Baltimore Center

AND Software, a Dutch company, will move its North American headquarters and five employees to Baltimore from New York, the Greater Baltimore Alliance has announced.AND, which makes route-planning, electronic publishing and geographic data products, expects to boost its local complement to 20 workers within two years, GBA said. The company, based in Rotterdam, considered several other U.S. sites, including Raleigh-Durham, N.C., and Philadelphia."This is a well-respected, aggressive, growing company in the information technology industry whose commitment to the Baltimore region will help us bring other international technology firms to the area," said Ann Coscia, the GBA's executive director.

This will be Flight Test No. 40. In the center of the contraption — a 90-pound, human-powered helicopter made mostly of carbon fiber, balsa wood, foam and string — is University of Maryland doctoral candidate Colin Gore, decked out in orange cycling clothes and safety goggles. Gore will pedal, as he would on a bicycle, until the craft they call the Gamera II XR lifts off the floor. A student stands at each of the four massive propellers as they wait for the cue. "Tension on, take off," comes the order, and Gore's face turns red with effort as he pedals.

Twenty years after moving its headquarters to South Baltimore, the National Federation of the Blind plans to construct an $18 million addition designed to help improve the lives of visually impaired people around the country.The National Research and Training Institute for the Blind is the name of the proposed addition, a five-story structure that would be built west of the National Center for the Blind at 1800 Johnson St.Besides providing educational and research space and a conference center to augment the center's facilities, the institute would be the home of a newly established literary archive on blindness and human rights, including the personal papers and publications of federation founder Jacobus tenBroek and other legal scholars.

Dr. Nikita Levy and the Johns Hopkins clinic where he worked have no records of complaints against them, according to state health officials. But just who is responsible for oversight of the East Baltimore Medical Center where he is alleged to have secretly recorded his patients? Two state health regulatory bodies have the authority to investigate complaints that might have been received about Levy or the center, health officials said. But neither has broad authority over clinics like the East Baltimore center.

The federal Small Business Administration signed up the NAACP's Community Development Resource Center in Baltimore yesterday to become a part of its effort to quadruple lending to blacks by 2000.In a news conference at the Baltimore headquarters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the SBA and the civil rights organization designated the center as a prequalification loan intermediary.As an intermediary, the center will provide free lending services. They include:Reviewing business plans and credit reports to determine qualifications for the SBA program.

The state's first birthing center - where women could deliver their children standing up, under water or even after a long African dance - has shut its doors after more than two decades because of the pressure of rising malpractice insurance rates and other costs. The Baltimore Birth Center, which opened on Park Heights Avenue in 1981, delivered its last baby - a girl whose brother was born at the center about a year ago - May 23 and closed for good last week. "It just has become increasingly difficult to maintain our practice.

Baltimore native T. Edward Hambleton, who will be honored with a lifetime achievement award at the Tony Awards ceremony in New York next month, could be described as one of the first off-Broadway impresarios. But he's hardly the stereotyped tough-talking, cigar chomping theatrical producer. A soft-spoken, unassuming gentleman, Hambleton, 89, learned of the award when he received a call Friday from Roy A. Somlyo, president of the American Theatre Wing, which co-administers the awards. "It was certainly a pleasure being noted after all these many years.

A former worker at the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center has been charged with assault and child abuse, accused of slapping a youth during an incident at the facility about a month ago. Roslyn DeShields was charged in a summons issued by a Baltimore court commissioner, but a state police investigator has been unable to contact her for about the past two weeks, said Maj. Greg Shipley, a state police spokesman. If continued attempts are not successful, "the summons will turn into a criminal warrant," Shipley said.

On Wednesday, June 2, 2004 JUDITH C. BASTOW, of Columbia, MD. Beloved wife of Joel B. Bastow, mother of John William (Kerry) and Jeffrey Allen (Lauren) Bastow; grandmother of Heath, Leland, Hayden and Callia Bastow. She is also survived by a sister, Barbara Jane Walas. A Memorial Service will be held at Witzke Funeral Homes, Inc. of Columbia, 5555 Twin Knolls Rd., Columbia, MD 21045 on Sunday, June 6, 2004 at 3 P.M. Interment private. In lieu of flowers memorial contributions may be made in her name to Johns Hopkins Scleroderma Center, c/o Laura Hummers, Bayview Medical Center, 5501 Bayview Circle, Baltimore, MD 21224 or either the University of Maryland Baltimore Center (cancer research donation)

William Brewster "Bruce" Quackenbush Sr., a retired Commercial Credit Corp. official and a founding member of the Pride of Baltimore Inc., died of heart failure Wednesday at Mercy Medical Center. He was 73.He was one of the seven founding members in 1980 of Pride of Baltimore Inc. and was a board member and treasurer until 1993, when he resigned because a son, W. Bruce Quackenbush Jr. of Timonium, was made executive director."It was not uncommon to see Bruce in London or San Francisco on the docks, meeting the Pride and its crew, whom he loved," said Christopher C. Hartman, secretary of the Pride of Baltimore Inc. "He gave an enormous amount of time to the Pride in order to make it all work," Mr. Hartman said.

The break of a 10-inch water main at Interstate 83 near Maryland Avenue likely won't be fixed for a few days because it's in a bad spot and repairs will require specific equipment, according to officials from the city Department of Public Works. DPW spokesman Kurt Kocher said the break occurred at about 4:30 p.m. Saturday, and crews shut off water so it would not leak onto the highway and freeze. That also cut water flow to the University of Baltimore Law Center, which is near the intersection of West Mount Royal and Maryland avenues.

Jarnetta Kroh, a Greater Baltimore Medical Center philanthropist who assisted her husband in his import car servicing business, died Nov. 25 of chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder at her home in Laguna Hills, Calif. She was 81 and had lived in the Rockland section of Baltimore County for many years. Jarnetta Althea Jarvis was born in Spencer, W.Va., and raised in Walton, W.Va., where her father was postmaster. Her mother was a secretary to a May Co. department store executive.

The Orioles' annual FanFest again will be held on the third Saturday in January at the Baltimore Convention Center. The event, which normally includes player and media forums, memorabilia sales and autograph sessions, will run from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., on Jan. 19, according to the team. The event will open an hour earlier for season ticketholders. Typically, the Orioles' single-game tickets also go on sale on the day of FanFest. That likely will be the case again in 2013.  MASN first announced the date of the event.

Sun reporter Justin Fenton 's recent coverage of the flagrantly inhumane conditions for the youth at the Baltimore City Detention Center (BCDC) is a call to action. To find a lasting remedy for this horrific institutional failure, however, we must be clear about its causes. We otherwise risk devoting our energy and resources to a solution that would prove inadequate. Currently the state is debating whether to build a new jail for youth being charged as adults who are held in BCDC.

Maryland public safety secretary Gary D. Maynard insists that complaints about how his agency deals with youthful offenders are overblown and that those that are valid could be solved by building a new $70 million juvenile jail downtown. But recent reports of violence and unsafe conditions at the adult facility where minors charged with serious crimes are currently held - and the fact that federal officials haven't visited the place in more than two years to certify that that Maryland is honoring its commitment to improve conditions there - suggest the problem goes deeper than that.

Dr. John E. Adams, a pathologist who chaired the department of pathology at Greater Baltimore Medical Center for more than two decades after its founding and was a leading expert in bioethics, died July 9 of heart failure at Gilchrist Hospice in Towson. The longtime Timonium resident was 82. "He influenced a lot of people, myself included. He was a seminal figure in my life and a role model for so many people," said Dr. Ronald L. Sirota, who worked with Dr. Adams at GBMC from 1979 to 1983.

Shocked by the terrorist attack and determined to do something to help its victims, thousands of people flooded hospitals and American Red Cross centers across Maryland yesterday to offer a priceless gift: their blood. More than 1,000 people showed up at the Baltimore City Red Cross office on Mount Hope Drive by last night, waiting in line, on chairs and on the blue-green carpet. About 1,600 people signed up to give at the Columbia center, filling dozens of sheets of paper with names. Across the nation, more than 700,000 Americans signed up to give blood within six hours of the first bombing, Red Cross officials said.

Actor and performance artist Anna Deavere Smith will present the local debut of her award-winning "Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities" June 13-25 at Center Stage.The offering, part of the theater's "Off Center" series, explores the violent 1991 clash between Lubavitcher Jews and African-Americans in Brooklyn. The work is composed from the words of people whom Ms. Smith interviewed about the issues of race and community, people ranging from the Rev. Al Sharpton to an anonymous Jewish housewife from Brooklyn.

The Baltimore Convention Center expects to save $18 million in energy costs over 15 years because of water and energy conservation renovations it announced Monday. Constellation, a division of energy provider Exelon Corp., will install the efficiency measures, according to a joint statement from the energy company and the convention center. Although the conservation efforts — along with other capital improvements planned for the center — come with a $10 million price tag, no money is required up front from the convention center, the statement said.

A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that Baltimore cannot require faith-based pregnancy counseling centers to post disclaimers noting they won't assist clients in receiving abortions or birth control. The three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., voted 2-1 to uphold a lower court's ruling that the ordinance was unconstitutional - drawing praise from Catholic leaders who had opposed the ordinance and a defense of the law from MayorStephanie Rawlings-Blake, its original sponsor.