Hoard

Minnesota Vikings running back Leroy Hoard has always been good for some tough yards and a lot of laughs.Two years ago, he was the Ravens starting running back walking around Baltimore and being identified as a Canadian Football League player. Since then he has bounced around to two teams, traded in a red Lamborghini for a black one and leased three different apartments at the same time in Cleveland, Baltimore and Minneapolis.Hoard's career has come full circle, this time playing in Baltimore against the Ravens instead of for them.

News Roundup •••• According to Kotaku, the next PlayStation is codenamed "Orbis," it will be out next year and will not be friendly to used games or PlayStation 3 games. No word on if it blocks the door to your house and collects a toll every time you try and leave. [ Kotaku ] •••• "SimCity" will require a live internet connection to start playing, and will be an "internet-dependent" gaming experience. The emphasis on multiplayer seems like a convenient excuse to employ serious digital rights management, no?

Leroy Hoard took the bad news with a smile. Uncertainty finally had given way to reality, and after the Ravens cut Hoard yesterday to create salary-cap room to sign running back Bam Morris and tight end Eric Green, Hoard said he was glad his fate had been decided."

Apple today announced what many were expecting, given its huge war chest of around $100 billion in cash: future stock dividends and a stock repurchasing program. The company released the news in a conference call early Monday. It's amassed a huge pile of cash in recent years thanks to the runaway successes of its iPhone and iPad, a smartphone and a tablet, respectively, that are dominant in their categories. Apple said it plans a quarterly dividend of $2.65 a share sometime in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2012, which begins in July.

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. -- It's difficult for running back Leroy Hoard to feel secure these days.As he has struggled during the preseason, the Ravens have been looking at several alternatives, including Garrison Hearst and Vaughn Hebron.Things got even more tenuous for Hoard last night.While the Ravens routed the Buffalo Bills, 37-14, in their final preseason game, Hoard continued to have problems getting in a groove.He gained just 14 yards on nine carries and wound up the preseason with just 90 yards in 41 carries.

As veteran runner Leroy Hoard was saying goodbye at the front of the Ravens' training complex, former Pittsburgh Steelers running back Bam Morris was ushering in a new era at a side entrance.The Ravens (1-2), in an attempt to improve their offense, signed Morris to a two-year deal and former Steelers All-Pro tight end Eric Green to a one-year contract yesterday.In addition, the Ravens worked out free-agent linebackers Keith Goganious, Aubrey Beavers and Mark Williams to possibly add to a roster that has only five healthy linebackers.

The Ravens returned to practice yesterday after taking two days off, and the team heads into its bye weekend on a sour note after losing linebacker Mike Caldwell to a knee injury.Caldwell had arthroscopic surgery yesterday to repair chipped cartilage, and will miss four to six weeks. Caldwell, fourth on the team with 20 tackles and tied for the team lead with two sacks, will be replaced at weak-side linebacker by Jerrol Williams.Caldwell's loss leaves the Ravens with five linebackers. The team has signed linebacker Dexter Daniels, drafted in the sixth round, to their one-man practice squad.

Just because Ravens running back Leroy Hoard has played in a Pro Bowl, that doesn't necessarily make him a pro bowler.But Hoard is giving it his best shot, trading in his helmet and shoulder pads this week for a monogrammed bowling shirt and a pair of those funny-looking shoes.An avid bowler, Hoard received a "special exemption" by the Professional Bowlers Association that has allowed him to compete along with the best bowlers in the sport in the Greater Baltimore Open at Country Club Lanes in Rosedale.

Ravens owner Art Modell sounded enthusiastic yesterday about the team's impending free-agent signings of running back Bam Morris and tight end Eric Green."

A Laurel nurse was sentenced yesterday to 15 years in prison for trying to kill her ex-husband by stabbing him in the buttock with a syringe containing a drug so potent it is used in the execution of convicted murderers -- and so easily absorbed that its presence usually goes undetected. Donald Hoard, a hospital records coordinator from Greenbelt, had gone to his ex-wife's house in March 2004 to pick up their son when Ann Hoard attacked him with the syringe and said, "I want my son back," an Anne Arundel County prosecutor said.

Last week authorities in Anne Arundel County rescued nearly 70 cat from an apparent cat hoarder in Severna Park. After tips about conditions at the Cool Cats Rescue Center, officials moved in and pulled dozens of cats from the facility, two of which were dead. Read more about the raid here. Officials are now preparing to find people willing to give homes to the remaining cats. Here is what Anne Arundel County Police said in a release this morning: As of Saturday September 24, 2011, the Anne Arundel County Animal Control has placed 20 of the cats rescued from the deplorable conditions at the Cool Cats Rescue Center up for adoption.

A Baltimore criminal defense attorney has been charged in U.S. District Court with tax evasion and other financial crimes, according to records unsealed Tuesday, more than four months after his home and office were raided. Stanley Needleman, 69, is accused of "hoarding" $1.3 million in cash payments from criminal defense clients over a six-year period in order to conceal his income from the IRS. Needleman was charged by criminal information on Aug. 16. It is common for prosecutors to charge a person by criminal information if they expect the defendant to plead guilty.

The table in Jack Samuels' Fells Point office is piled two feet high with books, papers, scientific journals and grant applications. Samuels' wife likes to tease him that he has a hoarding problem, just like the people he studies. In reality, those stacks of paper might hold a remedy. Samuels, an associate professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University's School of Medicine, is the go-to guy nationwide for researchers seeking to understand the biological basis of hoarding — an intense, irrational drive to collect items in vast quantities, coupled with an inability to discard even objects that are worthless or broken.

I am not a hoarder, I can say with authority. But then I start feeling like Richard "I am not a crook" Nixon. Hoarding can be a matter of degree, and although I do not have a room full of empty pizza boxes, I do have a box of cassette tapes and another of record albums, and we no longer have a cassette player or a turntable. I spent a recent Saturday clearing out junk from my back basement, and afterward felt an incredible lightness of being. But I was unable to let go of my cross-stitch projects and the box of 125 different colors of thread.

This week at the city's typically sedate Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, there's been much barking, furry things tearing at top speed though the lobby and — don't tell Marin Alsop — a wee puddle in one of the backstage hallways. Shedding, too. It's pretty safe to say that's also a first for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. The BSO is letting its hair down a bit for its annual Holiday Spectacular, which this year prominently features trainer Tony Hoard and his famous show dogs.

Like many U.S. companies, Micros Systems cut costs last year and boosted profits this year. The Columbia-based maker of computerized sales systems for restaurants and hotels earned $32 million last quarter. That was nearly a third more than its profit for the same period in 2009, thanks partly to overseas growth and a nascent U.S. recovery. With about $600 million in cash and short-term investments, Micros has added more to its cash hoard in the last year than all but five other publicly trade Maryland companies, some of them substantially larger.

Willard Barr, 90, former mayor of Fort Worth, Texas, died Sunday of a stroke in Fort Worth. Mr. Barr, father of Mayor Kenneth Barr, was elected to the City Council in 1963 and served a single term as mayor from 1965 to 1967.Harley Flack, 55, president of Wright State University since 1994, died of cancer Sunday in Dayton, Ohio.Mary Cunningham Hoard, 95, former board chairman of W. D. Hoard and Sons Co., a publishing firm, from 1972 to 1992, died Saturday in Whitewater, Wis.Athelstan F. Spilhaus, 86, the first U.S. ambassador to the United Nations' scientific organization, a geophysicist and inventor of a device for measuring deep ocean temperatures, died Monday in Washington.

It didn't take long for Keith Goganious to make a mark with his new team.On Thursday, the Ravens filled a pressing need for a healthy linebacker by signing Goganious. Three days later, Goganious contributed two, first-half tackles in the Ravens' 17-10 victory over the New Orleans Saints."I was just making sure I was lined up where I was supposed to be. I haven't played in a game since December," said Goganious, who is in his fifth year and last played for Jacksonville in 1995. His last game was a loss against the Cleveland Browns in the regular-season finale, when he intercepted a pass and finished the year with 132 tackles.

Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler asked the state's health department Friday to remove all caffeine-infused alcoholic drinks from the state's liquor stores and taverns. "I ask you to exercise your authority … to take all steps available to you to prevent any further distribution or sale of these unsafe, unadulterated, and mislabeled products wherever found in Maryland," Gansler wrote in a letter to John M. Colmers, the state's secretary of health and mental hygiene.