Making Progress

Baltimore police say they are making progress arresting suspects in the string of armed robberies that have plagued the Baltimore area since the fall.In the past month, 13 people have been arrested in the 73 robberies of banks, supermarkets and other businesses in the city and Baltimore and Anne Arundel counties."This is a progress report," Baltimore police spokesman Dennis Hill said yesterday. "I think people need to know . . . we are making progress on the arrests of the holdup men."We're not slacking off," Hill said, but "we're not claiming a great success.

FORWARD OPERATING BASE Q-WEST, Iraq -- Their commanding general spent hours delivering his report card and pages of charts to Congress this week as several hundred members of the Maryland National Guard kept up their own punishing schedule at this base in northern Iraq. Some who paused here to watch the testimony of Gen. David Petraeus or absorb the news accounts said they were encouraged and impressed by his message. Others said it wouldn't change their views, either of the war or their role in it. "It was an honest presentation," Cpl. Sean Dolan, 30, of Pocomoke said after hearing some of Monday's testimony, in which Petraeus described "uneven" military progress in Iraq.

A little Sunday smorgasbord:I said it before the season started, I'll repeat it now, and I'll still be saying it when the last football is put in storage for the winter. As an old grad, as a member of the M Club and as one who has covered University of Maryland football impartially for more than 30 years, it is my unqualified feeling that, whatever the final won-lost record shows this year, Joe Krivak's contract as head coach should be extended.He is a good coach and a good, honest, decent human being who is running a sound, scandal-free program, which is exactly what the university needs at this stage as it tries to get out from under its National Collegiate Athletic Association sanctions and other difficulties within the athletic system, none of which was of Krivak's making.

PARIS -- Trade ministers from the world's most powerful industrial nations yesterday gave their most upbeat assessment to date on the likelihood of reaching an agreement on market access.Officials from the United States, Japan, the European Community and Canada described their meeting in the Uruguay Round of global trade talks as a successful step toward an outline agreement on removing barriers to trade in services and in industrial and agricultural goods.They expressed confidence that the outline would be prepared in time for consideration and approval by heads of state and government at the summit of the Group of Seven leading industrial nations next month in Tokyo.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- In our continuing effort to honor and respect the Sacramento Kings, to leap on the Bobby Hurley bandwagon and take a kinder, gentler approach to an NBA team that never wins 30 games, we request a brief timeout.Excuse me, but wasn't anyone worried that things were a little too quiet at training camp? Didn't anyone think the Kings were overdue for bad news?Right on schedule, here comes Walt Williams, out four or five weeks with a stress fracture in his lower left leg. Chalk it up to Kings Luck.

In Friday's preseason loss to the New York Jets, there was no better player among the Ravens than quarterback Eric Zeier. And the toughest part about Zeier's job is that, in four months, he might look back on 1997 and point to that August night as the highlight of his season.Such is life through the eyes of a backup.Heading into his third season -- not to mention the end of a three-year contract he signed as a third-round pick of the Cleveland Browns in 1995 -- Zeier is long removed from the weekly highlight reels he generated as a star at Georgia, where he set 67 school records and 18 Southeastern Conference marks that still stand.

Jonathan Ogden wants to stay in Baltimore, says he belongs in Hawaii in February for his third straight Pro Bowl, and is gradually accepting a new role as the leader on the Ravens' offensive line."

Jurors in Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon's theft and embezzlement trial are heading into a fourth day of deliberations today but reported Monday that they were making "progress." A note delivered about 4:30 p.m. Monday from the jury forewoman asked Judge Dennis M. Sweeney to dismiss jurors for the day but also said, "We are making progress." "My suggestion is that we follow the jury's lead," Sweeney said, and instructed the nine women and three men to return at 9 a.m. today.

Monday was one of the longest days of racing NASCAR has had. Because of rain, the sanctioning body had to stack races and run both the Cup race and the Nationwide race on the same day. The big winner in all of that was Joe Gibbs Racing. Not only did JGR win the Cup race with driver Denny Hamlin just 2 1/2 weeks removed from surgery on his anterior cruciate ligament, the team now has all three cars in the top 12. Considering Joey Logano's growth, that is a significant accomplishment.

A spate of violence in the city continued with a daylight shooting that left three people dead inside a West Baltimore apartment, as members of the City Council on Tuesday pressed police commanders to address a rise in killings and robberies. The Fulton Avenue shootings took the life of two women and a man, the latest in an explosion of violence in West Baltimore, which has already seen 15 murders this year, half of its total for all of 2012. Ten of those killings have occurred in just a 12-block stretch southwest of Druid Hill Park and near Mondawmin Mall.