Blind

The doctors told Detective Jermaine Cook that the injury to his left eye was like placing a grape in a bag, slicing it in half, and then smashing it flat. The beer mug slung at his face by a Joppa man in May had caused irreparable damage. Cook, a Baltimore police officer who patrolled the toughest parts of the city, is now legally blind and can't drive long distances or at night. He's had trouble taking care of his children without assistance and has seen his income — which used to include significant overtime pay — drop substantially.

A year and a half after Baltimore police uncovered a murder-for-hire scheme in which they say two men conspired to kill a blind and mentally disabled man for insurance money, detectives believe they have found the man who pulled the trigger. On Thursday, police charged Kareem Clea, the 27-year-old brother of one of the men awaiting trial in the plot to obtain life insurance money. Police say James Clea introduced his brother to Kevin Pushia, who authorities say paid $50,000 for the killing of Lemuel Wallace.

In a large lab filled with rows of computers and other devices at the National Federation of the Blind, a small team of technical analysts works with gadgets and websites to test how easily they can be used by the blind. The latest site to pass muster is also one of the web's largest and busiest: the online auction site eBay. The Baltimore-based advocacy group recently struck a partnership with eBay to make the site more accessible to blind users. And eBay decided to go a big step further — with an investment of $250,000 in seed money to fund blind entrepreneurs who wish to use the site to start a small business.

It was a lazy August night in Essex, and 21-year-old Joshua Brydge decided to have fun with his brother's laser pointer. Standing on his back porch, he aimed the piercing green beam at a police helicopter circling overhead. Inside the cockpit of Baltimore County's Air 1, hovering over the houses on Maryln Avenue, pilot Hobart Wolf was temporarily "flash-blinded" by the light and was diverted from helping fellow county officers chasing a suspect. Police say helicopters and other aircraft are increasingly being targeted by laser pointers commonly used in lecture halls.

A Harford County jury found James Aaron Kimble of Joppa guilty Tuesday of assaulting an off-duty Baltimore City police officer in May, leaving him without the use of one eye. But the panel also decided that the attack was not racially motivated, finding Kimble not guilty of first-degree assault based on race or color. Detective Jermaine Cook was struck in the face after Kimble approached Cook's vehicle at a stop sign and yelled at him about his driving. Kimble hit Cook in the face with a drinking glass.

There are times when Ronald Daniels feels like a kid with the coolest chess board in the world. As president of the Johns Hopkins University, Daniels might spend one week in Uganda, learning how his university's researchers spent painstaking years developing methods to slow the spread of HIV. The next, he might hold a chat with undergraduates on the Homewood campus about enriching their college experience. The beauty of Daniels' gig is that, if he wants, he can put the Africa piece and the Homewood piece together.

In the July 20 editions of The Baltimore Sun there were two letters praising the tea party folks and attempting to deny that they are blatantly racist. Anyone who asserts that racism isn't rampant in this crowd simply isn't paying attention or just doesn't care. Ann Power, Catonsville

True to form, Single Carrot Theatre wraps up its third season with another thought-provoking play. Will Eno's "Tragedy: A Tragedy" crams a lot of satire, irony and just plain oddity into 70 minutes, and this production serves up the volatile mixture in telling style. Eno, who wrote "Tragedy" a few years ago, takes as his starting point a little touch of doomsday — the sun has apparently set for good — and focuses on a TV news station's attempt to deal with it all. If you've ever seen today's "news models" trying to vamp their way through a technical glitch or a lull in a breaking story, you know we'd be in for some pathetic, even hilarious stuff filling the airwaves in the event they ever had to cover something as big as the end of the world.

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — Shaun Micheel knows what he'll do with the ball he used to make a double eagle Sunday. "I've got it hidden away in my secret pocket in my golf bag," he said. "I'll probably give that one to my mom." Micheel's mother, Donna , is in the final stages of liver and brain cancer. "I'm really playing for her," the 41-year-old Micheel said after shooting an opening-round 69. Micheel topped that Sunday by recording just the second double eagle in U.S. Open history.

Watching Matt Gilman use his bike like a two-wheeled pogo stick, bouncing from giant wooden box to slightly smaller wooden box, your heart is in your throat waiting for a nasty spill. When he rears up on his back wheel on the highest box, like the Lone Ranger on Silver, you instinctively look away. The ballet that Gilman dances on his bike requires strength and balance, but, apparently, not sight, because Gilman is a blind bike trials rider. Gilman, 30, who grew up in Mount Washington and now lives in Reisterstown with his wife and son, was performing at Sunday's annual BikeJam in Patterson Park.