Handcuffs

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - Financial incentives don't win the war for high-tech talent, according to new research by two Wake Forest University professors. Their research showed that retention tools such as cash, stocks and options are not the most significant or effective means to acquire and retain talent through high-tech mergers and acquisitions. The findings are contained in "Acquiring New Knowledge: The Role of Retaining Human Capital in Acquisitions of High-Tech Firms," published in the Journal of High Technology Management Research.

Three years ago, when Carroll County Arts Council was searching for a winter fund-raiser, someone suggested the group hold a Christmas crafts show. "Please don't make me. There's a million of those already," Sandy Oxx, the group's executive director, remembered saying. Instead, the group decided to auction decorated wreaths that had been donated by people in the community. Selling 24-inch circles of faux pine boughs festooned with ribbons and berries seemed like a practical, seasonal way to raise money, Oxx thought.

NEW YORK - Hard to believe that it's been 10 years since Pete Sampras came out of nowhere to win the first of his record 13 major championships at the U.S. Open. Hard to imagine that, at 29, Sampras is considered the grand old man of men's tennis. One more thing: Sampras is still hard to beat. Facing set point in his first-set tiebreaker yesterday in his semifinal match against Lleyton Hewitt, Sampras took advantage of a sloppy forehand volley by the 19-year-old Australian and turned it into a 7-6 (9-7)

The generous run support that had accompanied Jose Mercedes ended last night. So did his knack for picking up the Orioles after a loss. The only continuation was the Orioles' streak of futility against Kansas City pitching. For that, they stand alone. Mercedes couldn't hang with the Royals' Mac Suzuki, allowing a game-turning homer to Joe Randa in the sixth inning and leaving after four batters reached in the seventh in a 7-0 loss to Kansas City before an announced crowd of 43,827 at Camden Yards.

Everyone agrees the girl can be a problem. She is disruptive in class and her explosive temper has gotten the best of her more than once in school. So when the girl, age 12, ran in and out of classrooms and around the halls of her city middle school, the administration acted swiftly and suspended her. They called her mother and told her they were sending her home. But the girl was afraid to walk a mile home through the streets of Pimlico, a crime-ridden neighborhood in Northwest Baltimore.

After more than a decade of neglecting to enforce laws to prevent lead paint poisoning, city and state officials are poised to unveil an aggressive campaign to stop an epidemic that strikes more than 7,000 children a year in Baltimore. Gov. Parris N. Glendening and Mayor Martin O'Malley vowed last week to produce a joint "action plan" -- potentially worth millions of dollars in direct state aid to the city -- aimed at reducing the number of lead poisoning cases. The move follows a bureaucratic foul-up in Annapolis in what was, until two weeks ago, a relatively obscure line item in Glendening's annual budget.

THE DAY before the bloodshed at Columbine High School in Colorado, there was this schoolboy scene in Maryland: Carroll County deputy sheriffs arrested a diminutive fourth-grader and took him away in handcuffs and leg irons.We have learned to fear our children until further notice.Just hours before the shootings in Littleton, Colo., left 15 dead and 23 wounded Tuesday, there was the 10-year-old at the Carroll County Courthouse, waiting to see a juvenile court master, with his father, declaring, "When they arrested him, they put him in shackles, and he's crying, 'Please, Dad, help me, Dad,' and there's nothing I can do. He didn't kill nobody, he didn't rob nobody."

A former Baltimore police officer was sentenced to five years in prison yesterday -- considerably less than he could have been given -- for conspiring with drug lord Anthony Ayeni Jones to abduct and kill a narcotics dealer.Erick McCrary, who took more than $5,000 in bribes from Jones, received concurrent five-year sentences in Baltimore Circuit Court and U.S. District Court in Baltimore. He will not be eligible for parole.McCrary faced up to 30 years in prison on a state charge of conspiracy to kidnap and a federal charge of conspiracy to murder in aid of racketeering.

The Commission on Judicial Disabilities took the rare step yesterday of reprimanding Baltimore Circuit Judge Kenneth Lavon Johnson for putting a lawyer in handcuffs after he tried to speak for his client last year.Johnson, 60, agreed to the private reprimand, according to a statement released by the commission yesterday. He also agreed that it be made public, said Steven P. Lemmey, investigative counsel for the commission.The judge, who took the day off yesterday, did not respond to telephone messages left at his home seeking comment.