social issues

In an extraordinary, wide-ranging interview, Pope Francis expressed frustration that the Catholic Church is ¿obsessed¿ with issues such as abortion, homosexuality and contraception, and called instead for a focus on healing and mercy.

Project Homeless Connect offering variety of support services to needy

Brooklyn used to be every bit as bad as Baltimore, and now it's the hippest place on Earth.

Groups that meet regularly in Howard County

Indictment of Baltimore grocers on food stamp fraud should not justify GOP plan to deny eligibility to millions of hungry people

Poverty would spread if Maryland chooses to raise the minimum wage

Hrabowski, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and a widely influential educator, reflected Sunday on the 50th anniversary of the daylight bombing of the Birmingham church.

Obamacare and the poor

Cat adoption center will open in Harford Mall

Planned pregnancies will help reduce Maryland's infant mortality rate further.

Boulevard at Box Hill, off I-95 in Abingdon and serving more than 250,000 residents from Harford and Cecil counties, southern Pennsylvania and northern Baltimore County, will hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony to unveil its newest merchants on Saturday, Sept. 14.

I recently invited elected officials in Harford County to accompany me on a tour of the Humane Society of Harford County to see the good work done there.

A Pennsylvania judge ordered a suburban Philadelphia official to cease granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples on Thursday nearly two months after he started doing so in violation of state law.

Stealing from productive people won't end poverty

Outreach program diverts dollars from health care delivery

Baltimore resident Nick Cienski hopes to create an online community and then engage them in conquering serious problems.

The resignation of NAACP president Benjamin Jealous left the nation's most influential advocacy group for equality in search of a new leader at a particularly sensitive time for U.S. race relations, setting off a debate Monday about his potential successor.

Retiring NAACP President Benjamin Jealous transformed the group by refocusing it on contemporary concerns

Sexual slavery is a problem in all 50 states but one that gets scant attention except in cases like former Ohio bus driver Ariel Castro.

The Ravens' senior adviser to player development was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS in 2007, a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects the cells in the brain and spinal cord. Often referred to as Lou Gehrig's Disease, the disease causes muscle atrophy and difficulty speaking, swallowing and breathing.

On a Civil War battlefield where tens of thousands of men clashed fifteen decades ago, eight Ku Klux Klan members unfurled their group's banner Saturday afternoon and called for a new uprising to oust President Obama.

For same-sex married couples in Maryland and elsewhere, filing taxes is about to change.

List of Howard County support groups

Wage slavery in corporate America

International Association of Firefighters Local 1605 Foundation organizers fundraiser

Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center hopes to better address health needs of the Latino community with a new center of excellence.

Legally married same-sex couples will be recognized for federal tax purposes no matter what state they live in, the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department announced Thursday.

A. Philip Randolph went from being "the most dangerous Negro in America" to one of the most venerated and acknowledged for his role as the grandfather of civil rights.

Read the transcript from the "Let Freedom Ring" ceremony Aug. 28, 2013

LGBT veterans and their partners could find themselves unable to receive equal veterans' benefits due to a portion of U.S. law, according to the Secretary of Veterans Affairs.

For Aberdeen resident Janice Grant, it meant feeling like a real American for the first time.

On Wednesday in Atlanta, Art Shell will be honored for his time at Maryland State -- now known as UMES -- with his third Hall of Fame enshrinement.

City must be take the long view with its proposed broadband network

One day after being sentenced to 35 years in a military prison for espionage in the largest breach of classified documents in the nation's history, U.S. soldier Bradley Manning made a request of all of us Thursday: to stop calling him Brad, and start calling her Chelsea.

Thousands of people are expected to descend on Washington this weekend to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington civil rights event. Several events are planned for the weekend and on Wednesday, Aug. 28, the anniversary of the day of the march. Baltimore-area civil rights groups are scrambling to keep up with the demand for bus reservations.

Millions rely on the SNAP program, yet Republicans propose to balance the budget on their backs

There are many lingering and tragic results of racism in this nation that are likely to take generations to untangle, and one is unfortunate state of the reputation of African-American horse jockeys from an age gone by.

Sherrilyn Ifill writes that 50 years after the seminal event of the civil rights era, the work is still unfinished

Howard County sports notices for the week of Aug. 22

More minorities are attending college but fewer proportionately are reaping the benefits. What's going on?

Women and minorities are vastly underrepresented in fields with the most potential for job growth, but there are ways to spark their interest in STEM subjects.

Harbor Point and lead paint settlement appear to be 'done deals' that haven't been fully investigated

The International Association of Black Firefighters is complaining that the latest firefighter recruit class for Anne Arundel County is all-white and all-male.

A New Jersey judge heard arguments Thursday over whether the state should be required to legalize same-sex marriage in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision on the Defense of Marriage Act.

Groups that meet regularly in Howard County

Labor Department udates guidance for same-sex marriages

The Department of Defense announced Wednesday that will be granting benefits to the same-sex spouses of both uniformed military personnel and civilian employees no later than Sept. 3.

Using funds meant to help poor families find affordable places to live, Baltimore's public housing agency has paid nearly $6.8 million to satisfy long-standing court judgments against it for lead poisoning suffered by six former residents when they were young children years ago.