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A $1 million federal appropriation for Baltimore's sagging sloop-of-war Constellation was passed yesterday by the U.S. House of Representatives.But there's a catch.The Constellation will have to share the money with the World War II-era aircraft carrier Intrepid, which is docked in New York. Its share apparently will be decided by the military.Bill Toohey, a spokesman for Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes, said the Maryland Democrat will ask the secretary of defense to provide "the lion's share" to the Constellation.

Editor's note: Every Tuesday through the end of tax season, The Sun will run an edited transcript of Baltimoresun .com's weekly tax advice column featuring three experts from the Hunt Valley accounting firm SC&H Group. A few years ago we bought a time share. We recently sold it, at a loss, to a company that buys up time shares and that said the loss could be written off. My reading of tax information and a call to the IRS indicate that a time share is personal use property and the loss cannot be taken on taxes.

PAY FOR IT, AND THEY WILL COME. That was the part of the pitch that caught my attention. My husband and I had been sitting in the salesman's air-conditioned office for more than the 90 minutes that was required of us in exchange for this free weekend at the resort. We'd been listening -- well, I had been listening -- to the salesman's high-speed lecture on the value of purchasing a time share. You pay what amounts to the price of a nice used car for the right to vacation for one week at this or some other fancy resort -- forever.

They say there are no strangers gathered around a quilt. For the Pieceful Quilters of Glenelg, their craft is as much about sharing as it is about sewing.As American women -- and sometimes men -- have done for hundreds of years, the 13 Howard County women gather each week to share their fabric and their lives.Tomorrow and Saturday, for the first time in six years, the Pieceful Quilters will share their creations with the public in a show and sale at Glenelg United Methodist Church.The event also will showcase the group's youngest members -- Megan Graydon, 8, and Marissa Graydon, 5, of West Friendship -- quilting alongside the older members as they work to finish a vintage quilt begun many years ago."

I'm looking for a special partner in my life: a financial institution that pays more than lip service to my privacy. My bank, which has provided good service in some other ways, isn't in the running. It was bad enough that the bank insisted on using my Social Security number as the log-on identifier for Web-based banking. "But you still need a password," said an oblivious customer-service agent when I noted the incredible foolishness of this policy. It's frighteningly simple to get individuals' Social Security numbers, and people tend to use easy-to-guess passwords, so the potential for security and privacy breaches seems high.

In a victory yesterday for consumers who share TV shows online, a federal appeals court rejected regulations requiring electronics makers to include anti-piracy technology in new digital video and computer equipment. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia found that the Federal Communications Commission overstepped its authority in 2003 when it approved the regulation, which would have applied to new digital televisions and other devices sold beginning in July. The rules would have required the devices to recognize a "broadcast flag," a hidden marker inserted into over-the-air digital broadcasts, to prevent high-quality shows from being recorded and widely shared on the Internet.

In the latest skirmish in the battle over Conrail Inc., Norfolk Southern Corp. boosted its hostile takeover bid to $110 a share yesterday, topping the latest offer by friendly suitor CSX Corp. How high the bidding could go remained uncertain."This was inevitable, but I don't think that Norfolk is going to go any higher," said Thom Brown, rail analyst for Rutherford Brown & Catherwood, a Philadelphia investment firm. "This is the outside limit of what the thing would be worth."The bid by Norfolk Southern yesterday is the latest in a series of dramatic back-and-forth moves between the East Coast's largest railroads to acquire Conrail and its lucrative Northeast territory.

The state has filed criminal charges against a Virginia developer accused of bilking more than a thousand people out of money for time-share housing in Ocean City resorts.In a two-count criminal information filed last week in Worcester County Circuit Court, Harold Lloyd Hensley is charged with stealing or misappropriating more than $4 million from time-share customers between 1986 and 1990.In some cases, customers who thought they were buying time-shares through Hensley's Alexandria, Va., real estate operation ended up with deeds still encumbered with liens for several thousand dollars, according to the criminal information.

Youth Services International Inc. posted a net loss of 17 cents a share for the second quarter yesterday, sending its stock price plummeting 19.6 percent to a 52-week low.The decline of $1.3125 a share to $5.375 comes as YSI is in discussions with several parties regarding its possible acquisition, or a joint venture, merger or strategic alliance, the Owings Mills-based company said yesterday. The company, which operates juvenile-offender facilities in 12 states, said the talks have moved past the preliminary phases, but officials declined to release details.

General Motors reported a 58 percent drop in fourth-quarter earnings yesterday and, for the first time since 1993, said its hourly workers would not receive profit-sharing checks. The world's largest automaker, faring slightly better than Wall Street analysts had expected, said it earned $255 million, or 60 cents a share, in the three months that ended Dec. 31. For the fourth quarter of 2000, the company reported a profit of $609 million, or $1.15 a share, excluding a one-time charge of $520 million related primarily to its decision to drop its Oldsmobile line and reduce employment at five plants.