Pinnacle

As she watches the Florida real estate market soften around her, Susie Hurst is getting nervous. The 59-year-old former teacher had thought that rental income from several properties she had accumulated over the years would finance her retirement. But higher insurance costs (the result of hurricanes), taxes and upkeep expenses have turned her cash flow to negative of late. She recently took out a home-equity line to cover the shortfall and is considering going back to work. She also is thinking about selling some of her $1.5 million real estate empire, which consists of a four-unit apartment building, a duplex and a small home adjacent to her own residence in Orlando.

Hamilton Smith never imagined himself trying to answer biology's grandest question.For more than 30 years, he'd been content to study bacteria, hunching over colonies of germs. He left it to others to tease out the secrets in the twisted, tangled and nearly endless coils of human DNA.Hidden there are the answers to the central mysteries of biology and medicine -- how we grow up and grow old, fall ill and get well, how genes influence our instincts and intellects. Inscribed in our DNA is the saga of 4 billion years of evolution and the story of mankind's dispersal across the Earth.

The bulk of the first round of 1996 NFL cards is due next month, but Baltimore football fans will find their Ravens looking a lot like Cleveland Browns.That's because NFL Properties will be releasing the Ravens' colors and logo about the same time, far too late in the production cycle to be included in the cards.Two of the earliest sets, Pacific's Pure Gridiron, shipped in mid-May, and Upper Deck's Collector's Choice, due in mid-June, have Browns. No Ravens. The companies blame the timing of the move and production schedules.

NEW YORK -- U.S. stocks gained as rising automobile and railroad shares reinforced the biggest one-day gain in technology-related companies in a week.Stocks were boosted by a flock of better-than-expected earnings reports from high-tech stocks including C-Cube Microsystems Inc., Seagate Technology Inc. and SGS-Thomson Microelectronics NV, Altera Corp. and Pinnacle Systems Inc.One round of computer-guided orders to buy stocks further lifted shares in the early afternoon.Starting with International Business Machines Corp.

Company sees promise in 401(k) consultingInvestment experts consider it nothing less than a tragedy that so many employees in their 20s, 30s and 40s put their 401(k) money into low-earning, relatively risk-free investments."You've got all these people out there sticking all their money into money market mutual funds because they're scared to death of losing their retirement savings," says John R. Hill, a member of the newly formed Pinnacle Advisory Group L.C. in Columbia.So Pinnacle has started the 401(k)

SO NOW it is up to the Arabs, Arabs in the new Palestine being created, and Arabs far beyond.On Feb. 15, 1993, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel said that the more the Palestine Liberation Organization lost its authority, the better it would be for progress toward peace.Two weeks later he said Yasser Arafat himself was a big obstacle to peace. And on May 3, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres wrote a letter to the American Zionist Organization: "Supported by hard evidence, we believe the PLO is engaged in terrorist activities and is therefore no partner for any negotiations or dialogue."

Pitchers and catchers, with 12 days until they report, may have begun to think about packing. But it's midseason for baseball cards.Collectors can add Upper Deck, Pinnacle and Fleer Series 2 to their score cards.Score is bringing its mid-priced Pinnacle line back for a second season. The first series, 310 cards, will be available this month and the second series in June.Preview cards have strong action shots from games of players as you think of them -- Deion Sanders running the bases, John Kruk getting ready to make contact, Cal Eldred coming over the top. The color scheme is still basic black, and subsets and insert sets abound.

For baseball fans interested in the Negro Leagues, the place to start is the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.The museum opened in January 1991 in Kansas City's 18th and Vine Historic District, a few blocks from the Paseo YMCA building where Andrew "Rube" Foster organized the Negro National Baseball League in 1920.Memorabilia from the Negro Leagues is on display, and there is memorabilia for sale.Looking ahead, the museum has plans for a computerized research center, with a custom database that will facilitate access to statistical and biographical data.

Bills would extend city landfill's lifeBALTIMORE -- City Council President Mary Pat Clarke yesterday introduced legislation that would prevent Baltimore's Quarantine Road Landfill from accepting trash generated outside the city.Currently, the Quarantine Road landfill is filling up faster than city officials anticipated because it accepts trash from the entire metropolitan area.The landfill opened in 1985 and was expected to last 19 years. But now, with a final section scheduled to be constructed in the coming months, the 143-acre landfill is expected to reach capacity in 2001.

Dream Team cards break baseball's holdCollectors returning to summer staplesFor a few golden weeks, the Dream Team pulled off an extraordinary feat. It turned the attention of collectors in baseball-crazy Baltimore to basketball in midsummer."

After years of delay, Baltimore is moving to allow a prominent developer to build two residential towers along Key Highway - renewing community concerns about the future of the peninsula's vanishing waterfront. If the City Council approves the zoning change, HarborView developer Richard A. Swirnow would be permitted to build a 26-story tower and could also proceed on an adjacent 17-story building west of the high-rise already on the site. City officials say the proposed design is the best they have seen because it maintains better views of the water for surrounding residents and includes first-floor shopping to enliven Key Highway.

SHENZHEN, China -- At least 20,000 police surveillance cameras are being installed along streets in southern China and will soon be guided by sophisticated computer software from an American-financed company to automatically recognize the faces of police suspects and detect unusual activity. The program will start this month in a port neighborhood and then spread across Shenzhen, a city of 12.4 million people. Most citizens will also be issued a residency card fitted with a powerful computer chip programmed by the same company.

Kurt Waldheim, the erudite diplomat who served as U.N. secretary-general and Austria's president but left the world stage a pariah after his Nazi past was exposed, died yesterday. He was 88. Austrian state media said Mr. Waldheim, who was hospitalized last month with an infection, died of heart failure in Vienna. The case that defined the legacy and memory of the longtime diplomat was built around a grainy black-and-white photograph that showed a young Mr. Waldheim - tall, lean and uniformed - as he fought for a Nazi army unit blamed for wartime atrocities in the Balkans.

As she watches the Florida real estate market soften around her, Susie Hurst is getting nervous. The 59-year-old former teacher had thought that rental income from several properties she had accumulated over the years would finance her retirement. But higher insurance costs (the result of hurricanes), taxes and upkeep expenses have turned her cash flow to negative of late. She recently took out a home-equity line to cover the shortfall and is considering going back to work. She also is thinking about selling some of her $1.5 million real estate empire, which consists of a four-unit apartment building, a duplex and a small home adjacent to her own residence in Orlando.

Bruce Springsteen was blaring through the speakers. "Come on up for the rising," the Boss crooned. And in the middle of a packed Dallas hotel ballroom early yesterday morning, Pat Riley, sore hip and all, danced with joy. That was the song played in the Miami Heat's home arena just before tip-off of every NBA Finals game, a song Riley referenced often around his team, part of the never-ending motivational ploys that, at long last, carried the Heat to...

On October 27, 2005, BARTHOLOMEUS "Bart" HERBERT, Jr., of Ellicott City, MD, beloved husband of Janet (nee Mariani) Herbert. Loving father of Elizabeth Anne Herbert and Marjorie Danielle Herbert. Devoted son of Everdina t'Hart Herbert and the late Bartholomeus Herbert, Sr. Dear brother of Rebecca Smith and Wilma Vigel. Friends may call at the family owned Slack Funeral Home, P.A. 3871 Old Columbia Pike, Ellicott City on Sunday, 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 P.M. Funeral Services from The Catonsville Ward of The Churchof Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, 4100 St. John's Lane, Ellicott CIty, MD, 21042 on Monday at 10 A.M. Interment Crestlawn Memorial Gardens.

It's common for people who can afford it to hire a wealth manager. So why not a health manager? That's the premise behind Pinnacle Care International, a Baltimore company that reports rapid growth in the newly developing business of patient advocacy. Pinnacle advises families on doctors and hospitals that are likely to give them the best care, but also arranges appointments, fills out paperwork and sometimes even accompanies patients. From time to time, it coordinates with a member's chef on healthful menus and with his personal trainer on an exercise plan.

If you want to import video and work on it on your PC, the Pinnacle Systems Movie Box DV ($250; a Universal Serial Bus version is available for $200) is a dream to use. Our efforts to work with digital video on a PC have prompted our friends who have Macintoshes to urge us to go buy an Apple machine. We don't need to do that because Movie Box uses FireWire technology - which means you'll still need to have a FireWire port or add one with an expansion card - to quickly connect your PC to your video camera or videocassette recorder and pull in video.

Could you recommend a special video card to copy some videotapes onto CD-Rs? Do I need other hardware? It's getting ever more easy to pump video into computers, and once you've done it, your idea of personal computing will be changed forever. So I recommend that folks first get their feet damp with an ultra-simple USB video input device before shelling out money and time opening up the computer case and installing a video card. Recently, I reviewed a nice one of these, the $70 Linx package from Pinnacle Systems Inc. (www.

COLLEGE PARK -- When he was recruiting Abe Thompson from nearby W.T. Woodson High School in Fairfax, Va., Maryland soccer coach Sasho Cirovski considered the striker a "must have" commodity. Cirovski envisioned Thompson and Taylor Twellman, a third-team All-American, as a productive combination that would make life miserable for opposing defenses. That plan went askew when Twellman turned professional and Sumed Ibrahim, another major offensive threat from the midfield, took a medical redshirt because of a stress fracture in his right foot.