Sensation

Hernias are a common ailment among Americans; more than 4 million people develop the painful condition. And although both men and women develop hernias, female patients may be harder to diagnose. Doctors and patients may not realize the abdominal pain a woman is feeling is because of a hernia. Dr. Hien Nguyen, assistant professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said the pain can be mistaken for other conditions with similar symptoms, such as adhesions from prior surgery, endometriosis, fibroids and ovarian cysts.

TORONTO -- I've often heard that Rogers Centre is one of the toughest places for a visiting outfielder to play because the fans in the two decks beyond the outfield wall feel like they're right on top of you. One player I used to cover said some brutal hecklers exist in the outfield stands there. Another said that it's more like a hockey crowd than your typical baseball crowd. There was at least one idiot there in the Orioles' 12-6 loss to the Blue Jays on Thursday night.

This year's Maryland State Fair has become the go-to event of the summer with just two words: Justin Bieber. The teen pop music sensation will perform at the Maryland State Fairgrounds in Timonium on Sept. 5, as part of the new tour dates recently added to his "Justin Bieber My World 2.0" tour. Also scheduled to perform at this year's fair are country music star Gretchen Wilson on Aug. 27 and former Poison frontman Bret Michaels on Sept. 1. All concerts start at 7 p.m., and tickets go on sale June 12. The fair runs Aug. 27 to Sept.

In offering the regional premiere of the 2008 Tony Award-winning musical "In the Heights," Toby's Dinner Theatre of Columbia has reached its own new heights. Toby's production of "The Color Purple" last season garnered a record number of Helen Hayes Awards nominations, but the dinner theater raises the bar even higher with this musical celebrating a vibrant Latino community in New York City's Washington Heights. "In the Heights" was the first important Broadway musical with book (playwright Quiara Alegria Hudes)

True Sensation beat three other Maryland-bred fillies and mares in yesterday's $75,000 All Brandy Stakes. The race, which was originally scheduled for the turf, was contested in pouring rain and over the muddy main track at Pimlico Race Course. A Queen's Smile, the morning-line favorite, and two others were scratched after the race was switched. River Cruise spurted to the front from her outside post and opened a four-length lead down the backstretch. As GraceBay and Sweep Up slipped farther behind, only jockey Erick Rodriguez and True Sensation had a chance to deny victory from the front-runner.

It happens to all of us - beginning, perhaps, as a little tickle, hardly noticeable. Maybe you're in an important meeting and you don't want to fidget. Or maybe your hands are full. So you try to ignore it, but the sensation grows - an irritating feeling that gradually occupies more and more of your attention. Finally, you can't take it any longer. You have to scratch the itch. Itching is as fundamental a sensation as pain and hunger, one we share with other creatures: "Every two-legged and four-legged animal itches and scratches," says Dr. Gil Yosipovitch, a dermatologist at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C. Yet for such a seemingly simple sensation, it's also surprisingly complicated.

If one of the functions of art is to teach us to see in new ways, the controversy over the Brooklyn Museum of Art's exhibition of young British artists is having just the opposite effect. It has blinded almost everyone to what this show is really about.It would be easy to dismiss the uproar over "Sensation: Young British Artists From the Saatchi Collection" as yet another collision between publicity-seeking artists and demagogic politicians making partisan hay before an election year.When New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani to threatened to cut off the museum's funding if it went ahead with the exhibition, the battle was quickly (and perhaps predictably)

NEW YORK -- The Catholics handed out vomit bags. The civil rights activists lighted candles. A yellow poster blared, "SENSATION SENSATION." By midmorning yesterday, the sidewalks in front of the Brooklyn Museum of Art were clogged with demonstrators, and a line of people waiting to see the art that was causing the commotion stretched through the museum's lobby, out the door and across the cobblestone plaza.It was the official opening of an exhibition of contemporary British art that has enraged New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and triggered lawsuits by the city and the museum in the past two weeks.

An article in yesterday's editions of The Sun gave an incorrect phone number for the Penn Station Sensation benefit on Dec. 2. The correct number is 633-5789.The Sun regrets the error.

Andrea Bocelli See Italian opera sensation Andrea Bocelli on his Royal Christmas Tour. Bocelli will perform tonight at the MCI Center, 601 F St. N.W. in Washington. The concert begins at 8 p.m., and tickets are $55-$178. To order, call 410-547-SEAT or visit ticketmaster.com.

It was a very exciting third night of battle rounds. The night was filled with exciting performances that left the coaches, performers and audience speechless. Full of steals, upsets, and great competition, the third night of the battle rounds was definitely a charm. Disclaimer: It must have been opposite day, everyone I was rooting for … lost. Team Usher: Jessica Childress vs. Vedo, “Walked Outta Heaven” by Bruno Mars Former PR girl Jessica Childress faced R&B sensation Vedo.

Your browser does not support iframes.   When Orioles first baseman Chris Davis flailed at a changeup in the dirt Tuesday for the last out of the third inning, he says he was really frustrated. So he snapped. And so did his bat. Over Davis' knee in one quick motion. "It was misbehaving, so I put him in timeout," Davis said about snapping his bat. "It's not something I am proud of. It's not something, 'Hey, I can break a bat over my knee.' But in that situation out there, I knew I wasn't going to get a lot to hit and I still continued to swing at a ball in the dirt.

There is no excuse for the kind of coverage TV has delivered the last two weeks on the sequester. Television news has been polarizing, sensational and mostly focused on personality rather than the policy behind the $85 billion in federal spending cuts that has come to be known as sequestration. President Obama went into full campaign mode weeks ago, warning of massive disruptions in American life if the cuts were enacted - and blaming them solely on Republican members of Congress.

Mr. Robert Monroe, Schuykill, afflicted with the above distressing malady.  Symptoms-- Great languor, flatulency, disturbed rest, nervous, head ache, difficulty of breathing, tightness and stricture across the breast, dizziness, nervous irritability and restlessness, could not lie in a horizontal position without the sensation of impending suffocation, palpitation of the heart, distressing cough, costiveness, pain in the stomach, drowsiness and...

For those who missed it, the National Rifle Association's top executive got worked up into a full lather at the group's annual conference this weekend in St. Louis. Wayne LaPierre's ire was aimed at the "sensational" coverage of the Trayvon Martin killing - although he didn't mention either the victim or the shooter by name. The NRA's beef is essentially this: Lots of people are getting killed every day without nearly so much mainstream media coverage. Why so much attention to this particular case?

He's good, but no star K.C. Johnson Chicago Tribune Jeremy Lin is the real deal — as long as the expectation is NBA rotation player and not star. There's a reason Lin went undrafted, got cut and sat low on the depth chart until recently. And, yes, his breakout is one of the best storylines of this NBA season. However, Lin's five-game run has come against three bad teams and a Lakers team with an aging Derek Fisher trying to guard him. Lin appears to be an excellent pick-and-roll player, so that skill should translate to him lasting.

Vaughn Meader, 68, who created a national sensation impersonating President John F. Kennedy on the hit 1962 comedy album The First Family but saw his career come to a virtual end when Kennedy was assassinated a year later, died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease yesterday at his home in Auburn, Maine.

Leona Louise Lewis Born: April 3, 1985, in Islington, London, England Education: Studied ballet and voice at several performing arts institutions, including the BRIT School, whose alumni include another recent British singing sensation, multi-Grammy winner Amy Winehouse Career: Named the winner of The X Factor in 2006 and signed a deal with SyCo/Sony in the U.K. and J Records in the United States Discography: Spirit, released in the U.K. on...

The Baltimore Sun Though the small statue with the greenish hue is nicknamed "The Modest Venus," she is anything but. It's true that the 10-inch figurine from the Italian Renaissance has one hand demurely covering her fig-leaf area, and the other held up as if to fend off unwanted advances. But around 1500, an anonymous metalworker crafted the Venus from bronze, which is naturally cool and pleasing to the touch. He gave her rounded limbs and an abundance of undulating curves; her buttocks might have been expressly designed to fill an adult's cupped palm.

Within a couple of hours of picking up his first ring, Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco was back on a football field, a champagne bottle in his right hand and his bride and his groomsmen crouched down in front of him like hulking offensive linemen. Flacco barked out commands to his tuxedo-clad teammates as he waited for his new wife to toss him the bouquet from underneath her lacy white dress. The steel bleachers at Audubon High School were empty, save for a few friends and family members.