Training

The federal Food and Drug Administration has fined the Baltimore branch of the American Red Cross $718,000 for failing to thoroughly investigate and correct a training irregularity involving blood inspection, the FDA said yesterday. In a letter to the Red Cross dated July 27, the FDA said the failure to report the training error at the Greater Chesapeake and Potomac Region office "reflects a troubling and recurrent pattern and presents serious potential health risks." On Aug. 9, 2005, according to the letter, an employee and her supervisor signed the employee's training record indicating that she had been trained and was competent to perform 12 separate blood collection tasks, though the employee had been trained to perform only seven of them.

Open burning of leaves in urban areas is illegal under state law unless you have a permit, or unless you are the Baltimore County Fire Department.That's why rush-hour motorists passing the county fire training site on Bosley Avenue in the heart of Towson last week may have been surprised to see uniformed fire academy cadets raking leaves against the fence, then calmly watching them being consumed by bright orange flames.The Fire Department says it's a training exercise.According to the academy's director, Battalion Chief Gary Warren, the department solves three problems by allowing cadets to burn leaves:* It gets rid of the leaves.

Straight Shooters answers your youth lacrosse questions with the help of US Lacrosse experts. This week's "Straight Shooter" is Matt Zash. Zash was a two-time All-America midfielder at Duke, graduating in 2006. He plays professional lacrosse for the Major Lacrosse League's Philadelphia Barrage and the National Lacrosse League's New York Titans. Zash was a member of the 2003 United States under-19 men's world championship team and played for Team USA in the 2007 Indoor World Lacrosse Championships in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

A food-safety training program for Maryland restaurants will be extended to grocery stores where take-away meal business is growing.The Maryland Council on Food Safety, a program of the Maryland Hospitality Education Foundation, is offering a special designation for grocery stores that sponsor safety seminars for employees, give food safety skills tests to new hires and send managers to sanitation certification classes.The foundation, a nonprofit education and training group serving the state's hospitality industry, first offered its designation to restaurants in January.

Maryland is one of seven states that will receive a total of $2.2 billion in federal funds to support welfare-to-work programs, state officials said yesterday.The Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation said the $14.9 million that Maryland will receive will go toward training and job placement, and will also help residents overcome obstacles that prevent them from keeping a job, such as affordable child care and lack of transportation."We needed to be realistic about the needs of people on welfare," said Marco K. Merrick, a spokesman for Maryland DLLR.

I was more than a trifle disturbed by the Nov. 16 editorial ''The Army's challenge.'' On the surface, your editorial sounds fair; as if you are addressing both sides of this issue in a just manner. But on the deeper level, your suggestions are insidious.You have said that female army recruits might report imagined harassment just to avenge the ''brutish training'' dished out by them by drill instructors.That's all we need -- military officials thinking the way you do and providing themselves with the perfect loophole to investigate only the most egregious crimes reing the less serious allegations.

Bidding farewell to the fabled espantoon, Baltimore police are wielding a new nightstick on city streets and practicing new ways of confronting unruly citizens.The California-based Koga Institute is teaching officers procedures for searching, subduing and arresting people. They are based on martial arts, and the police chief hopes these techniques win minimize injuries to officers and citizens.Officers also are learning several maneuvers with the new stick -- balled a baton -- which is replacing the espantoon, a nightstick used since the turn of the century.

Blaming a 27 percent increase in vehicle accidents on last year's rookies and harsh weather, Howard County police are providing their new academy class with a crash course in driving under similar conditions.Though weather forecasters doubt there will be a repeat of last year's icy winter, police training coordinators don't want their officers, particularly inexperienced drivers, to be caught off guard.The 23 recruits have been practicing driving police cruisers at a special skid course in Montgomery County, said Cpl. Pete Moskala, a Howard County training coordinator.

WASHINGTON -- The Clinton administration has complied with Congress' order to draft options for arming and training Bosnian government forces, but it warns that carrying out the proposal would be risky, costly and almost certain to jeopardize ties with major U.S. allies.The scenarios, outlined in classified briefings with leading lawmakers this week, call for the United States to lift the current arms embargo unilaterally, to arm and train Bosnian government soldiers and to help evacuate allied troops now on peacekeeping duty in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Some bosses say productive work can occur only if employees toil away in their work stations or cubicles -- and with few distractions. Strategy sessions at chance meetings in the hallway or banter over coffee can't measure up, they say.At Siemens Power Transmission and Distribution in Wendell, N.C., a unit of Siemens, the big German manufacturer, it is just the opposite.Management removed the plant's time clocks and expanded the cafeteria, putting in pens, pencils, markers, paper, flip charts -- even overhead projectors -- to encourage lingering lunch breaks, more talk and thus, more training.