Partnership

South Carroll High School recently formed a new business partnership with DejaVu Boutique in Mount Airy. Through the agreement, Jamie Sauro, the company's director of operations, and Veronica Cello, general manager, will be business representatives working with the school to provided a speaker for the school's clothing course, and will also participate in mock interviews and set up a booth at sporting events. The company will also co-sponsor a fashion show in January, with proceeds going toward the South Carroll High prom.

Now that Major League Soccer has its first openly gay player , the league is launching a new effort to tackle anti-gay attitudes and encourage inclusion in its ranks. Through a partnership with the You Can Play Project, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting LGBT discrimination in sports, the MLS and MLS Players Union hope to build on existing anti-discrimination efforts to offer greater support for gay players and fans. "The diversity found in our League has always been a point of pride for us," MLS commissioner Don Garber said in a statement released today.

Lacrosse equipment maker STX LLC has formed a one-year partnership with USA Field Hockey, the Baltimore-based company said Monday. STX, which also makes field hockey equipment and is the most widely distributed brand in the United States for the sport, said it had signed Carrie Lingo, a member of the 2008 USA field hockey Olympic team, as a product and brand advisor. Lingo will be featured in a new field hockey marketing campaign for STX, the company said. Through the partnership, STX will provide USA Field Hockey with equipment and funding and will work with the organization on a program to encourage youth participation in field hockey.

At the behest of business owners - and using their financial contributions - the Waterfront Partnership is extending its safety and cleaning services into the heart of Fells Point. "It's really a great example of a community coming together to better the place that they live, work and play," said Mike Maraziti, president of Fell's Point Main Street Inc., a nonprofit that promotes commerce in the neighborhood. About 30 businesses and a few residents chipped in more than $150,000 to hire the Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore Inc. to empty garbage cans, sweep sidewalks and provide safety patrols, said Maraziti, who owns One-Eyed Mike's tavern, near the corner of South Bond and Aliceanna streets.

The University of Maryland, Baltimore on Thursday announced a public-private partnership with two companies to offer stem cells for research and clinical testing. The university's Center for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine will work with Paragon Bioservices Inc., based in the university's BioPark, to offer stem cell services, such as the production and storage of various types of stem cells. The second company, California-based Life Technologies Inc., will provide training for research scientists who perform work for the partnership.

REINA World, created in early 2011, is one of the newest joshi, or all-women, promotions out of Japan.  Mia Yim, begain working with REINA World in May 2011 and officially became part of their roster in September 2012.  Yim has wrestled all over the United States, but she considers Baltimore's Real Championship Wrestling her home company.  She's been instrumental in forming a partnership between RCW and...

FedEx is a shipping company — except on football Sundays in Washington. Verizon is a communications company, unless professional hockey is being played at the home of the Capitals. Verizon competes with Comcast, unless you're talking about the home court of the University of Maryland Terrapins. Now, State Farm Insurance wants to be identified as a good Samaritan by drivers whose cars go kaput on Maryland highways. Just like FedEx, Verizon and Comcast, the insurance company has entered into a partnership — albeit somewhat less glamorous than the others — with the state of Maryland.

I am only about 2,000 news cycles behind with this post. But I was working on another project since Monday and did not have time to write about the GOP candidates debate hosted by CNN and the Tea Party Express. I thought I would get over it, but I continue to be troubled by the criticism CNN received in some quarters for partnering with the Tea Party to bring this debate to a prime time audience. I am troubled by the ideological nature of the criticism, as well as the hypocrisy and less than stellar reporting that characterized some of it. Look, I am not going to go on and on with my explanation as to why CNN should have been commended rather than criticized for partnering with the Tea Party, but let me just offer a piece of it. One of the primary roles of the media is to bring citizens reliable information that they can use to make informed choices in their lives, and didn't CNN (with the help of the Tea Party)

The Johns Hopkins University and Milles, Oken and Seals have created a partnership expanding the physicians' internal medicine practice in Columbia.The partnership, announced yesterday, gives Hopkins a minority interest in the Howard County practice.In return, Hopkins agreed to establish specialty clinics, preventive care programs and a clinical research center staffed by Hopkins faculty and Howard County physicians.Hopkins said it will lease space at 5900 Cedar Lane in Columbia, near Howard County General Hospital, to provide space for the clinics.

Texas Roadhouse of Fallston announced recently it has formed a partnership with the Upper Chesapeake Health Foundation in support of The Senator Bob Hooper House, Harford County's first residential hospice facility. Texas Roadhouse will be donating entrees and providing food service to an estimated 750 guests who will be in attendance for the 14th annual Upper Chesapeake Hospice Regatta planned for June in Havre de Grace. The restaurant is committed to making a positive impact by providing all food at free for this year's Hospice Regatta.

For Capt. Martin Noorsalu, deploying to Afghanistan with the Maryland National Guard last year was an unusual opportunity. Noorsalu is one of only a dozen helicopter pilots in the Estonian Air Force. The sole air defense service of the former Soviet republic numbers some 400 personnel. They fly four helicopters. But from September to December, Noorsalu and fellow Estonian Air Force Capt. Rene Kallis flew medical evacuation missions in Afghanistan with Maryland National Guard members in the 1st General Support Aviation Battalion of the 169th Aviation Regiment.

You are doing a disservice to readers presenting the lobbyist cheerleader version of public-private partnerships or "P3" without a cautionary review of the history of their unfettered development ("The future of infrastructure," May 9). Just consider Sandy Apgar's statement: "Business partnerships succeed on handshakes and prosper with cooperation but fail if they become adversarial. Although P3 terms must be formalized on paper, a P3 that relies on its contract, not its leaders, to solve policy and operational problems is doomed to fail.

There's a P3 in your future. Maryland is poised to join 34 states and key federal agencies in transforming the way government works. The new mantra, "P3," is shorthand for public-private partnerships. Maryland's P3 legislation, championed by Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, enables state agencies to engage business in planning, financing, building and operating public projects, from roads and rail to schools and other infrastructure. These could offset up to 10 percent of the state's capital budget, or $300 million annually, and create thousands of jobs.

It is unfortunate that the authors of the recent commentary, "Don't let Israel discriminate," (April 30), distort the purpose and the effect of the U.S.-Israel Strategic Partnership Act. This bill merely states that the State of Israel is designated as a country that is eligible for the Visa Waiver Program. This Visa Waiver Program waives the necessity of obtaining a visa for certain foreign visitors that meet certain requirements. These requirements include that the country of origin is friendly to the U.S., that it has in place high-levels of security so that adequate information on the visiting persons helps assure that they are not threats, that the visitors enter the U.S. for a limited time and for valid business purposes and that the visitors have plans to return to their country of origin.

Mark Montgomery, president and CEO of Ports America Chesapeake, will be the guest speaker at the BWI Business Partnership's May signature breakfast and annual transportation forum, Wednesday, May 15, from 7:45 to 9:15 a.m. at the BWI Airport Marriott, 1743 West Nursery Road, in Linthicum. Ports America, the largest terminal operator in America, is responsible for the widening of the berth at Seagirt Marine Terminal in Baltimore. The Port of Baltimore is one of only two ports on the East Coast that will be able to accommodate the super-sized ships expected to arrive through the expanded Panama Canal in 2014.Montgomery was honored as the Baltimore Museum of Industry's Industrialist of the Year in 2012.

City leaders assembled on a small side street near Morgan State University in Northeast Baltimore on Friday morning — steps from the sites of three recent car thefts and at least one burglary — and pledged to transform the region with cooperation from the college and community. "This is about a long-term engagement ... to bring about sustained change in the area," Morgan President David J. Wilson said in announcing the initiative, known as the "Morgan Community Mile. " It's one of a half-dozen similar efforts led by higher-education "anchor institutions" throughout the city to improve their respective environments for staff and students, but also for residents who live near the campuses.

When the Chesapeake Bay restoration program began in earnest in 1983, with the signing of the first Chesapeake Bay Agreement, it was hailed as the beginning of a new era of interjurisdictional partnering to save a national treasure. And so it was. With the recognition that a "cooperative approach" was needed "to fully address the extent, complexity, and sources of pollutants entering the Bay," Pennsylvania Gov. Richard Thornburgh, Maryland Gov. Harry Hughes, Virginia Gov. Chuck Robb, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator William Ruckelshaus created the Chesapeake Executive Council with a commitment to "assess and oversee implementation of coordinated plans to improve and protect the water quality and living resources of the Chesapeake Bay. " This unique partnership of federal, state and city governments, of Republican and Democratic leadership, grew to be recognized internationally as one of the most successful multijurisdictional restoration efforts in the world.

The BWI Business Partnership elected a new slate of officers at its annual meeting.Frank J. Guillott, director of capital resources at Westinghouse Electric Corp., was elected chairman of the board.Other officers elected were: President James J. Cannelli, assistant planning and zoning officer, Anne Arundel County Office of Planning and Zoning; vice chairman, Samuel F. Heffner, chairman of Airport Square Companies; treasurer Jay Hierholzer, associate administrator, Maryland Aviation Administration; and secretary, Catherine S. Hill, Commuter Transportation Center, National Security Agency.

Baltimore's spending panel on Wednesday unanimously approved $285,000 for city police to hire a Massachusetts-based consultant — the highest of five bidders — to recommend how the department should be run. Despite the protests of competing consultants and a city councilman, the city's Board of Estimates, which is controlled by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, voted 5-0 to hire Strategic Policy Partnership LLC, based in Martha's Vineyard, to...

City leaders hope that by this time next year they'll have returned from Annapolis with funds to put toward making the Inner Harbor what its original designers intended it to be - "a playground for Baltimoreans. " "The city has changed so much since the original development of the Inner Harbor," said Laurie Schwartz, executive director of the Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore Inc., a nonprofit that manages and advocates for the city's waterfront. It's time to evaluate the Inner Harbor and decide what needs to be done to sustain it as a vibrant part of the city, she said.