Financial Support

On behalf of the Mayor's Office of Employment Development, I am pleased to share the news that thousands of Baltimore youth will be working in productive summer jobs through our YouthWorks program this year. Thanks to the collective efforts of many committed partners from local and state government, businesses, foundations, community organizations and individual citizens, we expect that close to 5,000 young people 14-to-21 years of age will work in a variety of job settings where they will develop skills to become effective employees and build lasting careers.

Baltimore homeowners could receive counseling and financial support - including short-term loans to help avoid foreclosure - if the city wins the predatory and discriminatory lending lawsuit it filed yesterday against Wells Fargo Bank, Mayor Sheila Dixon said. After reviewing foreclosure data, city attorneys concluded that the leading mortgage lender was steering black homebuyers into high-cost, subprime loans, a contention Wells Fargo denies. City officials believe theirs is the first attempt by a municipality to recoup losses as a result of the subprime mortgage crisis.

Conservatives are putting their money behind Laura E. Albers and Gary W. Bauer for the school board.Moderates and liberals are putting theirs behind Carole M. "Cyd" Pecoraro and incumbent Carolyn L. Scott.Two of the four will be elected Nov. 8.They have spent little since the primary, when they defeated five other candidates, some of whom spent less than $300 to campaign.Ms. Scott has spent the least of the current four candidates, both before and after the primary, in which she made the strongest showing of any candidate.

The federal government gave 2,000 Maryland sixth-graders an extra incentive yesterday to go to college: the guarantee of help graduating from high school, followed by the promise of scholarship money."

CHICAGO - She was a professional golfer, a saxophone player, a blues singer, a teacher, an orator, an actress - and one of the greatest champions in the history of tennis. But the significance of Althea Gibson's life, which ended yesterday at 76, probably is appreciated by far too few. No less a trailblazer than Jackie Robinson and Arthur Ashe, she had accomplishments perhaps more impressive because of her singular place as an African-American female athlete in the 1950s. Gibson was the first African-American to compete in the U.S. championship in 1950 and at Wimbledon in 1951.

Mark Helman, the founder of Bill's Carpet Fair who appeared in scores of zany television commercials and was a donor to many charities, died of leukemia July 12 at his Pikesville home. He was 80. Born Morris Helman in Philadelphia, he graduated from Olney High School in 1948. He moved to Baltimore and became a "tin man," a salesman for Air-Tite aluminum windows, doors and siding. When he learned that carpet weavers were selling 12-foot-wide lengths at prices middle-class buyers could afford, he embraced wall-to-wall carpet sales.

A Baltimore developer has bought the historic Dundalk Village Shopping Center, and Baltimore County officials have offered $2 million in loans and grants to help him overhaul the old, underused retail, office and apartment strip. The recent purchase of the 87-year-old center by JMJ Dundalk Properties of Pikesville from Dunleer Co. will go a long way toward the continuing revitalization of Dundalk, an effort that includes a $2 million Dundalk Avenue streetscape, governM-Wment and community leaders said.

John Morton III has turned around failing thrifts, controlled billions of dollars in assets and weighed in on some of the banking industry's biggest mergers.Now he's directing his trademark aggressiveness and energy toward a new challenge: helping to bring the Summer Olympic Games to the region in 2012."I have a passion for seeing us win this," he said. "Once it's established in my mind, everything becomes focused on getting there. The benchmark to every decision has to be: Will this further our effort toward winning the bid?"

National Aquarium officials said yesterday that they have struck a deal to put the Animal Planet name inside the new pavilion that will house the Australian animal exhibit now under construction. The 10-year deal with the cable television channel and its parent, Silver Spring-based Discovery Communications Inc., represents the most significant naming and corporate partnership into which the National Aquarium has entered, said a top aquarium executive. The $66 million pavilion project is set to open in 2005.

WASHINGTON -- Democrats who only days ago feared that the White House sex scandal would cripple their candidates in a midterm election year now say that, to their amazement, the crisis might be galvanizing party loyalists and bolstering efforts to raise money.In interviews over the past few days, dozens of Democratic politicians, strategists and fund-raising consultants here and across the country said that the accusations against President Clinton, at first glance, could not have come at a worse time: The party faces $9 million in debt just as it is trying to advance an agenda in Congress and as candidates are gearing up for the November elections.