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Brandon Spruill, 23-year-old basketball player, shot to death during a robbery Monday* in the 2300 block of McKean Ave.

Good news, firearms fans, a federal judge has lifted his stay on our state's concealed carry laws, and at long last you could be packing heat in your pants in two weeks. So says our friend Buz, if you happen to be packing in a dark crowded theater when some homicidal maniac opens fire, aim for the flash. Or just do like this dad and drop your baby, abandon your wife and toddler and drive off.  My plan is to just wear this every time I leave the house. 

A year after the execution-style murders of 58-year-old Billy Ray Lovitt, 36-year-old daughter Tanyika Gibbs and her boyfriend, 27-year-old Michael Jones, no leads.

So, future robbery victims, I'd always assumed iPhones were un-stealable because of the 'find my iPhone' feature, but not so, as I learned from a friend who had her iPhone snatched out of her hand as she was walking and talking upon the streets of our fair city. Apparently all it takes to subvert all that trackin' technology is a tiny screwdriver and a $3 SIM card, readily found on the Internet. A fix: a Tungsten etching pen, available for $6 including shipping on eBay. Which means it probably also fell off a truck, but, well, anyway, with that you can skritch your land-line phone number or whatever on the back case, so that even if you don't get your phone back, at least you have the semi-comfort of knowing the fudgeface who robbed you won't be able to easily sell it on eBay.

British tourist comes to town to see the spots made famous by "The Wire," instead discovers AVAM's bumptious bottom-burp machine. (Via Fenton) Oh, those whingey Brits with the bollocks journalism.  Quips Scott Calvert, "Interesting to read that a dying Poe made it to the steps of Hopkins Hospital a good 40 years before it came into being."