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Immigrants help renew our countryIn his letter, "Stop immigration" (Dec. 16), Thuryle V. McKewin argues that due to the current economic recession, we ought to stop admitting any more immigrants into the U.S. "for the time being."First, I'd like to thank him for being in favor of immigration during good economic times. There are many, like Republican presidential candidates Pat Buchanan and David Duke, who want to close our borders during both good and bad times.But I challenge his statement that we cannot "take in more immigrants when our own people are being laid off."

GEORGE Crosby's engineering career started at Westinghouse. He assumed it would end there. Right ending, wrong script. After 34 years with the company, Crosby was laid off.Carol Diggs had a $40,000-a-year job, a house in the suburbs and, she thought, a future with her banking firm. When her supervisor called, Diggs was expecting a promotion. Instead, she and her position were cut.For 20 years, Jeff Hider followed a white-collar blueprint for success. He climbed the corporate ladder by leapfrogging from one company to another.

One Baltimore woman was laid off from her job with a building contractor. Two days later, she started her own business helping developers obtain building permits.A Silver Spring woman recognized a chance of a lifetime when the phone company she worked for offered an early-retirement plan. She accepted the pension package and went into business for herself as an interior designer.When one Baltimore couple's income dwindled, putting their mortgage payments in jeopardy, the two took a chance.

There must be 109 million ways to ruin your life after finding out you won Powerball. But the most critical decision comes quickly, after about the fourth or fifth time you check the numbers. To go public or not? To grip a check the size of a Charlie Sheen poster for the cameras? Or to hide your good fortune from an admiring and envious world? "We've heard from a couple" who say they own the $109 million Powerball ticket sold in Abingdon last week, says Carole Everett, spokeswoman for the Maryland Lottery.

While hundreds of thousands of federal workers brace for unpaid furloughs starting next month, Uncle Sam is still looking to hire. In one week alone this month, nearly 2,200 job listings available to the public were posted on USAJobs.gov, the federal government's recruiting site. Add in new postings open only to current or former federal workers , including those laid off, and the number of new openings jumps to more than 4,600. "One thing for sure about hiring freezes: They always begin to melt as soon as they are put into place," said Don Kettl, dean of the University of Maryland School of Public Policy at College Park.

On paper, Lisa Scottoline is a little intimidating. She's got more than 30 million copies in print of her books, including 20 best-selling novels. She writes a weekly column, with her daughter, for The Philadelphia Inquirer. She's a graduate of Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and taught a class at the latter called "Justice and Fiction. " But ask her about any connections she might have to Baltimore, where she'll be visiting May 20 as a featured author in the Baltimore Sun Book Club, and you'll quickly discover her self-deprecating sense of humor.

In February, Spike TV announced "Bar Rescue," a design makeover show, would take up the cause of J.A. Murphy's in Fells Point. The show was coming at the request of owners Keith Murphy and Joel Gallant. Theirs was one of more than 200 bars to apply for a guest spot on the show, the network said. Two months later, a new J.A. Murphy's, now dubbed a cliched Murphy's Law, quietly reopened. You could be forgiven for not knowing about it. While the bar got a new draft system and upgraded look, it seems the show's producers - or the owners - forgot to fix some things.

Before gangsta raps there were raps about libraries and teen-age pregnancy; before Dannemora State Prison and the killing bullets, there were pillow fights and the exuberance of youth.Tupac Amaru Shakur did not grow up in Baltimore. He was not a finished product when he left. But his years here encompassed that crucial time when childhood ends and self-discovery begins.He was 14 when he and his mother moved here from the Bronx in 1985. He called himself MC New York and won a rap contest sponsored by the Enoch Pratt Free Library.

A little more than a week ago, little children filled the yard of the Northeast Baltimore home with playthings and laughter. Neighbors of the Denwood Avenue rowhouse recalled happy, friendly and smiling kids under the eye of an ever-watchful grandmother. Now their bikes and toys lie in a charred heap by the concrete front porch. Debris fills the yard from the deadly fire that claimed the lives of four children and the woman the Worrell family called Mama Nancy. Family members and an estimated 1,000 mourners paid final tribute Thursday to Nancy Worrell, the 55-year-old at the heart of a family that included her husband of 27 years, 14 children, 60 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Corrections officers at the Baltimore City Detention Center were preparing for a middle-of-the-night search of jail cells, aimed at rooting out drugs, cellphones, weapons and any other contraband inmates had stashed away. But the officers weren't the only ones getting ready. Hours before the planned checks in January, an FBI affidavit says, word reached Tavon White, an inmate who prosecutors say reigned as the jailhouse leader of a violent gang called the Black Guerrilla Family. White's alleged tipster, according to court records: a corrections officer at the jail.