Maryland Xxxxxxx

On Wednesday, 61-year-old Covington resident Tyrone Wudtee was arrested after an east-coast man, known only by the initials M.L.S., filed a criminal complaint alleging that Wudtee had stolen his identity more than 30 years ago and had been collecting benefits in his name ever since.

According to a release sent out by the U.S. Attorney's Office for Western Washington, Wudtee encountered the real M.L.S. during a bar fight in Baltimore in 1977—during which Wudtee allegedly took off with M.L.S.'s wallet.

March 9, 2011: This article has been corrected. [1]

A 12th infant apparently has died of undetermined causes in military housing at Fort Bragg, N.C., and investigators are now trying to determine whether the death is linked to fumes from contaminated drywall or some other environmental problem in the home.

Last month, federal officials declared that 11 earlier infant deaths were not caused by environmental contaminants, but they did not suggest any alternative causes.

Four-and-a-half-month-old Jaxson Garza died on Feb. 24. His parents, Sgt. Armando Garza and his wife Brittany, both 26, were moved to a guest house on the base later that day. Brittany Garza later learned that her home was being tested for defective drywall and other environmental problems.

The Garzas, who have three other children, are still waiting for the final results of Jaxson’s autopsy. Brittany Garza said she recently spoke with the pathologist from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Rockville, Md., who performed the autopsy....

David Simon, creator of The Wire, writing in Slate in response to Felicia "Snoop" Pearson's arrest, is required reading.

In an essay published two years ago in Time magazine, the writers of The Wire made the argument that we believe the war on drugs has devolved into a war on the underclass, that in places like West and East Baltimore, where the drug economy is now the only factory still hiring and where the educational system is so crippled that the vast majority of children are trained only for

A bit of news from my hometown:

More than 60 people, including the actress known as "Snoop" from the Baltimore-based HBO series "The Wire," were arrested Thursday morning across the city and its surrounding counties in connection with a large-scale heroin and marijuana operation.

Raids were carried out in the pre-dawn hours by agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration, Baltimore police and a slew of other federal and state law enforcement agencies.

Makes me want to watch The Wire again.

[ Comment

prima seadiva has added a photo to the pool:

I never find clothes that fit, not the cheapest prices of books and housewares but bargains can be found. The store is always well decorated.Today's bonus, the counter person was very funny and affable.

Only 35

Read about Alonso's work in this 12/1/10 New York Times article "A Mission to Transform Baltimore’s Beaten Schools."

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The common refrain that climate change will bring malaria to U.S. shores again turns out to be cause for heated debate in scientific circles, according to Arthur Allen in the Washington Post:

The room where 10,000 Anopheles stephensi mosquitoes hatch each week is hot and humid and smells like the tropics – an appropriate surrogate for a warming world. The Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute in Baltimore, where the insects are raised, was created with a billionaire’s anonymous donation a decade ago, after a map printed in Scientific American suggested that by 2020 malaria could be breaking out in Baltimore, and across the eastern United States and Europe.

The idea that climate change will bring malaria and other tropical killers to our door turns out to be an extremely controversial one among ecologists, climatologists and biologists such as Marcelo Jacobs-Lorena, who runs the “insectary” at Johns Hopkins. “It’s a very complicated story,” says Jacobs-Lorena.

Allen reviews the evidence, and broad...