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Almost every weekday, book-toting children spill from a procession of minivans pulling up to an office building in the heart of Columbia. School has been out for hours, but not for pupils at this bustling Sylvan Learning Center.Similar scenes are repeated across Maryland and the country at thousands of for-profit tutoring sites, from high-achieving Howard County to inner-city Baltimore.Locally and nationally, a rapidly growing number of parents are seeking the help of private tutors for their children, mainly in reading and other basic skills.

On a corner in Little Italy sits Pacific Coast Dining Company, a restaurant trying to bring multicultural cuisine to the heart of red sauce country. And aside from a few inventory issues on a recent trip there, it succeeds. From its name, you might think Pacific Coast Dining Company sells cooking supplies. It's actually a romantic, modern-looking restaurant, with blue walls and azure accents in the bar and dining areas. We were seated next to a windowed wall with a people-watching view of Eastern Avenue.

Carroll County prosecutors have dropped reckless-endangerment charges against five former juvenile facility staff members in the death of a Baltimore teenager because the main detective on the case is being investigated for perjury. "It's devastating right now," said Felicia Wilson, the mother of Isaiah Simmons III. The 17-year-old died in 2007 at Bowling Brook Preparatory School, a facility for juvenile offenders in Keymar. The five defendants, whose trial was scheduled for May, were accused of pinning Simmons to the floor and delaying calls for help.

JONESBORO, Ga. -- Just before he was sentenced to life in prison for a rape he did not commit, Calvin Johnson Jr. told the judge that his moment of redemption would come."

They're facing high unemployment, depressed wages and loads of debt — and they're only in their 20s. Welcome to life after college. Though the labor market is recovering slowly, graduates this spring have only slightly better chances of landing jobs than grads did in the depths of the recession, experts say. Over the last year, unemployment has averaged 9.4 percent for college graduates under age 25. Meanwhile, researchers at the Washington-based Economic...

The Anne Arundel school system began a strict hiring and spending freeze this week, saying it needs to start saving money to give teachers a 1 percent pay raise because the county might not allow it to dip into a schools reserve fund. Superintendent Eric J. Smith warned that "more aggressive" budget cuts loom unless the county authorizes the system to pay for the $1.8 million in pay raises using a reserve fund it amassed last school year through spending reductions. "We have the money available," Smith said.

Fall is here, and it's not just people who are starting to pull up the covers and cocoon. Crickets are singing in the basement. Ants are invading many homes. Spiders are spinning webs in the corners of the living room. As the days and nights turn cold, other crawling things will be looking to get into the house for food and warmth. The best plan of attack starts now, early in the fall, with an autumnal version of spring cleaning. Maintaining a level of cleanliness through the winter will uncover insects before they can reproduce and will help reduce the need for chemical use. Here are some tips for keeping the house snug and free of pests.

BLUEFIELDS, Nicaragua -- Nicaragua's Mosquito Coast, seemingly forgotten by both the government of President Violeta Chamorro and the Sandinista-led armed forces, has quietly become a point of trade for cocaine en route from Colombia to the United States, local authorities say.In the 20 months since Mrs. Chamorro took office, because of liberalized trade and a decline in coastal law enforcement, Bluefields has become an easy port of entry for Colombian cocaine,...

Nearly 200,000 people are expected to descend on Annapolis this weekend when the Whitbread Round the World Race, the Spring Boat Show and the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Walk converge on the 18th-century city.That means restaurants and shops will be jammed, parking spaces will be all but unavailable and traffic jams will dwarf those caused by the fall U.S. Sail and Power Boat Shows and homecoming weekend at the Naval Academy.Here is a short schedule of events and parking suggestions: The Annapolis Salutes Its Maritime Heritage Festival has opened at City Dock, and the Volvo Race Village, with Whitbread yacht displays, open-air exhibits, antique boat exhibits and story-tellers, will open there today.

KABUL, Afghanistan - It towers, a fantastic construction of orange-scented cake and buttercream icing, created by four men, including a cake engineer: a 132-pound creation in the shape of a ship, dedicated to Afghanistan's favorite film, Titanic. Although the Taliban had banned films and shut down cinemas when the movie was released in 1997, many people here in the capital watched pirated copies of Titanic at home on illegal videocassette recorders. Here, the movie is considered the greatest romantic adventure of all time, so the unhappy ending notwithstanding, the Titanic makes the perfect wedding cake.