NEWS
June 12, 2009
Shuttle named Charm City Circulator The free downtown shuttle bus system that debuts this summer is to be called the "Charm City Circulator," Mayor Sheila Dixon announced Wednesday. The name was submitted by 24-year-old Cherry Hill resident Michelle C. Brand and selected from about 2,700 entries by a committee that included the Downtown Partnership, neighborhood representatives and city employees. Brand will receive about $1,000 in prizes. Paid for by a recent increase in parking taxes, the circulator will include 21 clean-energy buses and three routes.
NEWS
April 23, 2009
Officer faces sex assault charges A Baltimore City schools police officer was arrested Wednesday after a grand jury indicted him in the sexual assault of a 16-year-old student. Reginald Watson, 35, of the 2200 block of Fleetwood Ave., is charged with sexual abuse of a minor, fourth-degree sex assault and second-degree assault in the alleged incident on Feb. 19 at Masonville Cove Community Academy, in the 1200 block of Cambria St. in Brooklyn. According to police, the student was walking in the hallways when Watson bought her snacks and took her into an office, where he allegedly made sexually explicit remarks to her and placed his hands on her hips and buttocks.
NEWS
By David Wood | February 10, 2009
The biodefense lab at Fort Detrick in Frederick began a thorough search of its freezers yesterday to ensure that it has an accurate inventory of the deadly bacteria, viruses and toxins accumulated there over a period of 40 years, Defense Department officials said. Col. John P. Skvorak, commander of the U.S. Army Medical Institute of Infectious Diseases, ordered a "stand-down," or pause in ordinary operations, and a complete inventory last week after 20 vials of "biological select agents and toxin" (BSAT)
NEWS
By Matthew Hay Brown | September 17, 2008
WASHINGTON - Amid continuing questions from some lawmakers and others about the FBI's investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks, the FBI is asking the National Academy of Sciences to review its probe, Director Robert S. Mueller III said yesterday. Among the issues that the independent organization likely would examine is how FBI analysts traced anthrax powder that was mailed to two U.S. senators and several news organizations to the Fort Detrick laboratory of Bruce E. Ivins, who killed himself in July.
NEWS
By Rona Marech | September 9, 2008
Eli Rody Vuicich, a scientist, athlete and restaurateur who co-owned Ordell Braase's Flaming Pit and seemed to always be pulling someone's leg with a wink and a smile, died of congestive heart failure Sept. 2 at his home in Timonium. He was 86. Mr. Vuicich grew up in Hibbing, Minn., where - as he often recounted - he delivered milk and papers to help support his mother, two brothers and a sister after his father died. A star athlete in high school, he was inducted into the Hibbing Hall of Fame for basketball and baseball.
NEWS
By CANDUS THOMSON | August 24, 2008
The Jedi master of fishing, Lefty Kreh, is the subject of two new books. Most of us would kill for one volume, and here's Lefty with two keepers. One he has put together himself, something he has been threatening to do for some time but never found the time. The other is a tribute from some of fishing's big names. Kreh, who held the job I now have until his "retirement" in January 1992, has written an entire library full of fishing books and magazine articles. But for his autobiography, My Life Was This Big, he has teamed up with Chris Millard, a former editor at Golf World magazine.
NEWS
August 21, 2008
Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler is pushing the Pentagon to do the right thing - obey the law and comply with an Environmental Protection Agency order that it quickly complete a cleanup of serious pollution at Fort Meade. He's threatening to sue if the Army fails to act. The Pentagon's assurance that public health and safety are not imperiled as it cleans up the Superfund site at its own pace and with its own priorities is not credible. The EPA issued the Fort Meade cleanup order last year because it was worried about drinking water and soil contamination from past dumping at the Anne Arundel County base.
NEWS
By JEAN MARBELLA | August 8, 2008
In case I ever turn up dead while being investigated by the Feds, and they release all the suspicious stuff they've uncovered about me, let me explain right now why I recently Googled "novel kill scientist poisoned strawberry." I was not trying to find a novel way to kill a scientist with a poisoned strawberry, OK? I was trying to remember a book I had read, in which several seemingly unrelated characters mysteriously start dying - including, I thought, a scientist who grew strawberries as a hobby, ate one and died - and it turned out they had all been involved in some secret scheme.
NEWS
By Stephen Kiehl and Josh Mitchell | August 8, 2008
A day after the Justice Department released hundreds of documents purporting to link Bruce E. Ivins to the 2001 anthrax killings, scientists and legal experts criticized the strength of the case and cast doubt on whether it could have succeeded. Federal investigators presented a raft of circumstantial evidence this week intended to prove Ivins' guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. But officials lacked direct evidence, such as hair fibers, DNA samples or handwriting analysis, that the eccentric microbiologist created the deadly powder in his Fort Detrick lab. Questions also remain about Ivins' ability to convert the spores stored in his lab into the powder sent through the mail.
NEWS
August 7, 2008
Bruce E. Ivins may not have been the anthrax killer, but scientific, postal and investigative evidence painstakingly compiled by federal agents and released yesterday points strongly to his guilt, as declared by the FBI. The case, detailed by prosecutors and investigators, is circumstantial - there are no witnesses or incriminating statements about the attack that killed five people and terrorized the nation in 2001. But it presents a plausible portrait of Mr. Ivins as the mastermind and sole perpetrator of the first bioterrorist attack in the United States . Mr. Ivins' suicide last week prevents a conclusive resolution of the 7-year-old case.