Import

WASHINGTON -- Food and Drug Administration officials defended the agency yesterday against charges that import restrictions on the abortion-inducing drug RU-486 are a response to political pressures by anti-abortion activists, saying the FDA stands ready to approve import of the controversial French drug for legitimate medical research.FDA representatives appearing at a House small business subcommittee hearing denied charges that limits on the import of RU-486 were depriving U.S. medical researchers of access to the drug, which could be useful in fighting breast cancer and other diseases.

There has been a lot of conflicting information in the local and national press recently about pre-kindergarten. As longtime practitioners of the art of early childhood education, the Maryland Family Network would like to offer some perspective and broaden the conversation. First, publicly funded pre-K is just one piece of a much larger system of early care and education. This system consists of child care centers, family child care, Head Start and a range of other early learning settings, such as private nursery school.

BEIJING -- President Clinton's move yesterday banning U.S. imports of Chinese-made guns strikes at the source of one-third of all firearms and more than half the rifles brought into the United States each year.But the import ban may not seriously hurt the Chinese military conglomerate making most of these weapons. And it does risk alienating politically the Peoples Liberation Army [PLA], a key Chinese organization with which the United States has been trying to restore contacts.The United States issued permits last year allowing the import of about 2 million weapons from China, according to figures provided by the U.S. Embassy.

Redevelopment plans for Carrolltown Center will be unveiled at the next Town Hall meeting, hosted by Carroll County Commissioner Doug Howard. Dixon Harvey, of Black Oak Associates, will discuss plans and a timetable for the project at the meeting on Monday, April 22. "At long last, our community will see plans for the redevelopment of Carrolltowne Mall," Howard said in a press release. "This is an important milestone in our community and should be an exciting meeting. " The troubled shopping center at Liberty and Ridge roads has seen K-Mart and Sears anchor stores shuttered.

Every year millions of wild or exotic animals arrive in the United States to spend the rest of their lives living with families as pets. Stowing away inside many of these creatures is an array of microscopic parasites, bacteria and viruses. Under the right circumstances, they can trigger disease among livestock and humans - such as this spring's monkeypox outbreak in the Midwest. Standing guard against this threat at the nation's ports of entry are overworked inspectors such as Cathy Cockey of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Three people have been arraigned in federal court on charges of conspiring to import and distribute heroin from Sierra Leone to Maryland through Baltimore-Washington International Airport.During a hearing yesterday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, Chief Magistrate Judge Clarence E. Goetz ordered Janice R. Ford, 31, of Washington, held on $100,000 bond. Oladele Joshua Ogunde, 33, a Nigerian national, and Christopher Tizhe, 30, of Hyattsville, were being held pending a detention hearing Monday.

A federal judge sentenced two Los Angeles men this week to decades in prison for importing a huge amount of cocaine and marijuana into the Baltimore region, federal prosecutors announced yesterday. U.S. District Judge William D. Quarles Jr. sentenced Jose Jesus Gutierrez, 31, yesterday to 40 years in prison for conspiracy to import and distribute cocaine and marijuana. On Thursday, the judge had sentenced co-defendant Laurencio Gonzalez, 36, to 45 years on the same charges. According to the U.S. attorney's office, trial testimony showed Gonzalez and Gutierrez distributed over 600 kilograms of cocaine to drug dealers in the Baltimore area in 2002 and 2003.

PRESIDENT CLINTON will not allow himself to be seen as soft on China's cheating on trade commitments during the election campaign. The trade war that continued building yesterday probably will be contained until November and resolved later. It has the virtue of being about genuine trade issues and not about other matters in dispute between two great countries.U.S. officials say that Chinese firms pirated U.S. music, films, books, software and patents to the annual tune of $2.3 billion in lost sales since China agreed in February 1995 to stop the practice.

WASHINGTON - Acting on one of the election year's hottest issues, an overwhelming majority in Congress has voted to lift a ban on the importation of prescription drugs as a protest against the much higher prices charged for pharmaceuticals in the United States. It's not yet clear whether recent votes in the House and Senate will lead to greater access for Americans to discount drugs. But the votes sent shock waves through the politically well-connected pharmaceutical industry, which is spending millions to fight price controls.

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government went further than ever before in trying to end more than two decades of hatred and hostility with Iran yesterday, announcing a lifting of import restrictions on some consumer goods and calling for an increase in people-to-people exchanges. The Clinton administration also openly addressed past grievances between the two nations, acknowledging the "significant" role played by the United States in the 1953 overthrow of Iran's elected government and U.S. support for the regime of Shah Mohammed Riza Pahlevi.

If Johns Hopkins coach Janine Tucker had any concerns that her team would suffer a letdown after last week's upset of then-No. 15 Virginia, she learned early against UMBC on Wednesday she needn't have worried. Hopkins looked every bit the national women's lacrosse power, holding the host Retrievers scoreless for the first 24:34 and building an early five-goal lead before cruising to an 11-5 win at UMBC Stadium. It could've been a trap game, with No. 6 Penn State coming to town Sunday for a critical conference contest.

I live in Clemens Crossing and am fortunate enough to be able to walk to my Giant. So off I went tonight to get a couple bags of groceries. On my way I passed a Mom and three kids at the tot lot. The little boy called to me from high on the swing. He had just called safely and successfully to a stranger! And then I noticed the two little girls were thrilled because they had just spotted a frog in the creek. On I went to then have a fun discussion with a man I had never met about his beautiful Great Dane.

Eight U.S. Marines died as a result of an explosion on a U.S. Army base in Hawthorne, Nevada Monday night while on a training exercise. This tragic story has been carried extensively by The Washington Post as well as national electronic and broadcast media outlets. The Sun mustered no mention of this incident until Thursday ("Severna Park Marine dies in Nev. accident," March 21). A front-page story on a flower fungus was deemed more newsworthy by the editors of your once-respected publication.

SARASOTA, Fla. - Brian Matusz's roller-coaster season had landed him in Triple-A Norfolk last August, and he was walking along the city's harbor in the shadows of majestic naval battleships with his father, Mike. Days earlier, the Orioles left-hander was told that the organization was moving to the bullpen. He initially saw it as another demotion, and two relief appearances in, the results were unspectacular. He called home to Arizona and asked his father to visit him in Virginia.

Last April, The New York Times reported on a startling spike in the deaths of horses running at the Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens. The investigation found widespread use of drugs to prop up horses that were worn out, broken down or otherwise unfit for the contests in which they were entered, contributing to a 100 percent increase in the horse fatality rate in the first few months of the year. Why were horse owners suddenly taking those kinds of risks? The answer was simple: money. A slot machine gambling parlor opened at Aqueduct in late 2011, subsidizing a massive increase in the purses paid to winning horses and creating financial incentives for owners to take advantage of a lax regulatory structure.

The filibuster is back in the news, thanks to Sen. Rand Paul's nearly 13-hour talkathon on U.S. drone policy last week. Putting aside the merits of Mr. Paul's national security views, his feat of endurance was in the best tradition of the Senate. He used his right to unlimited debate on the Senate floor to draw the attention of his fellow citizens to an issue of profound national importance. Other recent filibusters are less noble. Last month, senators used the rules to delay, for little apparent reason, confirmation of their former colleague Chuck Hagel to be secretary of defense.

Tokyo--For centuries, the Daijosai -- the Great Rice Offering Ritual -- made living gods of Japan's emperors.The ceremony will have the same name and the same rice-centered rituals when Emperor Akihito symbolically lies down with Amaterasu, the sun goddess, next month, but the government won't tell anyone it has turned him into anything but what the constitution says he is -- the living symbol of the %J Japanese nation.The change in the emperor's accession ritual is one measure of how far rice, for centuries the intersection of the mysteries of Japan's Shinto religion and the earthly needs of its people, has begun to lose some of its mystique.

The U.S. government is paying the Halliburton Co. an average of $2.64 a gallon to import gasoline and other fuel to Iraq from Kuwait, more than twice what others are paying to truck in Kuwaiti fuel, government documents show. Halliburton, which has the exclusive contract to import fuel into Iraq, subcontracts the work to a Kuwaiti firm, government officials said. But Halliburton receives 26 cents a gallon to cover overhead costs and its fee, according to documents from the Army Corps of Engineers.

The handsome young man sitting in the pink parlor chair radiates restlessness, a disdain for social conventions and undeniable self-satisfaction. The impatience in Richard Caton Woodville's "Self-Portrait with Flowered Wallpaper" can be detected in the wide-thrust knees of the artist born to a wealthy and prominent Baltimore family, and in his hastily buttoned and pointedly shabby jacket. His ego can be gleaned from the care he lavished on painting his face. Woodville imbued his visage with the high, broad forehead and aquiline nose that were thought in that age to signify a lofty mind and an aristocratic, resolute temperament.

A judge delivered a major blow Monday to the state's case against two men accused of fatally slashing the throats of three children nine years ago, ruling that the testimony of a key witness is inadmissible. As prosecutors try for a third time next month to convict Policarpio Espinoza Perez, 31, and Adan Canela, 26, they'll have to do so without some important evidence and witnesses they used to secure a 2006 guilty verdict that was later thrown out by Maryland's top court. Circuit Judge M. Brooke Murdock told the prosecution that it may not use the statements of the woman who said in the earlier trials that she drove the men from work to the crime scene.