State Lines

A fatal disease that attacks deer and elk and has forced wildlife officials to slaughter thousands of the animals across the country has been discovered just eight miles from Western Maryland. State biologists met yesterday to map their response to reports that chronic wasting disease was found in a 2 1/2 -year-old buck outside Slanesville, W.Va., near Allegany County. It is the first case in the region. "This is as close to the other side of the creek as you want it to be," said Paul Peditto, director of the Wildlife and Heritage Service of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

WASHINGTON - A key Senate panel approved a transportation spending bill yesterday that includes more than $25 million for projects in Maryland, including improvements in air traffic control, transit subsidies for the working poor, and planning for a proposed magnetic levitation rail service. "Each year I fight for federal funding to make traveling in Maryland safer, faster, and easier," said Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, a Maryland Democrat who helped secure the money. "This [spending] lives up to that promise."

COLLEGE PARK -- Penn State is no longer just "Linebacker U."Oh, the Nittany Lions still have some of the best in the country, but this year, it's the defensive line that plays the biggest part in one of the best defenses in the country.The No. 24 Nittany Lions are ranked eighth nationally on defense, allowing only 260.9 yards of total offense per game. Inside linebackers Mark D'Onofrio and Keith Goganious lead the team in tackles, but it's nose guard Jim Deter (6-2, 265, 21 tackles) and tackles Frank Giannetti (6-2, 255, 31)

Real estate sales agents and brokers in most of metropolitan Baltimore are about to link into what could become the nation's largest electronic home-selling system -- one promising greater efficiency for consumers and lower costs for agents.Realtors in the city and in Baltimore, Howard, Harford and Carroll counties are switching from a multiple-listing service covering only those jurisdictions to one covering most of Maryland and extending across state lines to the District of Columbia, Northern Virginia and part of West Virginia.

Cancer-causing chemicals that were found in residential wells near Keystone Sanitation Landfill may have provided the first direct link between toxic chemicals buried at the Superfund cleanup site and neighboring water supplies.High levels of vinyl chloride turned up in one well and pentachlorophenol in two others in March tests on about 70 residential wells that the federal Environmental Protection Agency has monitored regularly since February 1994. The chemicals did not appear in detectable levels in follow-up tests two weeks ago, but experts say such an erratic pattern is not uncommon.

Maryland employers slashed 6,200 jobs in April, cutting short a string of gains, the U.S. Department of Labor said Friday, as the state began feeling the pinch of federal budget sequestration and cutbacks in consumer spending. But the government's separate survey of households showed that Maryland's unemployment rate dropped to 6.5 percent in April from 6.6 percent a month earlier. The surveys of jobs and residents don't always move together, in part because Marylanders commuting across state lines or starting businesses don't affect the count of jobs.

The directions to the alleged brothel told the men that if they saw a house with green awnings, they'd gone too far. But some of them apparently misunderstood; would-be customers have shown up for years at the nearby house in Towson. Despite neighbors' complaints, police say, Di Zhang, 42, continued to operate the brothel from a white Colonial-style suburban home on Joppa Road, advertising on websites until this month, when county police and federal agents moved in. Neighbors said they weren't surprised to learn that Zhang, the operator of Jade Heart Health, had been charged with prostitution and human trafficking.

The woman, barely in her 20s and estranged from her family, worked two jobs as she tried to launch a singing career. When she started chatting online with the head of "424 Records," she thought she had finally gotten her break. The purported record label had music videos on Facebook and YouTube. The promoters appeared to have the cliched trappings of hip-hop — the cars, the gold chains, the girls, the lingo, the cash. But the group's motto breathed tranquillity: "One Team, One Family.

When Judy Harlan's husband, Bill, walked up the hill to their Harford County farmhouse in late May and told her she had to come see something by the Little Gunpowder Falls, she knew it would be unusual -- but an alienlike plant, growing fast, with leaves the size of tabletops? "I was just amazed at the size of the leaves," Judy Harlan said. "It looked like a giant Queen Anne's lace." What they had found next door to their farmland was giant hogweed, a cousin to the carrot and an invasive species worthy of a most-wanted list for noxious plants.

SHREWSBURY, Pa. — A bold warning adorns the outside of the Phantom Fireworks showroom just over the Maryland line: "Pennsylvania residents not permitted entry. " But Marylanders are most certainly welcome here. The parking lot is typically full of cars bearing Maryland license plates and with shoppers filling up their trunks with fireworks that have names like the "New York Salute" and the "Lock and Load. " The explosives can be purchased in Pennsylvania but not used there, hence the ban on state residents.