Young Man

Milford Mill junior guard Isaiah McCray enjoyed growing in 2009 and is looking to do the same in 2010. He maintains a 3.8 grade-point average and plans to major in mathematics or accounting in college. He is in his third season with the varsity basketball team and first as a starter after being the first player off the bench last season. The No. 6 Millers captured the Baltimore County championship last season and made a strong run in the Class 3A North region, falling to eventual state champion Lake Clifton in the final seconds of the regional title game.

Milford Mill junior guard Isaiah McCray enjoyed growing in 2009 and is looking to do the same in 2010. He maintains a 3.8 grade-point average and plans to major in mathematics or accounting in college. He is in his third season with the varsity basketball team and first as a starter after being the first player off the bench last season. The No. 6 Millers captured the Baltimore County championship last season and made a strong run in the Class 3A North region, falling to eventual state champion Lake Clifton in the final seconds of the regional title game.

Anne Arundel County police said they are investigating a suspected homicide in the western part of the county. The body of a man believed to be 22 years old was found early Monday morning near Route 198 and Red Clay Road, police said. Further information was unavailable.

The following is a selection of reader comments about a recent fatal shooting downtown near Camden Yards from The Baltimore Sun's crime blog, baltimoresun.com/crimewatch. I lived in The Redwood at the corner of Eutaw and Redwood for two years during my time at UM Law. This is about the least surprising thing I've read to come out of Baltimore in a long time, and really was only a matter of time. Those of us who lived in this block of Eutaw were always shocked at the total lack of police enforcement of the rowdy, obscene and violent crowds who would pour out of the Upper Deck bar and the Goddess strip club on all nights of the week.

Baltimore police were investigating the shooting of a man who was wounded yesterday morning in East Baltimore. The victim - whose identity was not available but who was described as young, possibly in his teens - was shot in the chest and shoulder about 8:50 a.m. at Rutland Avenue and Oliver Street in the Broadway East neighborhood. He was taken to Johns Hopkins Hospital and was listed in critical condition. Within minutes of the shooting, city police posted word of the incident on the department's Twitter page, which officials say could become a more common way of disseminating information.

The format of the second presidential debate was described as that of a town hall meeting, but it was pure TV from the "citizens" seated on risers on a brightly lit stage, to the candidates moving about a stage like performers. In TV terms, body language and modes of address were never more important. John McCain lived up to his reputation for excelling in town hall meetings, quickly establishing a soft-spoken intimate relationship with the audience even as he attacked his opponent - two things experts say you are not supposed to be able to do simultaneously.

Everyone wants to meet the new guy. And so as Benjamin Todd Jealous works the room at Baltimore's Annie E. Casey Foundation, there is a receiving line of sorts that forms everywhere he turns. Roslyn M. Brock, vice chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's National Board of Directors, squires the 35-year-old Californian around the reception on the second day of his new job. He is the 17th CEO and president of the NAACP, "the youngest in our history, and THAT is something," she says as applause fills the room.

He pointed the gun in my face a few minutes before 5 a.m. . The gun was similar to the ones carried by the police. He was maybe 15 or 16 years old, and he mumbled, "This is for real," or something similar. I had just started my daily two-mile exercise walk around Union Square Park on a recent Tuesday. When you walk at 5 a.m., you escape the heat and the dangerous rays of the sun. When the young man stopped me, I was directly across the street from the front door of Steuart Hill Academic Academy, the school where Mayor Sheila Dixon once taught.

Did it ever occur to you, while driving around Baltimore and its environs, that respect for Maryland's traffic laws had evaporated like dry ice left out on a July afternoon? Have you ever wondered why? For a large part of the answer, you need look no further than the District Court of Maryland. Believe me, if you get a traffic ticket in Maryland, go to court. If your offense is severe enough, the judge might turn down your sheets and put a chocolate on your pillow. Here's an example from a courtroom I visited recently: Three straight cases come before a Catonsville judge.

He devoted much of his childhood in Africa either to playing sports or watching television, but Boubacar Coly can speak eight languages with ease. He is Muslim by faith but attended Catholic schools much of his life and even a Catholic university for a time. He grew up on a continent where soccer is king, but his heart led him to basketball and the United States. Incongruous as those facts seem, they are mere snapshots of a young man who forged a life in the United States when everyone back in Ziguinchor, Senegal, told him not to leave seven years ago. Factor in three major knee surgeries, two lost seasons of college basketball, a new wife and a reinvigorated career at Morgan State, and it still doesn't cover the journey Coly has taken.