Reins

On April 21, 2004 NAOMI REINS KAHN (nee Schlink), 103 years old, born in Gridley, IL resided in Chicago. Beloved wife of the late Karl F. Reins, Sr. and the late Alfonse Kahn; loving mother of Naomi (the late Frank) Majewski, Carole (the late Raymond) Schlitter, the late Ruth Reins, and Karl (the late Pearl) Reins; cherished grandmother of 20 (eight in the Baltimore area) and great-grandmother to many (13 in the Baltimore area). Funeral was held at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Chenoa, IL. Interment at St. Joseph Calvary Cemetery also in Chenoa.

Jon Cole knew who he wanted to serve as his best man. The former McDonogh and Virginia soccer star, now 33, had high school pals and college teammates who floated in and out of his life, but one guy was constant. His high school coach, Steve Nichols, went from mentor to father figure to big brother to best friend over 20 years. At the time, two summers ago, Nichols joked at Cole's request: "I'm 43 years old, why me?" Cole never thought twice. "He's like the brother I never had," said Cole, who married in June 2012.

An Owings Mills' riding program called Tack N' Trot trains kids to ride ponies in a series of afternoon group sessions.

Increasingly concerned about incidents involving the Baltimore police, I read the article concerning the review board and its lack of authority ( "Civilian police review board floundering," June 30). I would not want the police to think nobody cares or is watching or think that its business as usual when officers go looking for trouble and get no real discipline. Two men in Northwood say they have been stopped and beaten by the same two cops and now have joined in a civil suit.

WASHINGTON -- The Arkansas Legislature had just rejected a cigarette tax that state health director M. Joycelyn Elders, the woman tapped to become the next U.S. surgeon general, had fervently lobbied for.Knowing his boss' five-alarm temper, Tom Butler, the director's longtime deputy, pulled Dr. Elders aside and went through his usual routine with her in the face of defeat and a gathering press mob. "Are you calm? Are you OK?" he asked."Yep," she said. "No problem."With that, the firebrand of Arkansas turned to the cameras: "They sold our children to the cigarette industry!"

A new top editor has taken the reins of Baltimore City Paper, the 35-year-old free weekly newspaper announced Monday. Evan Serpick, a former senior editor at Baltimore magazine, took over June 13, according to a statement from the paper. Serpick replaces Lee Gardner, who resigned last month after serving as the paper's editor for a decade. Serpick, who grew up in the Baltimore suburbs, has also worked as an associate editor of Rolling Stone magazine and as a correspondent for Entertainment Weekly.

ALLENTOWN, Pa. -- Ralph E. Reins will resign as chairman, president and chief executive officer of Mack Trucks Inc., the chairman of the company's distributors council confirmed late yesterday.Mr. Reins, 50, has accepted a position as head of the automotive group at United Technologies Corp. of Hartford, Conn., said Bob Nuss, owner of Rochester Mack in Rochester, Minn., and chairman of the council that includes 200 Mack dealers.Mr. Reins will be replaced by an executive from Renault Vehicules Industriels, which on Oct. 5 completed its $107 million buyout of the 55 percent of Mack stock that it had not previously owned, Mr. Nuss said.

A wire report that appeared yesterday in Money Today on the planned resignation of the chairman of Mack Trucks Inc. was an outdated story that appeared as a result of a computer error.ALLENTOWN, Pa. -- Ralph E. Reins will resign as chairman, president and chief executive officer of Mack Trucks Inc., the chairman of the company's distributors council confirmed late yesterday. Reins, 50, has accepted a position as head of the automotive group at United Technologies Corp. of Hartford, Conn., said Bob Nuss, owner of Rochester Mack in Rochester, Minn.

On Maryland coach Gary Williams I hear some people calling for his head. I still think that coach Williams is a great college coach. [Williams] will force this current team to play the way he wants them to play and force them into roles that they aren't suited for. It's not too late to fix things. I'd like to see Gary give the reins to the freshmen.

Mack CEO resignsRalph E. Reins will resign as chairman, president and chief executive officer of Mack Trucks Inc., a company spokesman said yesterday.Mr. Reins, 50, has accepted a position as president of the automotive group at United Technologies Corp. of Hartford, Conn., said James Santanasto, a spokesman for Mack. UTA said Mr. Reins will take his new job Oct. 29.Mr. Reins will be replaced at Allentown, Pa.-based Mack, which has a power-train plant in Hagerstown, by an executive from Renault Vehicules Industriels, according to Bob Nuss, owner of Rochester Mack in Rochester, Minn.

Baltimore City Councilman Robert W. Curran is tired of hearing about motorists whose cars were towed for reasons he finds ridiculous - for being parked outside the white lines in a supermarket lot, for instance, or at a fast food restaurant when the business was closed. So he's sponsoring legislation to spell out a narrow list of conditions for which a vehicle can be removed from private property. And he would cut the allowed towing fee by nearly half. "What they're doing is such a disincentive for people to come here and visit Baltimore," Curran said.

It's a shame Carroll County's board of commissioners felt it had to hold a formal vote in order to prevent members from violating a federal court order against sectarian or denominational prayers at the opening of its meetings. Is it too much to ask for elected officials to act like grown-ups and not deliberately break the law? Apparently it is for some Carroll County board members, who seem unable to conduct the public's business without going on about their religious convictions as if they were in a revival tent.

The political equivalent of schoolyard bullying seems back in vogue to a degree seldom seen since the days of the late Sen. Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin, who used bare-knuckle intimidation to cow a whole country into viral anti-communism in the 1950s. Despite New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's assurance that "I am not a bully," more accounts of his strong-arm methods to get his way, strongly hinted in what's now known as Trafficgate, have cast him in that light. An even more pertinent comparison with McCarthy is being drawn by Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.

Some of the biggest political contributors in recent elections don't appear on any list of the usual suspects; they are neither corporations, unions nor extremely wealthy individuals. Instead, they are new nonprofit organizations that have been granted tax-exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service because of the ostensible "social welfare" activities they engage in. In truth, however, these groups have morphed into some of the nation's most powerful backstage political actors, shelling out millions of dollars to support candidates for office without ever having to disclose where their money is coming from or who is trying to influence the outcome on an election.

Due to the single-elimination nature of the NCAA men's soccer tournament, many teams find themselves playing a conservative style that may offer fewer rewards but also reduces the risk of going home prematurely. Case in point: five of Thursday's 16 first-round games went to penalty kick shootouts, and two more were decided in overtime. That could be a testament to the narrow gap in talent level between teams in the postseason, but UMBC coach Pete Caringi Jr. said he wants to make sure that timidity is not part of the game plan when the No. 16 seed Retrievers (16-1-2)

Speaking in Baltimore last week, National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander defended the methods his agency uses to spy on the private phone calls and emails of millions of American citizens, but he did appear to give a little ground to critics of the agency when he said he's "not wedded" to every surveillance program it carries out. "If we can come up with a better way of doing them, we should," he insisted. That formulation left unclear the meaning of the word "better," however.

The top rung of the fence has been repaired. Peggy Ingles, a national champion rider in horse shows, stops to look, and she doesn't flinch. "That's where it happened," she says, as if she were pointing out the place where she got a splinter, not where she lost her ability to walk and lift her arms. Two months after being thrown from a horse - and breaking her neck - Ingles is back on her Monkton farm. This homecoming, on a recent Monday, would be too brief, more of a field trip, really.

We had been in the saddle for about an hour when we got our first glimpse of the object of our search. There, on the horizon, near Bill Moore Lake with its reflective view of puffy white clouds and blue sky, was a herd of about 165 cows, including some of the more ornery bulls seen on the professional rodeo circuit. We gave our horses free reins and with a kick of our heels and a shout of "Yeehaw!" we began our morning's work. This was a cattle drive. Our job was to move a herd of longhorns, Corrientes and Brahmas -- all bred for their bucking abilities -- from their current spot to another grazing area on the 10,000-acre ranch where the grass was greener.

For years, Baltimore officials felt they could do little more than throw up their hands in frustration over the archipelago of small liquor stores that blight many of the city's poorest neighborhoods. Local residents complain the businesses are magnets for crime whose patrons are unruly and a threat to public safety, while public health officials cite the strong correlation between a range of serious health disorders and the number of liquor stores in a community. The ineffectiveness of the state-controlled city liquor board, as documented in a recent audit, only makes matters worse.

The Baltimore Police Department has already gone over its overtime budget for the fiscal year, which ends in June, but Police Commissioner Anthony Batts says he will rein in the agency's spending. "We will be in budget at the end of the fiscal year. Period," Batts said during an interview at police headquarters last week.  How, exactly, remains unclear. Pressed for details this week, Batts said he has a plan but needs approval from City Hall.  The Police Department's overall operating budget this year is $410 million, and there's been a $3.4 million spillover on overtime spending.