Outlets

FUNKSTOWN -- Four families were displaced by a Monday night fire at an apartment building on Funkstown's main street, said Dave Fraley, fire chief for the Funkstown Volunteer Fire Co. No one was injured in the fire at 27 W. Baltimore St., but nine people and two pets were displaced, according to a release from the Maryland State Fire Marshal's Office. The fire, which was reported at 11:37 p.m., damaged one apartment in the wood-frame building and two other apartments were damaged by smoke, Fraley said.

A Weekend of Metal featuring Darkest Hour 5 p.m. Saturday, March 21 Sonar 407 E. Saratoga St. Baltimore Tickets cost $15 or $20, plus service, and are available at Ticketmaster outlets and www.ticketmaster.com. The Dead 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 14 Verizon Center 601 F St. NW Washington, D.C. Tickets cost $68 to $98 plus service charge and are available at the Verizon Center box office and all Ticketmaster.com outlets and www.ticketmaster.

"Stay away from steroids" may be the second most important lesson we can take away from the tale of New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez, whose drug dalliances have been made public over the last couple of months. The main message concerns the value of the media, even as the established news industry seems to be crumbling all around us. This side of the message has nothing to do with sports, home run records, the cream or the clear. It has to do with how we obtain information and the value of the professions designed to dig that information out of hard-to-reach places.

The Herald-Mail embarked on two projects in May that use new technology and take advantage of our relationship with our sister company in Hagerstown, Antietam Cable. We have begun a new publication introduced in the South County-Boonsboro-Sharpsburg area called Washington County Living (WCL). It's available for free at dozens of retail outlets in southern Washington County, and delivered to nonsubscribers of The Herald-Mail in that area. It is accompanied by a Web site by the same name - washingtoncountyliving.

HAGERSTOWN -- A grand opening was held Thursday for a temporary welcome center that could draw more than 200,000 people off Interstate 70 and into Prime Outlets at Hagerstown. That's the number of people who visited the welcome center at Myersville, Md., each year before it closed for reconstruction work in April, said Margot A. Amelia, executive director of the Maryland Office of Tourism. The center off I-70 near Myersville will be closed through September 2009. The center at Prime Outlets will be open while the Myersville location in closed, and Amelia said it is a destination for anyone who needs directions, brochures, maps or information about tourism in Maryland.

Maryland State Police were looking for a man who robbed a shopper at Prime Outlets at Hagerstown Sunday afternoon. Police said that the man stole about $60 from the shopper's wallet about 3:15 p.m. as he was returning to his car. The man was opening the driver's-side passenger door of his vehicle when the man told him to "turn around," police said. A hard object was pressed against the victim's back, and police said the victim believed it was a gun. The man reached into the victim's back pocket and took the man's wallet, removing $60 that was inside, police said in a press release.