Spelling

In line with government and name changes in the former Soviet Union, The Sun has changed its spelling for some of the republics and its style for datelines from those republics. The spellings of five republics have changed. Byelorussia is now Belarus (bell-uh-ROOSE), Kirghizia is Kyrgyzstan (keer-geez-STAHN), Moldavia is Moldova, Tadzhikistan is Tajikistan and Turkmenia is Turkmenistan. There has been no change in the remaining republics. The Sun no longer uses "U.S.S.

In just a few hours, No. 13 Johns Hopkins will take the field at Michie Stadium in West Point, N.Y., for its regular-season finale against Army. But the Blue Jays' bid for an appearance in its 42nd consecutive NCAA tournament  suffered a blow via the Colonial Athletic Association tournament. Towson upset No. 9 Penn State, 11-10, in Friday's conference tournament final at University Park, Pa. The win secured the Tigers' first CAA tournament championship since 2007, which was also the last time they appeared in the NCAA tournament.

Summer, swimming and... spelling!Help your child find words she often uses and often misspells. Then encourage her to practice the spelling by following these steps: Look at it. Say it. Name the letters. Write it. Check. Some typical primary-grade words from the story "Hattie and the Wild Waves" are: do, when, make, went, home, little, blue.Here is another spelling technique for difficult words. Write the complete word in large letters and allow your child to study the configuration of the word and the sequence of the letters.

Winning last year's Eastern College Athletic Conference tournament was a breakthrough for Loyola. This spring, the program was just an overtime loss to Denver on April 13 away from completing an undefeated season in the league and earning the top seed in this week's conference tournament. The No. 5 Greyhounds (11-3) will face No. 8 Ohio State (10-3) in one semifinal Thursday night at Hobart in Geneva, N.Y. No. 3 Denver (11-3) and No. 19 Fairfield (8-6) will tangle in the other semifinal.

Hearing that Mayor Sheila Dixon hopes to spit-shine Baltimore's streets with a snappy new campaign to reform even the worst litterers, Sun readers jumped to help. Eager to share their wisdom, to save the city money and, most of all, to see how the city would look clean, Baltimoreans submitted to us dozens of anti-litter slogan suggestions -- many of which are even printable. Some people revealed their inner poet: "Stash it, Don't Trash it." "Litter -- It makes the City and Planet Bitter."

NEW YORK -- Viacom Inc. is looking for a buyer for its majority stake in Spelling Entertainment Group Inc., producer of television hits such as "Beverly Hills 90210" and "Melrose Place."Viacom, which is seeking to shed assets and reduce debt, values Los Angeles-based Spelling at as much as $2 billion, said an investment banker familiar with Viacom's pricing strategy. Based on today's stock price, Spelling's market value is about $1.06 billion.The investment banker said candidates to buy Spelling include Westinghouse Electric Corp.

If yure kidz R riting, but having trubl speling, reading can help. Exposure to written words helps form mental images of how words heard are supposed to look; it also expands vocabulary. There's bound to be some stumbling along the way, so keep a dictionary handy and emphasize the importance of proper spelling. Peggy Gisler and Marge Eberts, educators and co-authors of the syndicated "Dear Teacher" column, offer ideas to help your child with weekly spelling quizzes. Most important, parents need to be involved.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Blockbuster Entertainment Corp. said it will acquire control of Spelling Entertainment Group Inc. in a $141.5 million stock swap, expanding its reach in home entertainment programming.Blockbuster, the world's largest home-video retailer, will acquire 48.2 percent of the Los Angeles-based production and distribution company by issuing 7.6 million shares to Spelling's parent, American Financial Corp.The agreement, expected to close in several weeks, will make American Financial, a Cincinnati holding company controlled by investor Carl Lindner, the third-biggest shareholder in Blockbuster.

Attention, prospective home-buyers: looking for a killer deal with the real estate market up in flames? Is all this recession, recession, recession talk getting you down? For a measly $150 million, you can buy Aaron Spelling's place, a 57,000-square-foot L.A. estate called "The Manor" that has a gym, bowling alley, tasting room, gift-wrapping room, humidity-controlled silver-storage room and beauty salon. There's also a screening room where the screen rises out of the floor like a gleaming silver altar.

THE HOLIDAY season has arrived and once again we are faced with a question that has perplexed the English-speaking world for decades: What is the correct spelling of the Jewish holiday that will be celebrated next week?The most common spellings are: Hanukkah, Chanukah and Hanukah, but other variations abound. They include: Hanuka, Hanukka, Chanuka, Chanukka and Chanukkah.Last year, the U.S. Postal Service weighed in with a ''Hanukkah'' stamp. This may have settled the matter once and for all by having a single spelling officially sanctioned by an agency of the U.S. government.

Orioles first baseman Chris Davis has been here before, with fans screaming his name and his teammates shaking their heads at his latest incredible power display. Davis, though, also has been on the other side, when things are going terribly and he's sent to the minors and he's not really sure he can play this game. So that's why, after his eighth-inning grand slam in Friday's home opener - which gave the Orioles' a 9-5 win over the Minnesota Twins and Davis a mind-numbing four homers and 16 RBIs in four 2013 games - the extroverted first baseman was rather subdued.

Crabbing season officially begins in Maryland today, but the Chesapeake Bay's blue crabs apparently haven't gotten the word. My colleague Richard Gorelick reports that watermen, seafood dealers, restaurateurs and state natural resource officials all believe that chilly bay water temperatures lately could mean a meager harvest for now. "The cold temperatures are likely to keep early catches low," Brenda Davis, blue crab program manager of...

After reading Pete Pichaske's article ("A new way to teach spelling," March 7), I felt spurred on to reframe the issue of mathematical literacy. Ineffective teaching strategies for spelling have also been used for mathematics (ex. memorization). Teaching students merely the operations of math, without discussing what it is that makes math interesting (patterns, both shape and number), will only serve to demoralize students and destroy their intellectual curiosity about the beautiful subject that I have studied for over 20 years and hold so dear to my heart.

Looking for some diversion this afternoon before I must report to the paragraph factory for the impending Super Bowl tsunami of copy,* I turned to Twitter, to find that the only people not obsessing over chicken wings and football were arguing, some passionately, whether Internet should be capitalized. I, as a copy editor, should be the last to suggest that other people should get a life, but, for Fowler's sake, it's just capitalization. It's just spelling. It's just house style.

The eighth-ranked Maryland women's basketball team failed to protect a double-digit lead in the first half, then trailed by 11 late in the game before staging a frantic comeback that wasn't enough to overcome an extended shooting lull in a 60-57 loss to No. 15 North Carolina Thursday night at Carmichael Arena. Despite missing 17 of 19 shots during one stretch in the second half and needing eight minutes to score their first field goal after the break, the Terps had two chances to tie in the final seconds.

November is off to a colder-than-normal start despite a weekend warm spell that isn't expected to last through Tuesday. When the cold resumes, it could mean the end to a long streak in Baltimore weather. As of Sunday, the average monthly temperature was about 44 degrees, 5 degrees cooler than normal. Given that normal temperatures decrease as the month goes on, November could threaten a trend of 21 consecutive months with above-normal average temperatures at BWI Airport. BWI reached 69 degrees by 2 p.m. Monday, sure to tick up November's average temperature a smidge.

In today's column, we combine news from the worlds of education and business.Special congratulations to a 13-year-old spelling whiz from Shipley's Choice.Jennifer Harden, an eighth-grader from Severna Park Middle School, spelled her way last week through the first three rounds of the 64th National Spelling Bee in Washington.The 227 contestants had received a list of words for the early rounds, but when the fourth roundbegan, words were selected at random from Webster's Third New International Dictionary.

How do you spell failure?The citizens of Middletown, Calif., an agricultural community 60 miles north of San Francisco, feared the answer was on the letters page of their local newspaper.There they found more than two dozen letters from eighth-graders furious about an outbreak of vandalism at their school. Departing from its usual practice, the newspaper ran the letters exactly as they had been written. It didn't take long to figure out why.For starters, the 25 students spelled "vandal" in nearly as many ways.

President Barack Obama's re-election will cause problems for Israel and Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It's very unlikely now that Israel can count on Mr. Obama and U.S. support as far as the Palestinians go, or on efforts to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Mr. Obama's support and endorsement of the establishment of a Hamas-led Palestinian state based on the pre-1967 borders is one of the worst and most dangerous foreign policy decisions his administration has made so far. Mr. Obama has alienated Israel since he entered office in 2009 . Its no secret that he and Mr. Netanyahu have clashed; remember how Mr. Obama snubbed Mr. Netanyahu when he visited the United Nations in September?

Once again, there won't be much national interest in the 2012 federal election results here in Maryland next month. President Barack Obama, who carried the state by 25 percentage points four years ago, is a cinch to capture the state's 10 electoral votes again this November. Rookie Sen. Ben Cardin should easily win re-election, especially with the late entry of a self-funded millionaire whose presence, as polls have indicated, will probably split any anti-incumbent sentiment. Results from seven of the state's eight U.S. House seats are already a foregone conclusion.