Malt Liquor

The Maryland Parole Commission has released the Mount Airy man who bought malt liquor for a group of teen-agers who later crashed a stolen car along Liberty Road, killing three of them.Milton Stanley Bowens Jr., 25, was paroled March 14 after serving about half his six-month sentence on a reckless endangerment conviction tied to the fatal accident June 6, 1993."He's doing just fine, just fine," Mr. Bowens' mother, Gloria Bowens, said Friday of her son.A Carroll jury in October convicted Mr. Bowens of reckless endangerment and furnishing alcohol to minors.

County police arrested two 17-year-old Pasadena residents in Odenton Friday on charges of violating liquor laws, county police said.The youths, who live in the 8200 block of Doby Lane and the 8300 block of Catherine Ave., were charged with underage possession of alcohol and released to their parents.Detective Paul W. Johnson spotted two youths pacing nervously outside Bill's Lounge in the 1600 block of Annapolis Road shortly after 9 p.m., police said.A few minutes later, a man walked out of the store and handed the youths a package in a paper bag. The youths left together, and the man left separately.

A Carroll jury is to begin deciding today whether a 25-year-old Mount Airy man bought the malt liquor that contributed to a crash along Liberty Road more than a year ago in which three teen-agers died.Milton Stanley Bowens Jr., who was indicted in June on two counts of furnishing alcohol to minors and one count of reckless rTC endangerment, represented himself yesterday before the jury of 10 men and two women that is to begin deliberating after closing arguments today.He did not testify and called only one witness, his father.

First there was PowerMaster, a high-alcohol malt liquor roundly attacked for its name (implying that it was a strong intoxicant) and its alleged targeting of blacks.G. Heileman Brewing Co., the maker of PowerMaster, pulled it from the market in July after only a few weeks when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms said the name ran afoul of a law prohibiting the promoting of a beer's strength on its label.Now, Heileman is back with a new malt liquor called Colt 45 Premium. The problem is that it is in virtually the same style can as the old PowerMaster, and many of the same controversies are dogging the company.

He lined up at fullback, but from the moment he set foot in training camp in 1961, Jerry Hill understood his role with the Colts. "I was John Unitas' bodyguard," he said. For nine years, Hill policed the Baltimore backfield, protecting Unitas from defenders who thundered in to sack No. 19 or whoever was quarterbacking the Colts. Others got the glory; Hill got the satisfaction of a job well done. Did Unitas critique his blocking? "He would if I missed one," Hill said. Which wasn't often.

The tavern at 102 N. Liberty St. has the odd mixture of beauty and grime that makes the argument over whether to demolish it and other buildings as part of Baltimore's $350 million west-side urban renewal project as sticky as malt liquor on linoleum. The top half of the Downtown Sports Exchange is an architectural treasure. Preservationists praise the neo-Gothic arches and arrow slits on the 1920s building, saying the ornate stone and brick shouldn't be torn down for a suburban-style chain store.

MAYOR KURT Schmoke has been actively spreading the word about his plans for making Baltimore a more livable city, and explaining how the $100 million in Empowerment Zone funding will help this effort.For years, the government has thrown money at problems in poor communities with very limited success. This time officials say things will be different: The Empowerment Zone money will be used to help develop jobs. That's a laudable goal since a chief cause of poverty is unemployment. But I'd like to see city officials go beyond finding remedies for joblessness and concentrate too on the inner-city infrastructure that helps to foster crime, drug addiction, anti-social behavior and poverty.

The young man is tapping the name on the concrete wall of 2510 E. Biddle St., tapping it insistently, emphatically, as he makes his point. This name, spray-painted here and across the street and around the corner, these words, "1 Love Dre 1975-1999," were not left randomly to disrespect property and community. "Don't disrespect this by calling it graffiti," he says. "This is a piece of my heart right here." His name is Troy, and pieces of his heart are all around East Biddle Street and Milton Avenue: "RIP Dre The good die young.

When he decided, finally, that it was time to end the life of a woman he loved, Tony Boston knew the perfect place was church, in front of God and the whole congregation. It would be a gesture as big and dramatic as the woman herself. After all, there was no hope of hiding his plan. Nearly everyone in Baltimore knew this woman, or at least had heard of her. She could walk into a room, all brassy, sassy 350-plus pounds of her, and bring you to your feet, singing, dancing, laughing.

&TC Nearly two-thirds of callers to SUNDIAL say the G. Heileman Brewing Co. should not target young black men with its potent malt liquor, PowerMaster, but a majority of callers would not have the brewer withdraw the product from the market.Of 481 callers, 306, or 64 percent, said the brewer should not target young black men, and 175 callers (36 percent) said the company should. Only 207 callers, or 43 percent, wanted the brewer to withdraw the product from the market, while 274 (57 percent)