. Peter's Episcopal Church marked the anniversary of the deaths of the Rev. Marguerite Mary Kohn and Brenda Brewington over the weekend with a gathering the Rev. Thomas Slawson described as "a celebration of life. " "Pretty good participation from representatives from the community," said Slawson, the church vicar.

A law requiring gun makers to provide state police with ballistic information is ineffective and should be repealed, with the money put to better use, says a report by the Maryland State Police. No criminal cases have been helped by the Integrated Ballistics Identification System, or IBIS, which began in 2000, according to the report. "The program has not yielded any investigative results in four years," said Sgt. Robert A. Moroney, a state police spokesman. The idea behind the law was to amass a database of ballistic markers.

Vintage Civil War era "base ball" exhibition introduced fans to some new terms, but in many ways the game is the same. In base ball — as in the vintage circa 1865-style, two-word version of the all-American pastime — you not only have the exhilarating crack of the narrow bat hitting a slow, underhand-"hurled" (pitched), straw-filled ball. You also have the sharp smack — as in "ouch!" — of a sharply hit "stinger" (line drive) rocketing into a "ballist's" (fielder's)

WASHINGTON -- The Clinton administration has been quietly pressing Russia for most of this year to stop Russian scientists and military institutes from helping Iran develop a new ballistic missile that could reach Israel, Saudi Arabia and American troops in the Persian Gulf, senior administration officials say.The Russian scientists' assistance has continued, officials said, even though President Clinton raised the matter with President Boris N. Yeltsin in...

WASHINGTON -- U.S. intelligence analysts have discovered evidence that South Korea is trying to develop longer-range ballistic missiles while keeping some of the program's key aims secret from Washington, U.S. officials say. U.S. spy satellites detected fresh evidence of the program's extent last year, and U.S. concerns intensified after a missile test this year, the officials said. The United States, South Korea's closest ally, has been tracking its missile research carefully for years.

UNITED NATIONS -- The United Nations has given Iraq until March 26 to come up with a detailed plan for destroying a long list of equipment and buildings used for constructing and repairing its banned ballistic missiles, according to U.N. officials and Western diplomats.The deadline, which carried at least an implicit threat of the use of force, was given last week to Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, Iraq's special envoy here, by Rolf Ekeus, of Sweden, the chief of the special commission set up to oversee the elimination of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

New revelations about the intensity and thoroughness of the Iraqi weapons program should cause leaders all over the world to reassess their good fortune. Had Saddam Hussein waited to launch his scheme of conquest, or had the United Nations not reacted with such alacrity, the world might have witnessed the ++ unthinkable: Thermonuclear warfare, launched by a madman. U.N. reports have shown that Iraqi had mounted a systematic, industrial-scale bomb-making effort. Tied to parallel missile developments, it could in a few short years have given Saddam Hussein the ability to lob ballistic attacks at any capital on the globe.

Washington. -- Like the Energizer Bunny, some debates just go on and on. Many of the military strategies developed in the long bipolar competition with the Soviet Union are now obsolete, but they are still debated in the Washington policy community as if they were relevant.No hostile power of comparable size or strength to the United States exists today or is on the horizon, but several dictatorships of violent tendency and hostile intent -- Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Libya -- are known to be working to acquire ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction.

As a result of messages received from the Persian Gulf war, the United States is in the process of altering its strategy and thinking on missile defense. Put off, for the moment, is any deployment of a Reaganesque Strategic Defense Initiative using space-based interceptors to checkmate a massive Soviet attack. Also losing support is absolute adherence to the arms controllers' favorite treaty, the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile pact that limits the United States and the Soviet Union to just one ground-based defense system each.

Baltimorean and Boys' Latin School graduate Dr. Calvin Hooker Goddard, who in his youth developed a fondness for firearms, went on to become known as the "Father of Ballistics" for his pioneering work in developing the system by which bullets can be traced to the weapons that fired them. Goddard, who was born in Baltimore in 1891, graduated in 1907 from the old Boys' Latin School, which was then located on Brevard Street near Mount Royal Station. "He was an excellent student and the number one boy in most of his classes.

The agent for Orioles reliever Alfredo Simon said there are several witnesses in the Dominican Republic who are willing to come forward and testify that the pitcher could not have fired the bullet that killed Simon's 25-year-old cousin in the early morning hours of New Year's Day. Phil Isaac, one of Simon's two American agents, spent the weekend in the Dominican talking to attorneys and others involved with the case and said he believes Simon was...

Emerson V. Clarke Jr., a retired Aberdeen Proving Ground physicist and a decorated World War II infantryman, died Thursday of pneumonia at Upper Chesapeake Medical Center. The longtime Bel Air resident was 85. Born in Baltimore, Mr. Clarke spent his early years in Overlea before moving with his family to a home on Mayfield Avenue. After graduating from Polytechnic Institute in 1941, he went to work at the old Glenn L. Martin Co. plant in Middle River, building Martin B-26 Marauder bombers, and was a supervisor at the time when he was inducted into the Army in 1944.

In recent days Jenni Carlson, a sports columnist for the Daily Oaklahoman, received a verbal tirade from Oklahoma State University football coach Mike Gundy, who claimed a column she wrote was three-fourths inaccurate. The assault, viewed widely across the nation on YouTube, reminded me of the challenges facing journalists covering college sports. The last time I saw Carlson we were both working at the Kansas City Star - Carlson was a high school columnist, and I was an intern. She was kind enough to let me live with her that summer in 1999, and while I was out for a run one day, the old, eight-unit building went up in flames.

A Baltimore County police ballistics expert testified yesterday that a bullet fragment removed from a murder victim's head during an autopsy was so mutilated that he couldn't make any meaningful determinations about whether it had come from the off-duty revolver of the former police sergeant convicted of killing the woman. The conclusions of firearms examiner Michael J. Thomas were essentially the same as those testified to 14 years ago by veteran ballistics expert Joseph Kopera, whose testimony has since been called into question with the discovery that he routinely lied on witness stands across Maryland about having college degrees that he never earned.

A high-ranking police ballistics expert who testified in courts throughout Maryland and neighboring states killed himself after being confronted with evidence that he had lied about his credentials - a revelation that defense attorneys say could force new trials for some of the hundreds of people he helped convict. Joseph Kopera, head of the Maryland State Police firearms unit, claimed on witness stands to have degrees that he never earned, state police acknowledged yesterday as they began notifying prosecutors and defense attorneys across the region of their findings.

AMHERST, Mass. - Almost every aspect of U.S. military policy is likely to be affected by Tuesday's terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, but one that is certain to come under intense scrutiny is the Bush administration's plan for a national missile defense (NMD). In particular, President Bush's claim that NMD represents the single most important priority for U.S. "homeland" defense is bound to appear highly dubious in light of the apparent success of a still-unidentified terrorist network in causing massive damage to major U.S. institutions and facilities.

MOSCOW - North Korean leader Kim Jong Il repeated a promise to suspend ballistic missile launchings until 2003, saying yesterday in a declaration with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin that his nation's missile program "does not present a threat to nations respecting North Korea's sovereignty." The declaration, aimed squarely at the United States' proposal to build a defense against ballistic missile attacks by so-called rogue states, came at a Kremlin meeting of the two leaders that capped Kim's 10-day journey to Moscow by rail.

CHICAGO -- If you're an al-Qaida terrorist who manages to get his hands on a nuclear warhead, what do you do with it? You don't have an airplane that could reach the United States. You don't have an intercontinental ballistic missile. But there is an obvious option: Hide it in a cargo container, to be loaded onto a ship bound for Los Angeles or New York. Once it arrives, the final step is easy. Where would an al-Qaida terrorist get a bomb? Maybe from the cash-strapped North Korean government, which has few products to sell and a record of selling anything it has. It has already furnished ballistic missile technology to Iran and Pakistan.