Uncovered

With two minutes left in the game, Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis was having a chat with Cincinnati coach Marvin Lewis, whose Bengals had the ball at their 33-yard line. "He was chuckling with me, and I told him, 'Look, man, we got you exactly where we want you,' " Marvin Lewis said. He was right. Ten plays later, Andre Caldwell caught a 20-yard pass over the middle for the game-winning touchdown as the Bengals upset the Ravens, 17-14, at M&T Bank Stadium. It was the fourth time Bengals quarterback Carson Palmer had rallied the Bengals (4-1)

A smart financier once remarked that investing was a matter of gambling with the odds tilted in your favor. Smart investors scrutinize and study; they learn from their mistakes, discover what works and doesn't work and gravitate to the winning strategies. What's so infuriating about the latest audit of the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development is that it appears such scrutiny was severely lacking when appointed officials chose to gamble on marketing strategies on behalf of the state.

WASHINGTON - Two white supremacists allegedly plotted to go on a national killing spree, shooting and decapitating black people and ultimately targeting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, federal authorities said yesterday. In all, the two men whom officials describe as neo-Nazi skinheads planned to kill 88 people - 14 by beheading, according to documents unsealed in U.S. District Court in Jackson, Tenn. The numbers 88 and 14 are symbolic in the white supremacist community.

Die-hard Orioles fans could have been forgiven for feeling tinges of panic when Mike Flanagan hobbled off the mound on May 17, 1983. With Jim Palmer already on the shelf and Dennis Martinez unable to find any consistency, Flanagan's twisted knee made him the third mangled piece of the club's projected pitching puzzle. Flanagan's injury occurred in the first half of a doubleheader against the slugging Chicago White Sox. Set to take the mound in Game 2 was a lithe Iowan named Mike Boddicker, who had come to Baltimore for brief stretches of the previous three seasons.

Undercover Maryland State Police officers repeatedly spied on peace activists and anti-death penalty groups in recent years and entered the names of some in a law-enforcement database of people thought to be terrorists or drug traffickers, newly released documents show. The files, made public yesterday by the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, depict a pattern of infiltration of the activists' organizations in 2005 and 2006.

The director of student activities at Baltimore City Community College used a campus credit card to make $7,250 in "questionable purchases," including an $800 digital camera, electronic game consoles, video games and DVD players, according to a legislative audit report released yesterday. College officials told auditors that the consumer items were given away to students at school-sponsored events, but they were "unable to document the specific students to whom prizes were given or the related events," the report said.

When Jim Chrismer researched black Harford County residents who fought in the Civil War about 20 years ago, he discovered that there was virtually nothing known about black history in the county. And people said there wasn't much history to find. "I was told that I might find about eight blacks who fought in the war," said Chrismer, who has been a history teacher at John Carroll School in Bel Air for the past 38 years. "Today I can identify over 200." As a result of the gaps in black history in the county, Chrismer and other county educators, genealogists and historians are doing their part to help document and preserve the county's black history.

When friends stop by my place, they gasp at my music collection -- not just because I have thousands of CDs. They're shocked at how unorganized they are. Stacks and stacks of jewel cases on tables. On the floor. On shelves. In crates. In boxes. Even in old duffel bags. I often know which stack contains what. Sometimes, though, it takes a minute to find that one song on that one CD I haven't heard since my freshman year of college. A part of me likes rediscovering CDs in all the disorganization.

NAKURU, Kenya -- Kenya's privileged tribe is on the run. During the past few days, tens of thousands of Kikuyus, the tribe of Kenya's president, have packed into heavily guarded buses to flee the western part of the country because of ethnic violence. Yesterday, endless convoys of buses - some with their windshields smashed by rocks - crawled across a landscape of scorched homes and empty farms. It is nothing short of a mass exodus. The tribe that has dominated business and politics in Kenya since independence in 1963 is being chased off its land by machete-wielding mobs made up of members of other tribes furious about the Dec. 27 election, which Kenya's president, Mwai Kibaki, won under dubious circumstances.

The peculiar red orb hung motionless in the summer sky near Frederick. A boy at the time, Keith Chester vividly recalls that day in 1966. It was about 6:30 p.m. and Chester was on his way to a friend's house. As he walked, he noticed a shiny red ball in the sky near the Catoctin Mountains. "The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up," Chester said. "I was so scared that I ran into my neighbor's house. I still think it was a UFO." To this day, the 50-year-old Bel Air resident has not been able find an explanation for the object, but incident sparked an interest in unidentified flying objects.