Easy Access

A planned waterfront development in Westport is among the five locations eligible for millions in state funds intended to encourage military families relocating to Maryland to settle in high-density communities with easy access to mass transit, Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown announced yesterday. The other so-called BRAC zones are around the Odenton and Laurel MARC train stations near Fort Meade, in East Frederick near Fort Detrick, and at a commercial stretch of Prince George's County near Andrews Air Force Base.

In baseball, they'll tell you that a loss is not always just a loss. Sometimes you learn things even when you don't come out ahead. While that may be easy to understand in sports, it's a little fuzzier when it comes to a city's population: If you're not growing, then you're losing, right? Well, it's more complicated than that. Although Baltimore's total population has declined in the past 10 years, it was the slowest rate of decline in decades. And, through forward-thinking efforts to establish data-driven measurement systems in the last decade, we have fine-grained data available to learn from these losses - and there is much to be gained from what we know now. While the city as a whole lost population between 2000 and 2010, more than a third of its neighborhoods grew.

The sales force for the port of Baltimore travels the country and the world, looking for business. It could be farm equipment manufactured in the Midwest on its way to Australia or furniture coming from South America or Alabama-built Hondas headed for Russian dealerships or outdoors gear ordered by U.S. retailers. "We want it," said Richard Powers, director of trade development. Baltimore's sales plan, formed several years ago, targets autos, containers, farm and construction equipment, forest products and passenger cruises.

Kudos to Cynthia Tucker for her column on the tragic state of affairs in this country on gun control ("The bloody results of America's bizarre love affair with guns," Opinion * Commentary, April 9). Ms. Tucker is right: We lack anything resembling a sane policy on guns. I expect The Sun will be inundated with letters making the same tired and flawed arguments about how "guns don't kill people; people do," and that our Second Amendment rights must be protected. And of course people, not weapons, instigate violence.

Howard County has become a regional haven for massage parlors, which crime experts say are often a new suburban face of the world's oldest profession.Despite years of crackdowns, massage parlors have become increasingly prominent in the consumer landscape, operating side-by-side with doughnut shops and convenience stores in strip malls across the country."Business is booming in suburban areas, and people are spending more time there," says University of Maryland criminology Professor Lawrence Sherman.

When you walk in, there's something different about the house, but it's hard to put your finger on it immediately.It's obviously a total rehab -- every surface looks pristine, in contemporary colors and finishes. The rooms are spacious, the layouts thoughtful, the furniture perfectly suited to the setting.So what is this small dwelling's special role? You can, in fact, put your finger on it -- when you reach for the light and find a rocker-type switch set just 37 inches above the floor.Then you notice lever handles on all doors; electrical outlets 25 inches above the floor; low-pile or non-slip type flooring everywhere; a stair glide in the stairway.

When Lynn Patterson resolved to lose weight early this year, she took a hormone normally associated with pregnancy, not dieting. The 53-year-old Catonsville nurse went on the hCG diet, named for human chorionic gonadotropin, a hormone that is produced naturally in pregnant women and often used in fertility treatments to trigger ovulation. Promoters of the diet say hCG suppresses the appetite, making it easy to stick to a diet of just 500 calories a day. They also say it helps the body burn fat while retaining muscle.

When it came time for Stephanie Blatchley and her husband, Tyler, to buy their first house, the young couple knew exactly what they wanted. Having grown up in western Howard County, she was most comfortable in a country setting. Both of them wanted to be near family and friends. And the idea of easy access to major thoroughfares was appealing. They also knew what they did not want: a formal dining room. "We lived in an apartment for two years, and although we enjoyed that lifestyle, we wanted to buy a house of our own," Blatchley explained.

The president of the Nasdaq Stock Market Inc. said yesterday that buying and selling stocks has become so convenient for amateur investors that their risk of losing money is increasing."

With summer approaching, the Howard County Police Department is urging residents to secure themselves against one of summer's most common crimes: burglaries resulting from open or unsecured garage doors. Since January 1999, the county's Police Department has handled 118 such burglaries, said Sgt. John Superson, police spokesman. "This is something we experience every year when the weather starts breaking," he said. In some cases, burglars have gotten into a closed garage by stealing garage openers from unlocked cars in driveways, Superson said.