Xerox

Vaughn Harman always has had plenty to say about Towson State football.It's just that more people hear him now.Westminster High graduate Harman, a four-year starter for Towson State and a member of the Washington Federals team of the U.S. Football League, is the new color commentator for Towson State's football broadcasts on WITH-AM.Harman had helped Towson State as a part-time volunteer coach for several seasons after his December 1981 graduation. He drifted away, however, in the past few years following the birth of his two daughters.

Q. What are your thoughts on Paramount Communications? After so many changes taking place,is it time to look at this investment?A. This famous film company needs more low-budget blockbusters such as its surprise hit "Ghost" and fewer big-budget disappointments like its much-hyped "Days of Thunder."Take a wait-and-see attitude toward the stock of Paramount Communications (around $40, NYSE) because its entertainment division has suffered several major flops, cautioned Mark Manson, analyst with Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette.

City officials said Friday that they no longer have complete confidence in the accuracy of their speed cameras' radar systems and have instituted a new "reasonableness" test on two cameras known to have issued erroneous tickets. "We now know we can't just rely on radar being 100 percent accurate," said Frank Murphy, the city's deputy transportation director for operations. "It is incumbent upon us as the operator to make sure what's being issued is accurate. " Murphy's comments came after a Baltimore Sun investigation showed that a series of vehicles received speed camera tickets at two cameras along Cold Spring Lane even though the cameras' own pictures proved the vehicles were traveling too slowly to warrant the tickets.

Years ago, before we were married and moved to Maryland, my husband opened a checking account in Indiana and had the statements mailed to his office there. The account wasn't forgotten, just ignored. That wasn't a problem until his employer moved and the statements started bouncing back to the bank. Eventually, the account was turned over to the Indiana attorney general, who added it to a list of unclaimed property — where it was recently spotted by a family acquaintance. We put in a claim.

Baltimore's speed camera contractor disclosed Friday that several of the city's automated cameras have been wrongly ticketing roughly one of every 20 passing cars and trucks. Officials with Xerox State and Local Solutions told a mayoral task force studying the city's program that the five cameras have been idled and are no longer issuing $40 tickets after they found during a recent review that the devices had an error rate of 5.2 percent. Those five cameras have generated at least 15,000 tickets, city records show, translating to $600,000 in potential fines for motorists.

It's not a matter of "if" but "when. " Medifast Inc., the No. 3 manufacturer of weight-loss food products, is growing so quickly in that industry that there will soon come a time when it outgrows its sole production facility in Owings Mills and builds plants elsewhere. To keep up with that rapid growth, Medifast plans on making $5 million in improvements to its headquarters and plant in Owings Mills over the next two years. But it's also considering other sites for the future, including a possible West Coast manufacturing site and one in Mexico to serve the growing Latin American market.

Baltimore officials are refusing to pay the city's former speed and red-light camera operator $2 million for its final three months of work, a period that preceded the troubled start for the new contractor in January. The city stopped issuing tickets from the cameras for weeks because of the rocky transition from the old vendor, Xerox State and Local Solutions, to Brekford Corp. Xerox says it's owed money for services provided in October, November and December, according to Solicitor George Nilson, the city's chief lawyer.

ARLINGTON, Va. -- "Greed is the universal motive, sincerity is a pose, honesty is for chumps, altruism is selfishness with a neurotic twist, and morality is for kids and fools." That was Walt Harrington writing in The Washington Post on Dec. 27, 1987, in response to the financial and sexual scandals of that period. Then, the ethical violations were committed by men named Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken. Their means to immoral ends were junk bonds and insider trading. The most prominent (though by no means only)

Baltimore officials said Monday they are scrapping all 83 of the city's automated speed cameras and "methodically" replacing them with newer models, after a Baltimore Sun investigation found errors with the system. The overhaul, estimated to cost about $450,000, comes after the city's new speed camera contractor, Brekford Corp., analyzed Baltimore's system and concluded the only way to cut down on the errors was to replace all the cameras with newer models, the company said. Maurice R. Nelson, managing director of Brekford, said hiring enough employees and police officers to catch all the errors the old cameras were generating would be too expensive.

Baltimore City said Tuesday that it will throw out more than 6,000 speed and red-light camera tickets because its former contractor has stopped showing up in court to defend them - the latest sign of the dysfunction dogging Baltimore's speed camera program. City transportation officials say they lack the evidence to fight the appeals on their own. Voiding the tickets means the city is forgoing the chance to collect more than $300,000 in fines. The announcement comes after judges over the past two weeks dismissed 600 speed camera tickets because city lawyers said they had no evidence.