Yim

After a five-year battle with community associations and lawmakers, nearly 30 Baltimore liquor store owners who ignored zoning laws are being forced to close shop on Sundays and scale back hours.The package stores, which started as taverns, have continued to operate under a tavern zoning ordinance that allowed more liberal hours. But the Planning Commission yesterday voted to require the operations to become taverns and keep their extended hours or remain a package store with shorter hours.

Lillian Kim sees more than a thousand seasons of Asian tradition reflected in the eyes of the lion that swaggers and skips this time of year in dazzling hues of orange, red and gold.For more than three decades, the 78-year-old matriarch of Baltimore's Chinese community has presided over the centuries-old practice of the lion dance -- perhaps the most widely recognized image of Asian culture. The mesmerizing performance is an integral piece of the Lunar New Year celebration, a holiday that begins Wednesday for millions of Asians across the world.

People still knock on the door of the Ostend Street rowhouse. They are looking for help or a few words from the woman who used to live there. They are looking for a ghost."

A Baltimore grand jury began hearing testimony yesterday in the death of a Baltimore man who suffered a head injury after falling to the sidewalk while being arrested by two city police officers.At least three witnesses testified at the panel's closed session on the events surrounding the arrest of 31-year-old George T. Hite, said Deborah Wood, one of the witnesses. Mark Cohen, an assistant state's attorney, confirmed that the case went to the grand jury yesterday.Ms. Wood, who lived in the block where the arrest occurred, said she testified for about 30 minutes yesterday morning.

Pyung Lee arrived at his corner store promptly at 8 yesterday morning in his aging blue van filled with bread, milk, soda and bacon, expecting a routine day behind the bulletproof glass that protected him from robbers.But Baltimore police say a young man waited for Lee to unlock the door, followed the merchant inside Woodington Market and demanded money. After grabbing a fistful of cash from two cash registers, police said the gunman shot Lee once in the right side of the head. Lee, 37, was in serious condition yesterday at Maryland Shock Trauma Center.

A comatose South Baltimore man died Tuesday night -- nearly two months after he suffered a head injury while being arrested by two city police officers.George T. Hite, 31, was pronounced dead about 9 p.m. at the Greenery Extended Care Center in Baltimore.Thomas C. Cardaro, a lawyer for Mr. Hite's family, said Mr. Hite died after developing pneumonia. The lawyer said an autopsy was completed yesterday, but the medical examiner is waiting for test results before ruling on a cause of death.Mr.

The Arditti String Quartet plays music when the ink is wet on the page.The British quartet, which will appear at Shriver Hall tonight at 7:30, performs 20 to 30 world premieres each year, and the average age of the works in its repertory is eight years. The Ardittis -- violinists Irvine Arditti and Dave Alberman, violist Levine Andrade and cellist Rohan de Saram -- play only one work that was written before the masterpieces of Bartok: Beethoven's futuristic "Grosse Fuge," which the composer himself predicted would take nearly a century before it would be understood.

Yesterday's inaugural Maryland Lacrosse Showdown at Johns Hopkins pit two of the state's best public school programs against last year's finalists from the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association, perhaps the nation's best high school league.The results were predictable, as No. 4 Gilman, the two-time MIAA champ, broke open a close one to beat No. 11 Mount Hebron, 9-4, and No. 3 Boys' Latin, last year's MIAA runner-up, blasted defending two-time 1A-2A state champ North Harford (4-5) by 23-4.

Accompanied by a piano and stringed instruments, the strains of a traditional Protestant hymn waft through an Ellicott City sanctuary full of Sunday worshipers.At first it sounds like any suburban Protestant congregation. But listen carefully - the words are sung in Korean.Bethel Korean Presbyterian Church is the largest of about 40 Korean-American congregations in the Baltimore metropolitan area. For its members, Bethel is a font of spirituality, but it is also a gathering place and a transmitter of Korean tradition, language and culture.

Stephanie Bell decided to skip her senior season of volleyball at Marymount (Va.) last year to pursue a different athletic endeavor. It still involves bumps and hits, only now she is working without a net. And instead of delivering overhand serves, she's dishing out forearm smashes. Bell gave up the sport she had played at James Madison High School (Vienna, Va.) and in college to go after her dream of becoming a professional wrestler. Known as Mia Yim on the independent wrestling circuit, Bell wrestles at small venues in Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Virginia while keeping an eye on one day working for a major wrestling company such as World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)