Loser

The game drew 2,500 fans to the Towson Center and merited many more. The winners shot 60 percent. The losers needed only 90 seconds to make an 11-point deficit disappear late in the second half. Each of the four starting guards scored at least 20 points. The game ended at 85-84, with seven players sprawled on the court diving for a loose ball. Get me a T-O, baby.That the winner was Loyola and the loser was Towson State will surprise many Basketball Joneses. Towson made the NCAA tournament last year, had won eight straight, is unbeaten in its conference.

JESSE JACKSON has added a significant new element of uncertainty to the embryonic contest for the Democratic presidential nomination. Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water, the civil rights leader says he is giving "the most serious consideration" to a third campaign for the presidency.The Assumption in the political community for the past several months has been that Jackson would not run again in 1992. He has been negotiating with CNN for a televised talk show. He had lost some stature by declining to run for mayor of the District of Columbia.

It began as a bit of advice from his girlfriend, and it ended with Duke junior forward Chris Carrawell sitting in his hotel room and going over tape after tape of Maryland on the eve of yesterday's game between the two top-five teams."

Session's winners and losers talliedTwo moods -- both of them dark -- clouded the 1991 session of the Maryland General Assembly. When lawmakers weren't squirming beneath the weight of an economic recession, they were shielding themselves from the fallout of a gubernatorial depression.Between the bad budget news and the bad vibes, the session, which ends at midnight today, was a 90-day test of wits, endurance and humor. So who comes out a winner and who crawls out a loser? Very few players will awaken tomorrow untarnished by the legislative grind.

The Middle East peace conference in Madrid showed what is possible when a fight ends with the victor unable to accept he has won, the vanquished unwilling to admit he has lost and the referee insistent on keeping the outcome to himself.Of course, it helps if the winners are the neurotically insecure Israelis, the losers are vainglorious Arabs and the referee is the ever wily U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III.The unsentimental secretary of state has crafted a negotiating process based mainly on the cold calculation that the loss of two wars -- one cold and one hot -- had left the Arabs desperately weakened and therefore ready to negotiate an end to their decades-old bitter dispute with the Israelis.

WHEN IT comes to news reporting, the old city-room edict is always: first, get the story; and second, get it right. When the writer gets it wrong, it's a mess. It gets the reader who knows better all upset, confuses history and puts an error in the record books. I know; I've had my share of errors.Recently, the New York Times, which is known for its excellence, included what some of us around Baltimore consider a glaring error. On Sunday, July 9, the Times published an article about Baltimore in its travel section, called "What's Doing in Baltimore," by writer Melinda Henneberger.

It was while she was serving dinner to her kids in 2008 and their dad was out campaigning for president, that Michelle Obama hatched a modest daydream: a vegetable garden on the White House grounds. She'd recently had a conversation with her children's pediatrician about their eating habits, and the poor health of children he was seeing in his practice. It shook her up — he was treating obesity and diabetes in kids — and she resolved to make better food choices for her family. She never said anything to Barack Obama about a vegetable garden (she told interviewers this week that she didn't want to jinx things with a "what if" question)

An uncle of the two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings said his nephews had brought shame to his family and ethnicity, while their father insisted they were innocent and had been framed. The uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, said Friday from his front lawn in Montgomery Village that he had been following news reports and never could have imagined his brother's children were involved in the attack. He and another brother living in the middle-class Washington suburb said they have been estranged from the suspects' family.

Earl Weaver penned his own epitaph. “On my tombstone just write, 'The sorest loser that ever lived,' “ he once said. Weaver, the Orioles' chain-smoking, umpire-baiting, tomato-growing manager who led the team to four American League pennants and the 1970 world championship in his 17 years here, died late Friday night while on a baseball-themed cruise. The Orioles confirmed his death Saturday morning but did not release a cause. The Hall of Famer, who lived in Pembroke Pines, Fla., was 82. “Earl Weaver stands alone as the greatest manager in the history of the Orioles organization and one of the greatest in the history of baseball,” Orioles owner Peter Angelos said in a statement.

Here are my predictions for WWE Extreme Rules:  BROCK LESNAR VS. TRIPLE H: CAGE MATCH I think Brock Lesnar needs the win here, because I see him continuing on for another big match, while I see Triple H returning in the future only if absolutely necessary. Perhaps Paul Heyman's "newest" client (or clients) interferes in this match, helping Lesnar get the win. Because it's a cage match, neither superstar has to be pinned or submitted, one can simply exit through the cage, which means that the loser doesn't look as weak in a loss.