Contact

As a defensive tackle, Poly coach Larry Webster experienced full-contact practice almost every day of his 20-year playing career, usually twice a day. It wouldn't be easy for the former Raven to adjust to coaching a football team that could soon be limited to hitting live only once or twice a week during the regular season, one of the steps being considered by a Maryland State Department of Education task force studying ways to prevent concussions in...

Adam Jones has proven his toughness all season long, playing through pain in both of his wrists, starting in center field in every game but one this season -- all while being hit by pitches 10 times, second most in the AL. But Orioles fans - and manager Buck Showalter - had to cringe during the team's five-run sixth inning in their 5-3 win over Boston on Wednesday night. That's when Jones lowered his left shoulder on a play at the plate and collided full force with Red Sox catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia.

Four Maryland hospitals are offering free hepatitis C testing to at least 1,750 patients who may have been exposed to the viral disease by a traveling medical technician, as state officials launch a broad regulatory review in response to the case. The testing and review follow the arrest of David Matthew Kwiatkowski in New Hampshire last month. Authorities say he injected himself with stolen narcotics-filled syringes while working at a hospital there and left the contaminated needles to be re-used by unwitting staff in patients, infecting at least 30 people.

If you're used to watching an Orioles game in the quiet of a family room, then watching one at Camden Yards can be unsettling - fellow fans yelling in your ears, maybe dropping a profanity here and there. If you rarely walk on city sidewalks full of people, it can be a strange experience, especially if there are panhandlers or mentally ill wanderers in your path. If you're almost always with people who look like you, then being in a diverse crowd can be weird, even frightening. It was always thus, but never more so than in the last few decades in the United States.

A warning against water contact in the lower Patapsco River issued nearly two months ago has been lifted, the Anne Arundel County health department announced Monday. Health officials had ordered an emergency closure of the river downstream from Annapolis Road in Brooklyn and warned against swimming or other water contact after sewage spilled March 25 from a Baltimore County pumping station. Workers halted the spill soon afterward, according to a spokesman for the county public works department.

Picture yourself in Laurel history on C Street Gallery's Discover Laurel Bike Ride, Saturday, May 19 from 2 to 5 p.m., starting at the gallery, 19 C St. Participants will bike the neighborhood to follow the gallery's history adventure. Bring a camera to take photographs along the way, and then see your photos on display at C Street Gallery. To register, contact Abbie Chessler at abbie@cstreetgallery.com .

Two young female students reported seeing an unknown man inside and near a girls' bathroom at Linthicum Elementary School in Anne Arundel County on Friday afternoon, according to police and school officials. The two girls told police the man did not speak to them or try to touch them, according to a letter sent home to parents and posted on the school's website. An Anne Arundel police spokesman confirmed officers were investigating the incident, but had no other details. According to the letter, written by school principal Fran Nussle, two female students reported late Friday that they had seen the man, who they did not recognize, in the school building.

Enough is enough Teddy Greenstein Chicago Tribune I can live with the one-game clip. But if I were dean of discipline, Rajon Rondo also would have to agree to some conditions. Start with publicly apologizing to official Marc Davis. Acknowledge that you intentionally bumped him. He didn't get in your way, as you pathetically claimed. Go to some elementary schools and tell the kids that what you did was inexcusable. They look up to you; they're watching you. Why should they respect referees after seeing what you did?

Over a span of forty-one years, from Fer-de-Lance in 1934 to A Family Affair in 1975, Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe displayed himself as a purist about language as well as a detective of prodigious girth and and gifts. You may recall that in the opening pages of Gambit (1962), he busies himself burning the pages of Webster's Third International because it indicates that people use infer and imply interchangeably. He is a peever. This morning I direct your attention to a short passage from Please Pass the Guilt (1973)

Baltimore County Police have charged a Parkton-area man with sexual solicitation of a minor and an attempted sex offense, saying the man solicited an undercover detective for sex. Police say they began investigating Rahn Freeland, 26, of the unit block of Foreston Valley Court, after he allegedly established a relationship with a 14-year-old girl who lives within the Towson Precinct. Police said that in August 2011, the girl began receiving Facebook messages from a man who saw her picture on Facebook.