Happening

The Baltimore City Detention Center had the nation's second-highest rate of sexual contact between jail staff and inmates, according to a U.S. Department of Justice study released less than a month after federal prosecutors accused corrections officers at the jail of sleeping with gang members. The report, released Thursday, also found higher-than-average rates of inmate abuse at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women in Jessup. Women in prison are generally subjected to more abuse than men, and nearly 13 percent of inmates at that facility reported being abused either by a fellow inmate or staff member.

When it comes to doors, knobs, floors, molding and such for the home, discussions typically focus on the history of styles. But when it comes to tile, the conversation is about what's happening now. Aided by new technology, tile today is more eco-friendly and more widely available in a vast range of finishes and textures. As a hard, watertight surface applied to floors and walls, ceramic, stone and porcelain have been commonly used for thousands of years. In some ways, not much has changed.

In 2008, Ed DeRosa witnessed the infamy of the Preakness infield - the passed-out partiers, the chucking of full beer cans into crowds and of course, the "Running of the Urinals," where drunken infielders ran down a row of portable toilets. DeRosa, a horse-racing reporter from Lexington, Ky., who attended Preakness from 2005 to 2011, says nothing could have prepared a first-timer for the debauchery. "I was in Vegas for New Year's Eve a couple times, and until I had been to the Preakness infield, that was the craziest I'd ever seen people behave," DeRosa, now 33, said.

Even for Dexter, there was a lot of aggression tonight. The death total is up to four, with the two imagined killings by Dexter of the post-woman and Masuka, Louis' murder by the Ukrainian mobster, and the waitress who was killed by Speltzer. Deb was almost killed by Speltzer and a random felon was almost strangled by Dexter. Maybe someone should go to therapy. Any one of them, really. Because, to put it bluntly, what's happening now isn't working out for anyone. Deb almost gave Dexter's Dark Passenger approval.

Aaliyah Boyer had hoped to watch the New Year's ball drop on TV, but when she learned she had missed the stroke of midnight by 32 seconds, she returned to the front yard with her friends to watch her neighbors light fireworks. Nearby, someone apparently fired a gun into the air to add to the celebration. Amid the jubilation, the 10-year-old fell to the ground, the warmth and color draining from her body after she was hit by a falling bullet. Her family initially thought that she had fainted, but the wound would prove fatal.

The gay couples who've booked Rouge Fine Catering in Hunt Valley for their weddings have appreciated not only good food and stylish events, but something less tangible. "They don't want to be with a caterer that is going to be judgmental," said Jonathan Soudry, Rouge chef and owner. "There is a lot of intimacy in the relationship between the caterer and the couple. " Soudry, whose business handles about 300 weddings a year, catered more than two dozen receptions for same-sex couples last year.

For nearly three decades, Jack Luskin was "The Cheapest Guy in Town," which in turn became a household slogan for his Baltimore-based appliance and electronics chain. Luskin, now 80 and retired, splits his time between homes in Stevenson and Aventura, Fla. "I have the best of both worlds," he said. "I consider myself unemployed, but I check The Sun's classifieds every day to see what I can do, but no one seems to want me." Jack and his brother, Joe, established Luskin's Inc. in 1948, and turned the post-World War II demand for refrigerators and washing machines into a successful business.

With all the Branson revolutionary-ing, Lady Edith altar-jilting and Bates jail-rotting, it was easy to forget that Lady Sybil was, you know, about to give birth. And she does in this episode. But in a huge surprise, she doesn't make it -- dead at 24 after giving birth to a girl. Yes, we still have something in our eye. Watching Tom Branson and Cora hover over Sybil, weeping, crying for her to make it and don't leave them was perhaps the most emotional moment of the whole series so far.  Sigh, how did this happen?

There has been much hue and cry in recent days about the General Assembly approving a "rain tax" this year that is punitive, anti-commerce and unnecessary. What's truly remarkable about these protestations is how none of the underlying claims are true. Rather, this may be a lesson in the perils of approving a policy at the state level but leaving the business of carrying it out to local government. It's far easier for county elected leaders to point a finger at Annapolis than to actually educate themselves on an issue - let alone try to explain why a tax is so clearly in their constituents' self-interest.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the younger of the two brothers accused of perpetrating the Boston Marathon bombing, is the baffling mystery man in this crime. His older brother, Tamerlan, who died in a shootout with police in the dark early hours Friday morning, better fits the stereotype of a disaffected, nascent terrorist. He was nearing adulthood when he came to this country from Russia's predominantly Muslim central Asian region. He talked of having no American friends. He had openly disdained the immorality of American society and adopted a zealous brand of Islam.