Tainted

Spurred by reports that students in Baltimore City schools may have been drinking lead-tainted water for more than a decade, dozens of concerned people attended a lead poisoning prevention forum yesterday to have their children or themselves tested, and to learn more about the problem. The daylong forum, organized by the Coalition to End Childhood Lead Poisoning, featured exhibits, workshops, speakers and free testing by the city Health Department. By midday, nurses had nearly exhausted their supply of 30 testing kits.

The clandestine production and sale of adulterated fruit juice is a widespread and highly profitable practice, a review of court cases filed across the country shows -- a practice that is costing U.S. consumers an estimated $1.2 billion a year and exposing them to undisclosed and unapproved chemicals.Regulators at the Food and Drug Administration, which oversees the food industry, had hoped that tainted juice would become less common after the federal prosecution in 1987 of Beech-Nut Nutrition Corp.

LOS ANGELES -- More than three-quarters of all the paper money in Los Angeles has some amount of cocaine or some other drug stuck to it, according to a federal appeals court decision that vividly illuminates how extensively the drug trade touches mainstream commerce.Of every four bills in circulation in Los Angeles, more than three have traces of cocaine or another illicit drug actually stuck to the paper, according to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which relied on that fact to dismiss a case against a man suspected of drug trafficking.

On the surface, Kicker Vencill has a bright future. He has a degree from Western Kentucky and a wedding date with Beth Botsford, a Timonium native who won Olympic gold in swimming in 1996. For the moment, his prospects do not include swimming. A long shot to make the Olympic team, Vencill saw that chance end when he tested positive in January 2003 for a precursor to the steroid nandrolone. The facts that he tested positive for a relatively small amount of the banned substance and hired a private lab to test his multivitamins, which were found to be tainted, were irrelevant.

In an effort to combat potentially tainted sweets produced in Mexico and sold widely in American groceries, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced a proposal yesterday to reduce the threshold for lead in candy. But Baltimore health officials - who had planned to push for state legislation to attack the problem after lead-tainted candy was found in the city this fall - said they were concerned the federal rules wouldn't have enough impact. The federal guideline recommends lowering the limit for lead in candy from 0.5 parts per million to 0.1, a standard pushed by advocates in Baltimore and other places the spicy sweets are sold.

Washington -- Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said yesterday that he has been pressing the Bush administration to move war crimes trials of suspected terrorists from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to courts in the United States because other countries might consider the military tribunals tainted. No matter how open the trials are under a new law, Gates said, they might not be deemed credible by the outside world because of prior military practices at Guantanamo, which included interrogation techniques that allowed physical coercion.

FAIRFAX, Va. - Defense lawyers for teen-age sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo argued yesterday that his capital murder trial should be moved out of this Washington suburb, maintaining that potential jurors in Fairfax County were tainted by news reports and by having to live under a siege of random shootings last fall. Prosecutors objected, saying any decision would be premature until the effort to seat a jury started. The trial is scheduled to begin Nov. 10 in Fairfax City. Fairfax County Circuit Judge Jane Marum Roush said she will decide in a month whether to move the trial.

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- Retirement apparently hasn't disrupted Cal Ripken Jr.'s game. The former Orioles great can still sidestep controversy and offer carefully measured responses to the media like a seasoned pro. While at baseball's winter meetings here yesterday to discuss Ripken Baseball's new partnership with the synthetic surfacing company FieldTurf, Ripken inevitably was peppered with questions about the upcoming National Baseball Hall of...

Ilana Edelman's science project at Pikesville Middle School did more than win her an award - it triggered a federal investigation into lead-tainted food cans. Based on the 13-year-old's findings, Food and Drug Administration inspectors began visiting food sellers in the region this month, and quickly found scores of illegal cans on store shelves in Rockville, Gaithersburg and Norfolk, Va. The investigation continues and could extend into other states. "It's a growing issue," said Stephen King, a spokesman for the FDA's Baltimore office.

WILMINGTON, Del. - Napster Inc.'s sale to Bertelsmann AG was blocked by a bankruptcy judge, increasing the risk of extinction for the service that once had 13 million users and popularized song sharing on the Web. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Peter Walsh refused to approve the sale, saying conflicts of interest by Napster Chief Executive Officer Konrad Hilbers, had "tainted" the transaction. The ruling ends an effort started by Bertelsmann's then-chief executive, Thomas Middelhoff, who resigned this year in a dispute with board members who want to return Germany's largest media company to its main businesses such as publishing.