Flint

Noooo!!!! Lakisha Jones, say it ain't so! The American Idol front-runner recently dashed the dreams of Free State residents everywhere eager to claim her as one of our own. On Feb. 19, the 27-year-old Jones was asked point-blank by The Enemy - otherwise known as the Detroit Free Press - why the American Idol Web site identifies Jones' hometown as Fort Meade when she spent the first 20 years of her life in the Midwest. "It's not!" Jones - allegedly - replied. "It's really, Flint, Michigan.

BaseballAngels: Optioned IF Chris Pritchett to Triple-A Edmonton.Athletics: Placed P Kevin Jarvis (blood clot on left index finger) on 15-day DL, retroactive to April 19. Recalled P Brad Rigby from Triple-A Vancouver.Cubs: Recalled P Richard Barker from Triple-A Iowa.Indians: Traded P Jerry Spradlin to Giants for minor-league OF Dan McKinley and player to be named.Rangers: Recalled P Mike Venafro from Triple-A Oklahoma.Twins: Transferred P Hector Carrasco to 60-day DL. Claimed P Jack Cressend off waivers from Red Sox and optioned him to Double-A New Britain.

IT DOESN'T take a complex strategy to succeed in the stock market, financial pros say.Many of them learned this early, when they bought their first stocks for their own portfolios.Investing in high-quality companies, holding stocks for the long haul and not panicking at the first whiff of bad news are some of the lessons brokers say they took away when they became investors.Those tactics work, says Chuck Carlson, editor of Drip Investor Newsletter in Hammond, Ind.For Carlson's coming book, "Eight Steps to Seven Figures," he interviewed 170 investors whose portfolios over the years had grown to $1 million or more.

Twenty years after an effervescent young talent named Earvin Johnson led Michigan State to the NCAA championship, another young, charismatic point guard has delivered the Spartans to the Final Four.That's where all analogies and comparisons of Michigan State's past and present should end, however.Mateen Cleaves is no Magic Johnson, but his No. 2-ranked Spartans do possess some magic of their own going into Saturday's national semifinal against No. 1-ranked Duke in St. Petersburg, Fla.How else do you explain a team with no true scorer getting this far in the NCAA tournament?

DETROIT -- Two crippling strikes against General Motors Corp. entered their fourth week yesterday with no end in sight as analysts began tallying the mounting costs to the world's largest automaker.James Irwin, an analyst at Goldman, Sachs & Co., said the strikes have cost the company $936 million in second-quarter profit.He lowered his GM earnings estimate for the quarter to $1 a diluted share from his previous $2.40 a share. Other analysts were preparing to cut their estimates as well.Talks resumed yesterday, but there were no reports of progress.

THE WORLD has changed since the chairman of General Motors Corp. first proclaimed four decades ago that what's good for GM is good for America. For one thing, GM is now the largest private employer in Mexico, where it employs 72,000 people producing parts.Several thousand of those jobs used to reside in Flint, Mich. Workers there have watched in frustration for 20 years as big chunks of machinery, equipment and their city's future were crated up and sent south like migrating birds, to Matamoros, Mexico.

WILMINGTON, Del. -- G. Richard Wagoner Jr., president of General Motors Corp.'s North American Operations, reported some progress yesterday in talks to avoid a strike at a Flint, Mich., sheet metal plant that could halt production at Baltimore's largest manufacturing employer.Speaking to reporters after the company's shareholders meeting here, Wagoner said the company and the union were both trying to prevent a situation similar to the strike at a Dayton, Ohio, brake parts plant in 1996 that idled all of GM's assembly plants in the United States and Canada, and cost the company $900 million.

HAVRE DE GRACE -- At last the usual June miasma inevitably descends, bringing with it bad air from Baltimore and dire health warnings from Washington. And residents of our afflicted region, no doubt including the celebrated cop-killer and litigant Flint Gregory Hunt, are wondering if each breath they suck in may be their last.I found myself considering these and related subjects the other day as I baled some unusually nice alfalfa hay in the smoggy haze, and tried to see if I could check the pollution content in the air with the most sophisticated instrument I had available, my nose.

WORCESTER, Mass. -- Bruiser Flint can only imagine what most college basketball fans thought back in early December when they looked at a mid-February matchup between Massachusetts and Maryland.Or if they looked at it at all.The Minutemen, having lost three starters and their coach from last year's Final Four team, were off to a horrendous start under Flint, a former assistant to John Calipari.The Terrapins, having lost four starters from a team that had been upset in the opening round of the NCAA tournament, were undefeated but largely unproven and mostly unnoticed.

We stood before the death chamber, in a stuffy little room where we had come from another stuffy little room in the middle of the night.With the sureness of a voting-booth screen, a beige curtain snapped back. The reporter next to me lifted his pen from his pad and crossed himself.In front of us was Flint Gregory Hunt, only it was not the Flint Gregory Hunt I had interviewed two weeks before. That man, scheduled to die for the murder of Baltimore police Officer Vincent Adolfo, was animated, outspoken, shifting in his chair as emotions of all kinds crossed his face.

Yesterday, Richard Flint's classroom was a circus. The Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, to be exact. After four weeks of learning about the history behind the hijinks, teetering tightrope walkers and airborne acrobatics, the students in Flint's adult-education class - "The Circus: Rings Around the World" - peeked behind the curtains of the "Greatest Show on Earth." The group, which had been taking the course through the Johns Hopkins University Odyssey program, mingled with performers and trainers, and toured parts of the arena before yesterday's shows.

Noooo!!!! Lakisha Jones, say it ain't so! The American Idol front-runner recently dashed the dreams of Free State residents everywhere eager to claim her as one of our own. On Feb. 19, the 27-year-old Jones was asked point-blank by The Enemy - otherwise known as the Detroit Free Press - why the American Idol Web site identifies Jones' hometown as Fort Meade when she spent the first 20 years of her life in the Midwest. "It's not!" Jones - allegedly - replied. "It's really, Flint, Michigan.

Diane Jacobs sews the pockets on suit coats - as many as 200 a day - that are sold in stores such as Brooks Brothers. For 34 years, it's been a good job, with few layoffs, decent benefits and even a little show biz. "Do you remember Lawrence Welk? We did suits for his show once," she says. "I'll never forget them because they were orange." But factory jobs like hers, once the backbone of the economy, are becoming as much a relic as the bandleader whose "ah-one an' ah-two" would launch a nattily attired orchestra into a fizzy tune.

Standing on the porch outside his Gwynn Oak residence, Marion Flint Sr. speaks softly and slowly about his only son, his namesake, who was killed in a roadside explosion while serving in Iraq. But inside, Flint is angry. That his 29-year-old son, Staff Sgt. Marion Flint Jr., on his second tour of duty for the Army, had to go to Iraq again for a war that he says seems so futile infuriates him. "It's not just my child; it's everybody's child," said Mr. Flint, 49, clasping hands with his wife, B.J. Flint, 50. "What's the purpose of this war?"

DETROIT -- Twenty-one locals of the United Auto Workers union voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike should Delphi Corp. unilaterally impose changes to its labor agreements. More than 95 percent of the votes cast authorized the UAW to call a strike. The union's vote is a response to the auto supplier's request in court last week to nullify labor contracts and eliminate retiree medical and life insurance benefits. The approval was expected, but does not mean a strike is certain. Both sides are awaiting U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain's decision, which is not expected until June, at the earliest.

Dec. 30--1936: The United Auto Workers union staged its first "sit-down" strike, at the Fisher Body Plant No. 1 in Flint, Mich.

On August 10, 2005 GORDON O. FLINT, beloved son of Frances E. (nee Hall) and the late Henry O. Flint. A Funeral Service will be held at the family owned Leonard J. Ruck Inc. Funeral Home, 5305 Harford Road (at Echodale) on Thursday at 12 noon. Friends may call on Thursday from 11 to 12 noon. Interment Gardens of Faith Cemetery.

WASHINGTON -- Filmmaker Michael Moore brought his movie Fahrenheit 9/11 to a large neighborhood theater here for its American premiere the other night and, as he said himself, it was a case of "preaching to the choir." A demonstrably anti-war, anti-Bush packed house of political invitees applauded, cheered and groaned often through the two-hour film, a relentless assault of ridicule and grim scenes of the reality of war in Iraq leavened with comedic shots of President Bush. The film is an unabashed work of political propaganda in the literal sense of the word -- in my dictionary, "information or ideas methodically spread to promote or injure a cause, group or nation."

On Saturday, December 20, 2003 FLORENCE C. (nee Carroll); beloved wife of the late Ferdinand C. Flint; sister of Catherine Terry; aunt of Elizabeth Matthews and Joseph J. Kramer; great aunt of Joey W. Kramer, Joshuah C. Kramer, Kimberly Parrish, Samantha McLaughlin, Richard McLaughlin and Sean McLaughlin. Friends may call at Loring Byers Funeral Directors, Inc., 8728 Liberty Road (2 mi. W. of Beltway Exit 18-B) on Tuesday 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 P.M. Mass of Christian Burial Wednesday 9 A.M. at St. Gabriel Roman Catholic Church, 6950 Dogwood Rd. Interment Woodlawn Cemetery.

On June 25, 2003; ROBERT J., JR.; beloved husband of the late Mary L. Flint (nee Wagner); devoted father of Ruth A. Richardson and Jane R. Flint; loving grandfather of Evelyn M. Kinnard, Anthony L. and William W. Richardson. Also survived by one sister and five great-grandchildren. Relatives and friends are invited to call at the family owned MCCULLY-POLYNIAK FUNERAL HOME, P.A., 3204 Mountain Road (Pasadena) on Friday 3 to 5 and 7 to 9 PM, where Funeral Services will be held on Saturday at 9:30 AM. Interment Lorraine Park Cemetery.