Flagship

Navy Petty Officer 1st Class David W. Garver is participating in a six-month deployment to the Mediterranean and Adriatic seas aboard the destroyer USS John Rodgers.The destroyer is the flagship for NATO's Standing Naval Force Atlantic, an international task force of ships from different NATO countries.In the Adriatic Sea, the ship helped enforce the international arms embargo against Bosnia-Herzegovina. The ship was awarded the Battle Efficiency Award in February for the crew's outstanding performance in a variety of mission areas.

The two flagship beers from Woodberry's Union Craft Brewing Company - Duckpin Pale Ale and Balt Altbier - will be sold in 12-ounce cans in Baltimore city retailers by Friday, according to co-founder Jon Zerivitz. The cans will be sold in other areas of Maryland and Washington in the next few weeks. The brewery recently acquired three new 60 barrel tanks, which increase its brewing capacity by 75 percent. The expansion explains why UCB can now sell its beer in cans, Zerivitz said.

The Hecht Co.'s former flagship department store at Howard and Lexington streets quietly changed hands earlier this year and is now owned by Petrie Dierman and Partners, a development firm based in McLean, Va.James Abrams, a spokesman for the May Co., Hecht's parent, confirmed that the 300,000-square-foot Hecht's building was sold to Petrie Dierman but would not disclose the price. He referred questions about the property to developer Walt Petrie, who could not be reached for comment.Hecht's opened the eight-level building in 1925 and closed it in January 1989, joining the exodus of downtown department stores that over the past 15 years also has included branches of Hochschild Kohn & Co., Stewart's and Hutzler's.

Today is a big day for Microsoft. The company is introducing its Windows 8 operating system, it's biggest makeover, some say, since Windows 95. Computers have changed dramatically since 1995, of course. Mobile devices, i.e. smartphones and tablets, have roared into common use over the past three to four years. People are doing a lot more computing tasks on such alternate devices. The influence of mobile has been seen in Apple's operating system updates, as it's integrated some iOS-like features into OSX. Now, we're going to see Microsoft's take.

LOS ANGELES -- Far fewer black and Hispanic students will enroll as freshmen at the University of California's most prestigious schools this fall, although their numbers will drop only slightly throughout the state system and some campuses will experience an increase, officials said yesterday.The freshmen class of 1998 is the first to be admitted since California banned consideration of race in college admissions in 1996.The release of the new figures comes seven weeks after an announcement that minority applications at Berkeley and Los Angeles had dropped sharply.

WBAL Radio has been selected as the flagship station for University of Maryland football and basketball, the university and radio station announced yesterday.WBAL (1090 AM) has signed a three-year deal with Jefferson-Pilot productions, which owns Maryland's radio rights, to be the originating station for Terrapins games. WBAL recently had been the Baltimore affiliate on the Maryland radio network when Washington's WMAL was the flagship.Last week, university athletic director Andy Geiger announced that the school had reached an agreement with Washington-area station WRC to become the flagship.

More than a dozen medical groups, most with a strong Hopkins flavor, announced yesterday that they are merging to form Flagship Health.With 70 physicians, including well-known practices in internal medicine, pediatrics and various specialties, Flagship adds another player to a health marketplace where a variety of organizations are rushing to sign up physicians and compete for managed care contracts.Dr. Dana Frank, an internist with offices in Hopkins' Green Spring Station facility, is chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Flagship.

Flagship Health, a 15-month-old Baltimore doctors group, yesterday said it will merge with Towson-based Clinical Associates and spend more than $50 million raised by its corporate parent to keep growing.Flagship's merger with Clinical Associates will roughly double its number of doctors and patients. The expanded physician-owned network, to be called Flagship Health Care, will have about 135 doctors in the region and provide primary and specialty care for between 250,000 and 300,000 Marylanders.

For 3 1/2 hours, the slave ship Cora ducked the Navy guns and raced from the big American warship. Crew members tossed hatch covers, casks and spars overboard in a desperate bid to lighten their ship. They prayed nightfall would conceal their escape.But at 11 p.m., when the USS Constellation loomed suddenly out of the mouth of the Congo River, the Cora gave up. In a recently discovered memoir, a member of the Constellation's boarding party recalled what happened next."Before we could get the hatches open we could smell [the captives]

When MedImmune Inc. agreed to be purchased by AstraZeneca PLC over the weekend, the state was served notice that it will essentially lose its flagship biotech - the one officials have relied on for years as a selling tool to draw similar businesses. The Gaithersburg company's profits and high-profile products (FluMist and blockbuster treatment Synagis for babies) have led governors to herald it as an industry leader, mayors to praise the jobs it provides and economic development leaders to tout MedImmune as the example all biotechs should follow.

When will Apple Inc.release the new iPhone 5? Pinkman, the tortured junkie Paul plays on AMC's"Breaking Bad. "   The pain will be postponed slightly because the 16-episode final season of  "Breaking Bad" - one of AMC's flagship shows, along with "Mad Men" and"The Walking Dead" - is being divided in half, with the concluding eight installments airing next summer. of Sara (Amanda Seyfried) on"Big Love. "  

Donna Hamilton will be joining Rod Daniels at the 11 p.m. anchor desk at WBAL-TV  (Channel 11) starting Super Bowl night, General Manager Dan Joerres confirmed Wednesday. Daniels has been anchoring the flagship broadcast solo since July when WBAL decided not to renew the contract of Marianne Banister. Banister had been co-anchoring since 1995 when she arrived at WBAL from station KABC, the ABC owned station in Los Angeles where she anchored early morning and 6 p.m. newscasts in the nation's second largest TV market.

Legg Mason's famed stock picker Bill Miller will officially hand over the day-to-day management of the well-known Legg Mason Capital Management Value Trust fund to his successor, Sam Peters, on April 30, the Baltimore money manager announced Thursday. The announcement comes after Peters was named more than a year ago as successor to Miller, who has managed the Value Trust fund for almost three decades. Miller will also relinquish his role as chief investment officer of Legg Mason Capital Management to Peters.

The University of Maryland, Baltimore could become a diminished player in the city's revitalization efforts if it is combined with the state's flagship campus in College Park, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said at a Friday hearing on the proposed merger. Rawlings-Blake led a procession of civic leaders, faculty members and students who spoke against the merger plan, which has been championed by Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller as a way to improve the flagship university's national reputation and research clout.

With the board that oversees Maryland's university system just two months from deciding whether to back a merger of its largest research campuses, Baltimore civic leaders are lining up against any move that would place the city's campus under out-of-town control. The idea of merging the University of Maryland, Baltimore with the state's flagship campus in College Park initially was floated by Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller, who says the combined university would become one of the most prestigious in the nation.

Two weeks after the PGA Tour's "fifth major," the global schedule brings us the "other fifth major. " This week's BMW PGA Championship is the European Tour's flagship event — and with the strength of European golf these days, getting more vocal support as the next in prestige behind the four majors. "This is definitely taking the place of the TPC," Ernie Els told reporters this week. That follows word from world No.1 Lee Westwood , who said recently the BMW PGA "is the biggest title that I play for outside the majors.

PORT CANAVERAL, Fla. - The flagship of Disney's cruise line set out for sea last night after a stem-to-stern scrubbing by an army of cleaners hoping to eradicate a stomach bug that sickened nearly 300 people during its seven-day cruise. Disney Magic's departure was delayed about an hour until 6 p.m. to allow a crew of around 1,150 - including 200 added cleaners - to sanitize the 2,300-passenger ship, right down to Bibles and doorknobs. Investigators with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention searched the 964-foot long vessel for clues to the source of the mystery illness but had no immediate answers.

Johns Hopkins Medicine and Flagship Health, a 160-member physician group, announced a plan yesterday to jointly seek managed care contracts.Together, they said, they can offer patients better-coordinated care and insurers efficient management."

Wallace D. Loh, a Chinese native who immigrated to Iowa as a teenager and went on to become a star law professor and provost of the University of Iowa, will be the next president of the University of Maryland, College Park. Loh, 65, was appointed by the university system's Board of Regents after a six-month search to replace C.D. Mote Jr., who led the state's flagship university to new plateaus of academic prestige, research funding and student interest. "Dr. Loh is the right person to lead our flagship university to its next level of greatness," said Clifford Kendall, chairman of the regents.

Legg Mason Inc.'s Value Trust fund is synonymous with famed money manager Bill Miller, who has the unmatched record of beating the benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 index for 15 consecutive years. His streak has been compared to the record set by Orioles legend Cal Ripken Jr. So inevitably, the pressure is on for Miller's successor. That falls to Sam Peters, who was named last month as the fund's next manager after Miller retires. It's not clear when that will happen; the timeline for Miller's retirement is unknown.