now, abc 2 news at 5:30. right now, a baltimore city firefighter is charged with running an online prostitution ring. jamar marvin simmons, a 10-year veteran of the fire department, was arrested. we'll have much more coming up at 6. good news tonight when it comes to the health of the chesapeake bay. according to reports, maryland is on track to meet its goals for improving the health of the bay. maryland has exceeded its cover crop goal as far as the future goals. the report says urban septic system pollution -- students in baltimore are

showing progress in math but not so much in reading. the state department of education results were released today. we start tonight focusing on your money and the taxes that you pay. it's convenient. open 24 hours and right now it's tax-free. we're talking about online shopping. but all that tax-free shopping may soon change. >> how about organic green iced tea? >> reporter: if you buy anything from a store in washington, d.c., the sales tax is 10%. but if you bought something online from a business that doesn't have a physical presence in d.c., the retailer wouldn't ask you to pay a sales tax at all. jill is with the national conference of state

legislators. >> california has a great deal of problems. this would mean 4.1 billion in revenue for california that they don't have right now. that could mean more teachers, more police, more firemen. >> reporter: more and more states are passing laws that would require consumers to pay sales tax on all internet purchases. but so far, online sales companies have been able to get around that because of a 1992 supreme court ruling on mail- order purchases. that decision says if a retailer doesn't have an actual physical location in the state, the retailer doesn't have to collect sales tax. legislation in congress would change that. so say you are in washington, d.c. and you buy a $20 shirt online from an out-of-state company who happens to be in california. as of now, you pay zero dollars in taxes. but if this federal bill became law, you would have to pay d.c. a 6% sales tax and that shirt

would cost you 21.21. bricks and mortar retailers say the new federal proposal is only fair. >> all they're asking for is for the government to close this loophole, level the playing field and let everybody compete on price in a free market. >> reporter: but a coalition of internet companies, including ebay and overstock are lobbying against the federal legislation, saying this is going to hit mom-and-pop operations. >> it could be less fair to small businesses, forcing them to collect and remit and file sales taxes for nearly 10,000 different jurisdictions across the country. >> i hate to make things even worse for those of us here in maryland, but the sales tax could actually be even tougher here. earlier this year, governor martin o'malley proposed a tax on media downloads, like e- books and apps. it could have been affected those, so that 99 cents would

have cost you 1.05, adding the state's 6% income tax. but the bill failed. so how much shopping are you doing online and should you be tax-free? join in the conversation on our facebook page. wyatt? on the weather front here, just a couple of beneficial rain showers showing up mainly north of baltimore here the cou back into the bel aire area. a lot of us are clouding up. quite a bit of cloud cover has developed across the state, so not the early sunshine we had. as we look at the inner harbor, you can kind of see that, the clouds thickening up here. will the sun be back tomorrow and how hot will things trend into your weekend? we've got the details coming up in just a few. >> thanks, wyatt. two hospitals are no longer

giving formula to new moms. it's an effort to promote breastfeeding. hospital officials say more than 90% of new mothers breast- feed at the hospital following delivery. and an warning for anybody heading to the ocean this summer. police are searching for two teenagers they believe are appearing with counterfeit $20 bills. two teen boys tried to pass the fake 20's at four different shops. one business accepted the 20. in this case, investigators believe the teens are actually bleaching the funny money to make it look more real. how do you spot a fake? according to the u.s. secret service, you should pay attention to how the bill feels. those that are printed on special paper that is 75% cotton and 25% linen, so the

bills are a little stiffer. second, bills now have color- shifting ink. a $5 bill, you should look at the bill from an angle and you'll see shifting in the left right-hand corner from copper to green or from green to black. this morning, friends and family gathered to remember a 15-year-old girl who committed suicide. they gathered for a ceremony in grace's honor. grace's parents say she was being bullied at school at the time of her suicide. sadly, there is an increase in what is known as bully-cide. we're going to have much more on this event tomorrow on good morning maryland starting at 4:30. amusement rides can be very scary.

this person decided to jump and it was all caught on tape. more ahead. and chaos at a movie shoot, after the action turns into a real-life drama. and be sure to check out our weather app. it's not hard to pull up maryland's most interactive radar and see if it's going to rain where you live.

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move money with a slide. save with a shake. feel good about your decisions. caught on tape, a girl jumps off at the amusement park in new jersey. then a storm breaks out. she decided her only choice was to jump. >> i was like, oh, my gosh, don't cry, don't cry. i was like, no, we're jumping, we're jumping. she's like, what do we do? >> i said, we're jumping. >> melanie did not break any bones but she's got a couple of bumps and bruises. well, they walked into a movie, but not anticipating this scene, in the roxbury

section of boston. the movie truck is in luxembourg for the production of the heat. the scene played out on the street. >> a friend of mine, we thought that this scene was part of the movie, and i'm like, no, this is real-life footage. >> all passengers went to the hospital with bumps and bruises. why the bus driver crashed into the movie van, it was the drivers second trip on the route and he had gone around the bus for the first time. well, they may be on their all-star break, but tonight we're cheering for some of our favorite o's. more on baltimore's all-stars and the prep for tonight's big game. and what's hotter on twitter? tweeting about church or beer? take a guess. we'll have the answer.

all right. we're taking you live to kansas city right now. we're getting ready to cheer on our o's tonight. we have three o's playing tonight. we will all be cheering them on. all right, shifting gears, we have those facebook friends always bragging about something. social media is becoming very competitive. rosevelt leftwich reports tonight, we found parents who say, hey, they're unplugging from what they feel like should be called fakebook. >> reporter: do you feel less than martha stewartlike? or do you get jealous when a few minutes on facebook reveals your friends' great vacation? new research might make you feel better. >> people use facebook to compensate for their own

deficiencies, and facebook highlights the positive aspects and can cover up the negative parts in you. >> reporter: psychologist professionals found people use social networks for two common reasons. one, a sense of belonging. two, self-presentation. >> it's an opportunity to create a life that one wants to live rather than a life that the person actually lives. >> reporter: it can seem like everyone is living ideal lives. christie crowder had enough. she took a break from it all. >> i'm virtually unplugged from everything, just to let my brain breathe. >> reporter: taking a deep breath is rene's specialty. she nicknamed herself the good enough mother. she maintains a website with the same name. she's tired of the trend she's scene on social media and beyond. >> social media is a wonderful tool. but do you really think that anybody is going to put their bad foot forward? of course not!

>> reporter: she reminds parents to put what they see on facebook into perspective. >> this is not real life. i always say it's important to parents, for the people who really matter in your life, and those are the people under your own roof. >> reporter: if you decide to take a break, lets friend know you're about to head off the radar. now, maryland's most powerful doppler radar. >> we start off with a check on the radar. you can see the showers beginning to diminish now. but we had a fairly robust thunder shower earlier, but right now just some beneficial rain coming down. take a look at how the skies changed. you see the clouds thickening up and a passing shower, not too far from bel aire. kind of getting gray here late in the day. we look from ccbc and then clouds begin to billow up. the atmosphere is getting more

unstable and that's when you begin to see those vertically- stacked clouds, but not so unstable to allow major storms to begin to rumble out there this afternoon. let's take a look at the inner harbor where current conditions are warm but not excessively hot. 85 at the airport. right now, temperatures running low to mid 80's, 79 in york, 78 in ocean city. a wind light and variable, basically just enough to stir the air a little bit. it's relatively comfortable for early to mid july. however, as we look at the highs on the day, we can see widespread 80's. 93 was pretty hot in the heart of the city today. 91 out in frederick way. humidity is moderate, around 50%. the mean pattern continues to be to our south in terms of active weather.

it's all the way from arkansas, louisiana, texas to the outer banks of north carolina. not a moving front, just a stationary front that will kind of shift a little bit, 50, 75 miles in each direction. there's an area of low pressure that has spun up along that boundary and that is spinning in a little bit of unsettled air, allowing for a few showers around maryland, but not any robust thunderstorm action. as we look at the next 24 hours here, you can see most of the action will stay to the south. as we check out the future temps, tomorrow will be warm again, very summerlike, but not excessive heat. we do see signs of excessive heat in st. louis. around here, we still look for upper 80's. overnight, 67 with a few stray showers. 88 tomorrow. but, again, hotter in the heart of the city. tomorrow night, down to 65 with

some pretty comfortable temperatures. seven-day forecast, a few tweaks here for you. we have bumped up the numbers just a little bit as we go into the ladder part of the weekend and early next week. so that is the trend right now. >> it feels really thick out there today. >> the humidity, believe it or not, is not as high as last week, but the temperatures have come down, so it's humid. july in maryland, kelly, come on. >> all right. >> we've gotta take it. now, president obama and mitt romney back on the campaign trail. they're hitting some key bottle ground states. troy is live in washington. >> reporter: today president obama is in iowa, a state he won four years ago. meanwhile, mitt romney is back from vacation and he's hitting the campaign trail in colorado. both of these states so far are

offering up extremely course races. what you're going to see in iowa, it is a dead heat between obama and romney. but 10% of the voters there are actually unsure about who they might pick. in colorado, it's a similar story, a statistical tie between president obama and romney. it could be the uncertainty that's causing the candidates to get more personal in these attacks. >> my opponent's plan is to let the housing market hit bottom. governor romney said we should let them go bankrupt. >> i just don't think this president understands how our economy works. if there's an outsourcer in chief, it's the president of the united states, not the guy who is running to replace him. >> reporter: they're also sending national numbers out today that show us if the

election were to be held today, it would be a tie between obama and romney and that also might be a reason why they're getting so heated, the closer and closer we get to november. >> troy is definitely getting heated. so we're hearing that mitt romney may be close to making a decision when it comes to a running mate. what can you tell us about that tonight? >> reporter: mitt romney is still very tight-lipped about this process, but we're getting a little information from ohio senator rob portland. he was in boston yesterday and says he met with some of romney's campaign staffers. not sure exactly what those meetings were about, but he says it's not part of the process. but there is one person you might be able to cross off the that's rick santorum, because santorum recently said he's not been contacted by romney's team as of yet. >> thanks for joining us. we'll see you tomorrow. listen to this. people are actually tweeting more about church than beer.

researchers actually combed through ten million tweets and found that slightly more tweets involve churched. they searched for those two words with an effort to find differences across the country. they selected the words because religion and drinking are, quote, very, very rich businesses. no doubt about that. coming up new at 6, we're continuing to gather the latest details and information on that baltimore city firefighter that was charged with running an online prostitution ring. we'll have a live report ahead. and it appears the chesapeake bay cleanup efforts are on track. or are they? those stories and a whole lot more coming up at 6. but first, here's a preview of what's ahead on world news at 6:30. coming up on world news, what if losing weight doesn't

have to be so difficult? we go inside new research, a simple insight that could change the way you eat.

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for more of the inside story, visit shinglesinfo.com take a look at the numbers today. dow jones down 83. the nasdaq down 29. and the s&p 500 down almost 11, down two days in a row. a major consumer headache for six months now, the popular painkiller excedrin has been missing from store shelves. the cause? experts say go for the generic. >> it has this amount of

aspirin. the ingredients in excedrin, it should work just as well if it has that. >> excedrin is going for hundreds of dollars on ebay. makers of the drug say they are working hard to get it back into stores. google is going to have to pay a hefty fine for privacy violations. google by -- bypassed the privacy settings of users. google's $25 million fine will be the largest ever from the ffc. fiek soft is gearing up for windows 8, coming right in time for their new tablet. if you have an older version of windows or pc, you can upgrade for just $40 by the end of the year. do you love bananas?

who says baltimore is a top banana city? we'll have more at 6, which starts now. now, abc 2 news at 6. a city firefighter is feeling the heat after being accused of running a prostitution ring. keeping the chesapeake bay clean, how we're doing. >> we have areas of improvement. maryland's school assessments are released. and on the weather front, we've got a few showers out there this afternoon and the temperatures holding steady. much more coming up. we start off tonight with a breaking news update. we have been tracking this today all day and we brought it to you live at 5:00. two men have been arrested and charged in a prostitution re