Fuel

The defense lawyer for a Perry Hall man accused of fraudulently selling $9 million worth of fake renewable fuel credits said he didn't deceive anybody because victims knew they were buying phony credits for an unworkable federal energy program. Rodney R. Hailey's lawyer, assistant public defender Douglas R. Miller, contended that the large commodities brokerages and the oil company that bought Hailey's fuel credits didn't care that the credits were fake. "Everybody needed [credits]

As a financial matter, perhaps it's no big deal that MayorStephanie Rawlings-Blakehas a $562.39 telephone sitting on her desk. It and the five other touch screen, video phones the city bought recently amount to 0.0001 percent of Baltimore's $2.8 billion budget. Their cost wouldn't be enough to keep open a fire company or a recreation center or to roll back city property taxes. But as a symbol, the phone is a problem for City Hall. It contributes to residents' suspicions that their tax dollars are being squandered, and it makes the mayor look extravagantly out of touch with the concerns of most of her constituents.

A fuel spill and a vehicle accident at two points along southbound Interstate 295 closed lanes and snarled traffic Wednesday afternoon, according to transportation officials. A truck spilled fuel near the southbound I-295 ramp onto the outer loop of I-695 at about 2 p.m. A lane of traffic and the ramp were closed while a response vehicle brought sand to help contain the spill, said Charlie Gishler, a State Highway Administration spokesman. About an hour later, an accident occurred on southbound I-295 north of Daisy Avenue that closed the left lane and the shoulder of the roadway, according to Adrienne Barnes, a city transportation department spokeswoman.

If you're used to watching an Orioles game in the quiet of a family room, then watching one at Camden Yards can be unsettling - fellow fans yelling in your ears, maybe dropping a profanity here and there. If you rarely walk on city sidewalks full of people, it can be a strange experience, especially if there are panhandlers or mentally ill wanderers in your path. If you're almost always with people who look like you, then being in a diverse crowd can be weird, even frightening. It was always thus, but never more so than in the last few decades in the United States.

When Salisbury and SUNY-Cortland meet Sunday in an NCAA tournament Division III final at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., it's arguable that anyone on the field will be as emotional as Sam Bradman. The senior midfielder is always excited when he steps onto the field for a game, but in recent years, he has been able to tone it down and save his energy for scoring goals and making plays. But Bradman is still vulnerable to letting his emotions get the best of him. In Sunday's 7-2 victory over Stevenson in the semifinal round, Bradman was flagged for a one-minute unsportsmanlike conduct penalty after scoring a goal to give the Sea Gulls a 3-0 lead with 6:59 left in the third quarter.

A theft this month of 311 gallons of gasoline from a station in Baltimore is one in a series of similar incidents, according to the station's owner, who says people have been disabling pumps and allowing friends and relatives to fill their tanks for free Mehdi Rezakhan, who owns BP stations in Remington and East Baltimore, said each businesses has been hit once, and stations owned by friends have been taken several times, one for 1,800 gallons of...

Despite facing a short week and having to travel Tuesday to Denver for Wednesday night's start of the Eastern College Athletic Conference tournament, top-seeded Loyola is eager to put the memory of its first loss of the season behind it. Junior long-stick midfielder Scott Ratliff, the league's Defensive Player of the Year, acknowledged Monday that Saturday's 10-9 overtime loss to No. 8 Johns Hopkins is still a little raw. “I think it's...

In their quest to cure Baltimore's ailing harbor, advocates and authorities have tried one gadget after another: floating wetlands, a solar-powered aerator, even a trash wheel. Add now the "algal turf scrubber," a long wooden sluiceway in which harbor water is pumped over a bed of slimy green algae. The ecological restoration firm Biohabitats and the Living Classrooms Foundation invited news media to see the contraption set up on a former chromium plant site in Fells Point. The gutter, 350 feet long by one foot wide, uses native algae to strip nutrients, suspended sediment and carbon from water and inject oxygen into it before returning it to the harbor.

COLLEGE PARK - Joe Cummings has been a leader for Maryland all season, and he stepped up once again Saturday. Cummings scored four goals and added two assists in his final home game at Byrd Stadium. He helped the No. 8 Terps to a big early lead over Bellarmine and later scored a key goal that helped secure a 12-7 victory. "I thought Joe not only scored, but his leadership was really important today," Maryland coach John Tillman said. "There were some times where things weren't going the way we wanted or we got a little anxious.

Traffic backed up on Interstate 95 northbound just past the Hanover Street exit on Thursday after a truck spilled about 50 gallons of gasoline on the roadway, a city fire spokesman said. The spill caused the two right lanes of the interstate to be closed, said a spokesman with the Maryland Transportation Authority, which maintains the section of the interstate where the spill occurred. City fire personnel responded to the spill after receiving a call at about 11:45 a.m., said Chief Kevin Cartwright, the fire spokesman.