Dunning

Spurred by mounting complaints, the state attorney general is warning members of the medical community that if they are billing HMO members directly for services covered by insurance, they are breaking the law."Consumers are getting caught in the middle of an ongoing dispute between health-care providers and the HMO industry about delays in payments by HMOs," Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr. said last night. "If you're a member of an HMO and you pay your bills, the HMO should pay its bills."

Those possibly eternal opposites, East and West, have met again in The First Emperor, a visually spectacular, often engaging, and not entirely successful opera by Tan Dun. This new work by the winner of an Academy Award and a Grammy for his Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon film score is a hot ticket at New York's Metropolitan Opera, which commissioned the piece a decade ago. Although a few seats were available for last Thursday's opening night, the eight...

The Internal Revenue Service says as many as 10,000 people who worked for Johns Hopkins University in 1985 could soon receive IRS notices asking for payment of unpaid taxes and interest from 1988.Happily, most of the letters have been sent in error -- the lingering echoes of a mistake two years ago at the Social Security Administration.Hopkins spokesman Dennis O'Shea said the error "wasn't Hopkins'; it was the Social Security Administration's originally, and it's now beginning to surface at the IRS."

Of all the mind-boggling ideas that exploded during the 20th century, those about music by John Cage rank among the most provocative - and encouraging. "Until I die there will be sounds," he wrote in 1961. "And they will continue following after my death. One need not fear about the future of music." Cage heard music everywhere and in everything. A lot of folks won't ever be able to go that far, but those who gathered at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall Monday night got a jolting reminder of his philosophy from remarkable Chinese composer Tan Dun and the New York-based Eos Orchestra.

Dun & Bradstreet Corp. has entered into a definitive agreement to sell its Baltimore-based subsidiary, American Credit Indemnity Co., to Europe's largest credit insurer and a New York merchant banking firm for an undisclosed price, the company said yesterday.Paris-based Compagnie Financiere SFAC, a $2.9 billion-asset credit insurer, and Securitas Capital LLC have formed ACI lTC Holding Inc. to acquire American Credit. The deal is expected to close by September after it is approved by insurance regulators, executives said.

The state health department said yesterday that it had miscalculated rates and overpaid four HMOs by $3.1 million for coverage of about 2,500 people who are eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid.The HMOs will have to pay back the money, the department said. The HMOs said yesterday that they don't have enough information to be able to evaluate the state's claims."We're just getting some of this information," said Alan Silverstone, president of the Northeast division of Prudential HealthCare.

The law firm of Weinberg & Green LLC has fallen into a nasty rent dispute with its landlord, NationsBank, which turned up the heat by threatening to go after personal assets of more than 100 current and former Weinberg partners if the firm does not pay almost $400,000 in back rent.In a letter to Weinberg Chairman Charles O. Monk II, attorney K. Donald Proctor of the Miles & Stockbridge law firm said Weinberg "has left the landlord with no alternative other than to begin to pursue its legal remedies in order to resolve the existing defaults."

"Alvin Ailey: A Life in Dance," by Jennifer Dunning; Addison Wesley. 468 pages. $30"The Joffrey Ballet: Robert Joffrey and the Making of an American Dance Company," by Sasha Anawalt. Scribner. 464 pages. $35It seems appropriate that dueling biographies should appear almost simultaneously on dance visionaries Alvin Ailey and Robert Joffrey; the similarities between the two men are great.Both biographies provide insight into the passion these men held for dance and for life. They are also both so meticulously detailed as to be sometimes tedious but they are invaluable to those who love dance.

WILLIAM EDWARD KING, JR., 69, died Tuesday, November 11, 2003 at Waccamaw Community Hospital at Murrells Inlet, S.C. Mr. King was born in Essex, MD on September 10, 1934, a son of the late William Edward King, Sr. and Evelyn Betz King. He moved to Pawley 's Island, S.C. in 1969 from MD. Mr. King worked for Bethlehem Steel for 17 years and was Director of Purchasing at Georgetown Steel in Georgetown, S.C. for 13 years. He had also been president of King Industries for 13 years. Surviving are his wife, Joy Yvonne Wright King of Pawley's Island, S.C.; two sons, William E. King, III and his wife Mona K. of Charleston, S.C. and Michael King and his wife Cindy of Pawley's Island, S.C.; four daughters, Donna King Bowden and her husband Alan of Chapel Hill, N. C., Susan M. King of Charleston, S.C., Denise King Dunning of Pawley's Island, S.C., and Lynne King Mushock and her husband Michael of Pawley's Island, S.C.; a brother, Charles Dennis King and his wife Barbara of VA.; ten grandchildren, Kelly Dumas, William E. King, IV, Evan Haynes, and Nicholas Crossman, all of Charleston, S.C., Alexander Bowden of Chapel Hill, N. C., John Dunning, III, Dylan Dunning, Patrick Mushock, Kevin Mushock, and Madeline Joy King, all of Pawley's Island, S.C. Mr. King was predeceased by a daughter, Patricia Ann King.

Chesapeake Bay will be discussed in an Eastern Shore lecture series beginning tomorrow.The four talks, given by scientists from the University of Maryland's Horn Point environmental laboratory in Cambridge, are free and open to the public. All lectures begin at 7:30 p.m. For more information, call 1-410-228-9250. The schedule:* Feb. 26: Dunning lecture hall, Washington College, Chestertown.* March 18: Talbot County Historical Society, Easton.* May 20: Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, St. Michaels.