Zeman

The trial of an Elkton man accused of starving his brain-damaged wife to death in February will take place on the Eastern Shore after pretrial publicity forced it from Cecil County, an administrative judge had decided. John Joseph Dougherty will now stand trial in Queen Anne's County on charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter and abuse after his wife, Mary Elizabeth Kilrain, was found dead in the family home. A Cecil judge ruled this week that the case had received too much publicity for Dougherty to receive a fair trial and granted a defense motion for a change of venue.

PRAGUE, Czech Republic -- When the Czech Republic's President Vaclav Havel flew into the Canadian capital, Ottawa, last week for a three-day visit, he had some explaining to do.Fresh from NATO's Washington summit, Havel thanked Canada in an address to both houses of parliament for its support of his country's application to join the military alliance.Yet of the three new Central European members that formally joined NATO on March 12 -- Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic -- the Czechs find themselves at odds with the alliance over Yugoslavia.

On Monday, December 13, 2004CLAYBOURN J. LANGLOTZ, age 89 of Timonium, beloved husband of the late Anna E. (nee Holste) Langlotz, devoted father of William A. Langlotz and his wife Ruth Ann, Wilma A. Muir and her husband Robert and Claybourn J. Langlotz, brother of Mildred Zeman and Esther Rosenberger, grandfather of Mark W. Muir, Kari A. Gross and Laura A. Kefauver; great-grandfather of Sarah E. Gross and Owen M. Muir. Friends may call at the family owned Peaceful Alternatives Funeral & Cremation Center, P.A., 2325 York Road, Timonium on Wednesday and Thursday from 2 to 5 and 7 to 9 p.m. A Funeral Service will be held on Friday, December 17 at 11 a.m. at the St. John's Lutheran Church, 3911 Sweet Air Road, Sweet Air, MD 21131 with interment to follow in the adjoining cemetery.

For the next three weeks, observant Jews will not marry, listen to music, buy or wear new clothing, take a pleasure trip, cut their hair or shave. During the last nine days of the period, they also will refrain from consuming meat, fowl or wine (except on the Sabbath), sending gifts, doing laundry, bathing for pleasure and swimming. And on the final day of the three weeks, they will not eat, drink, bathe, wear leather shoes or engage in sexual relations. Instead, they will spend that evening sitting on a low chair or on the floor of their dimly lighted synagogues as the Book of Lamentations is mournfully chanted.

Sex, scandal and drama are hardly subjects new to the Internet, but now there is one-stop shopping for all of them on the Web -- at the Soap Opera Store. The Web site -- www.soap operastore.com -- claims to offer virtually everything a true soap opera junkie could want or need, from updates and chat rooms on every television soap to soap-related merchandise sales and auctions. The Soap Opera Store is brand new. So new, in fact, that on its scheduled day of launch last Friday, many of its features were still under construction.

Women's History Month will be celebrated at Western Maryland College throughout March.Highlighting the month's activities will be a film screening and panel discussion March 27 with Canadian filmmaker Donna Read; Dr. Ellen Reeder, curator of ancient art at the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore; Sheila Barth, director of the Temenos Center for the Healing Arts in Mount Airy; and moderator Dr. Julie Badiee, professor of art history at Western Maryland."

Services for Robert C. Alonso, a former manager of his family's Roland Park restaurant and a retired employee of the U.S. Customs Service, will be held 11 a.m. tomorrow at the Mitchell-Wiedefeld Funeral Home, 6500 York Road.Mr. Alonso, who had lived in Kissimmee, Fla., since his retirement in 1986, died suddenly Wednesday at a hospital there. He was 64.A 1943 graduate of Baltimore City College, where he played lacrosse, Mr. Alonso earned a bachelor's degree in 1949 from Western Maryland College before entering the Navy during World War II. After his discharge, he joined his two older brothers working at Alonso's, the family's restaurant on East Cold Spring Lane.

Harford County Sheriff's Office and Maryland State Police Reports: Aberdeen Ronald B. Comer, 26, of the first block of North Post Road, was charged Friday with second-degree escape. Prentis James Vinson III, 24, of the first block of North Post Road, was charged Saturday with violating probation in a case in which he was found guilty of theft below $100. Justin D. Baughman, 24, of the 800 block of Matthews Avenue, was charged Sunday with concealing a dangerous weapon and possessing drug paraphernalia.

PRAGUE -- Eva Eliasova lays down her pen and sighs, staring sadly at the questionnaire before her."It's terrible," said Ms. Eliasova, who was born in Slovakia but has lived in Prague for the last 27 of her 41 years. She points at a line asking what nationality she claims. "I have to write Czech.' But I feel like a Czechoslovak."As 15 million Czechs and Slovaks contemplate what their country's partition tonight will mean for them, hundreds of thousands of citizens living outside of their home republic are already faced with a tough choice: whether to take up citizenship in a new country, move back to the republic where they were born or continue living where they are but become foreigners.

Maryland had a blizzard flashback yesterday, as the first significant snowstorm of the season dropped a 2-inch mixture of snow, sleet and rain, creating treacherous road conditions that caused dozens of accidents.It was a year ago that a sucker punch hit as the area was just starting to pick itself up from a record-setting snowfall -- a second storm that added 4 inches.Yesterday's storm, which dropped about 2 1/2 inches of snow in Central Maryland and up to 4 inches to the west, wasn't in the same league, although schools were closed in 14 of the state's 24 subdivisions.