Label

A federal review of safety concerns about cough and cold remedies ought to be quick and result in restrictions on the products' marketing and use, Baltimore's health commissioner said yesterday. Dr. Joshua Sharfstein and a group of prominent pediatricians petitioned the Food and Drug Administration Thursday to warn parents against giving cough and cold medications to young children. The group wants the FDA to require drugmakers to stop marketing products for infants and babies. It also wants warning labels stating that the medications "have not been found to be safe or effective" for children under 6. FDA officials announced plans yesterday to review the matter over the next several months.

WASHINGTON -- Federal health officials proposed new label warnings for all antidepressants yesterday, a move aimed at protecting 18- to 24-year-olds who might be at increased risk of suicidal thinking and behavior during early months of treatment. The "black box" update would follow similar changes made to antidepressants' labels in 2005 that added a warning of increased suicide risks among children and adolescents but did not give specific ages. The Food and Drug Administration emphasized that patients who are advised by their doctors to take an antidepressant should not stop using the drug.

GLOUCESTER, Mass. -- No one taught Bruce McNeil to read in elementary school, and he stuttered so badly that a minute could go by before a word would form.Still, McNeil says, his elementary school teachers in Salem would force him to stand before his taunting classmates and try to read to them.They called him retarded. At first, the label stung. Then it merely hurt. As McNeil grew older, it seeped in and became part of him.He used it to win assistance from the state, calling himself one of the nation's few mentally retarded entrepreneurs.

U.S. offers to label beef to cool dispute with EUThe United States proposed labeling beef exports to the European Union in an effort to end a decade-old EU ban and defuse a potentially explosive trade dispute over hormone-treated beef, a U. S. trade official said yesterday.Peter Scher, U. S. trade representative special negotiator for agriculture trade, said the proposal marks the first time Washington has been willing to accept the idea of a mandatory country-of-origin label for U.S. beef exports to Europe.

THE MOST effective animal protection measure of recent times has been the "dolphin safe" tuna label campaign that has reduced the fishing boat slaughter of these marvelous marine mammals, following a grass-roots consumer boycott and then U.S. law in 1990. The killing of dolphins by tuna netting has dropped from 130,000 a year in 1986 to fewer than 3,000 in 1996.Now the White House wants to overturn this remarkable success, arguing that other nations will violate the rules anyway and that "dolphin safe" methods needlessly kill young tuna, sea turtles, sharks and other creatures.

More evidence that the theme-restaurant business is a hard life: Hard Rock Cafe, which has had flat sales in its restaurants, is branching into television.It also plans to announce a new music-recording venture later this month."Hard Rock Live," a weekly one-hour television music series produced by the co-creator of MTV's popular "Unplugged," is scheduled to debut in March on the VH-1 cable-music channel.The $35 million production, to be taped at Sony Studios in New York, is sponsored by VH-1, Pontiac automobiles and Warner Bros.

Champion Industries Inc., a Huntington, W.Va.-based business form printer, announced yesterday that it had agreed to buy Baltimore-based U.S. Tag & Ticket, the nation's oldest maker of paper tags, for $1.1 million in stock.Tom Burdette, president of the privately owned tag company, a division of U.S. Tag & Label, said that Champion planned to keep operating the 30-worker East Baltimore plant.Mr. Burdette said the tag company's owners had turned down other, more lucrative offers from competitors who planned to shut the Baltimore plant.

You would expect a woman with a raucous sense of humor like Patti Austin -- who, during a nationally televised awards show called Olivia Newton-John "Olivia Neutron-Bomb" -- to be able to take anything in stride.So as Ms. Austin copes with the absence of a recording contract for the first time in about 20 years, she's doing it with the typical aplomb that she's used to deal with everything in life."I guess at this point, I should be on the ceiling screaming because not only am I label-less, but I'm 45 [in three weeks]

In Wednesday's A La Carte section, an incorrect wine label was pictured. The correct label for the 1993 Napa Ridge North Coast Cabernet Sauvignon, Oak Barrel, is shown above.The Sun regrets the errors.

The staff of Clue magazine doesn't like the "twentysomething" label.They admit that's what they are and acknowledge it's the audience they have in mind for their soon-to-be-launched Baltimore literary magazine. And lacking anything better, they even plan to use it in their new publication, which they hope will showcase the city's artistic and literary talent.But they don't necessarily like the image it conveys -- vaguely elitist, a tad superficial, the idea of a generation that doesn't know where it's going and doesn't really care.

Many bands, even in today's reality TV, Internet-savvy world, go through a stretch of paying dues. The story usually goes something like this: For a while, the group travels from gig to gig in a beat-up van, selling its CDs at shows. A buzz starts. Eventually, a suit at a major label catches wind of the group's "fresh" sound and offers a contract. By the time mainstream pop audiences hear said band's music, all the style kinks have usually been smoothed out. Well, that is not the story of Cute Is What We Aim For. The emo-pop band, whose name originated from an inside joke, landed a major-label deal soon after forming and posting songs on its MySpace page.

It can take more than a commitment to eat right these days. It can also take some research before you head to the grocery. Is there a difference between "low fat" and "fat free"? Is "natural" the same as "organic"? Is "whole wheat" the same as "100 percent whole grain"? The short answer: Words matter. The government specifically defines some labels but not others, the food industry makes up some of its own rules, and consumers are left to make sense of it all. The consequences can be significant.

When coronary arteries get dangerously narrow, the solution -- increasingly -- is to prop open the walls with a device called a drug-eluting stent. Now, two new studies are adding fuel to a growing debate about whether these stents are being overused, with ill consequences for patients. The studies, both published in the May 9 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, included large groups of patients who were treated for narrowing in their coronary arteries with the stents, which are tiny drug-coated cylinders used to prop open blocked arteries.

In the past year, less has been more for Judd and Maggie. The brother and sister singer/songwriter team was signed to a major label in 2004 and dropped at the end of last summer. Now, after writing and recording a new EP in their Nashville, Tenn., apartment, the duo is on a two-week tour. They come to the Ottobar on Tuesday. Judd, 27, and Maggie Bolger, 23, started playing music together about five years ago. Though their family is originally from New York, they lived near Catonsville for a while and moved to Frederick during high school.

WASHINGTON -- Federal health officials proposed new label warnings for all antidepressants yesterday, a move aimed at protecting 18- to 24-year-olds who might be at increased risk of suicidal thinking and behavior during early months of treatment. The "black box" update would follow similar changes made to antidepressants' labels in 2005 that added a warning of increased suicide risks among children and adolescents but did not give specific ages. The Food and Drug Administration emphasized that patients who are advised by their doctors to take an antidepressant should not stop using the drug.

When I was a kid looking up at a movie screen, I could read the text faster than it scrolled up from the bottom of the screen - "Once upon a time, in a land faraway, in a beautiful castle in the forest" - and I took this to mean that I was smart. It came as a huge relief to be smart, since dumb kids were scorned and teased, and to demonstrate my smartness, I learned facts from the World Almanac and I developed prowess as a speller. By the time I was 10, I had won the label of Brain. This was easier back then: If you wore glasses and were self-absorbed, they took it as brilliance.

A federal review of safety concerns about cough and cold remedies ought to be quick and result in restrictions on the products' marketing and use, Baltimore's health commissioner said yesterday. Dr. Joshua Sharfstein and a group of prominent pediatricians petitioned the Food and Drug Administration Thursday to warn parents against giving cough and cold medications to young children. The group wants the FDA to require drugmakers to stop marketing products for infants and babies. It also wants warning labels stating that the medications "have not been found to be safe or effective" for children under 6. FDA officials announced plans yesterday to review the matter over the next several months.

The timing is off -- way off. But Sunshine Anderson feels it's better late than never. After nearly six years of silence, the R&B singer has finally released her sophomore effort, Sunshine After Midnight. The CD belatedly follows her hit 2001 debut, Your Woman. Spurred by the sassy, strutting crossover smash "Heard It All Before," that album entered the Top 10 on Billboard's pop charts five Aprils ago, eventually going gold. Anderson's lyrical directness and swaggering, slightly off-key approach drew comparisons to the original 'hood-rat diva, Mary J. Blige.

With its first independent label release in 14 years, Everclear is returning to its indie rock roots tonight at the Recher Theatre. Lead singer Art Alexakis boasts that he's written the "ultimate break-up song" on the album, Welcome to the Drama Club. Following the breakup of Alexakis' marriage and having to declare bankruptcy after Everclear's split with its longtime label, the band has been through it all -- including recording several multiplatinum records and a critically acclaimed greatest-hits album.

Hometown -- Columbia Current members --Ashley Llorens Founded in --2000 Style --hip hop, rap and indie Influenced by --Common, Black Thought, Nas, Rakim, Miles Davis, Big Pun, Radiohead Notable --With three solo records under his belt and a new mix tape dropping later this month, Llorens has no qualms about his lack of a major label contract. He proudly lists "indie" as one of his genres on his MySpace page. After all, he is an independent artist in the true sense of the word. Quotable --"What this affords me is the opportunity to hold out for a deal that satisfies the terms that I'm comfortable with," Llorens said.