Yields

President Barack Obama has succeeded in opening up a new legal specialty, namely interpreting and enforcing the incomprehensible health care reform law ("Romney: It's a penalty, not a tax," July 3). Certainly, the resulting maze will dismay the majority of the medical profession and their patients. The tax laws now are so complicated that the average layperson is totally baffled and for the most part has to consult tax experts who frequently also have problems, not to mention the IRS responders who try to give answers to citizens' questions.

It's a dream Ida Heck never really expected to come true. Her family has raised about $1 million since 2005 for research into the rare disorder that afflicts her 8-year-old daughter, Jenna, resulting in cognitive deficits, seizures, long-lasting migraines, glaucoma in one eye and a red birthmark on the right side of her face. She's been driven by a fervent hope that the money would help finance a breakthrough. Yet she had her doubts: "So often you give and give and give and never hear of any findings.

The Yield on the benchmark 30-year Treasury bond, which has been creeping up since the Federal Reserve first raised interest rates this year on Feb. 4, leapt to a 16-month closing high yesterday as the strong jobs report sparked inflation fears (Article, 16c).

Federal officials announced Friday a major expansion of the “ urban waters ” initiative they kicked off in Baltimore nearly two years ago, adding 11 new blighted water ways around the country to the seven they've already pledged to help clean up and redevelop, including the Patapsco River. Representatives of the Environmental Protection Agency and 12 other federal agencies gathered for the announcement this time in Grand Rapids, Mich. A group of kayakers there has teamed up with a private engineering firm to push a $27 million white-water park on the Grand River flowing through the city's downtown.

All investors know that over the past few months interest rates for standard savings, money market accounts and certificates of deposit have fallen to levels unacceptable to many. This has created a widespread search for better yields, but ones without a lot of fluctuation of principal.The demand for alternatives has boosted bond mutual funds by billions of dollars. Their 7 percent to 7 1/2 percent yields are attractive and certainly beat the returns from passbooks, money markets and CDs. But are there better possibilities for higher yields among stocks?

Yields of money-market funds monitored by IBC/Donoghue's Money Fund Report were down for the second consecutive week in the period that ended Wednesday."

At the beginning of this month, a lot of high-yielding municipal bonds were called in, years ahead of their maturity dates, and the bondowners were repaid their principal along with a 2 1/2 or 3 percent premium to help compensate for the early call.The result was that investors had their pockets stuffed with money but no reasonably safe way to reinvest it to get the 11, 12 or 13 percent yields that their old bonds had been earning.Keep in mind that those bonds had been issued a decade ago when interest rates were especially high.

U.S. bond yields, driven by another piece of news suggesting that the economy is hurting, fell to a record 6.18 percent before rebounding, the ninth straight day the record tumbled.The closing yield was 6.21 percent, down four basis points.Bonds were helped when the Commerce Department said the merchandise trade deficit widened to $12.1 billion for June. The gap was nearly 50 percent larger than expected, adding to investors' perception that the economy and inflation won't grow more than 3 percent this year.

C As investors prepare for a month when more certificate-of-deposit money is scheduled to roll over than ever before, a study commissioned by Fidelity Investments says that only 31 percent of CD holders with October expirations are committed to keeping their money in the bank.The culprit is lower interest rates, says Fidelity, relying on a national polling firm's survey of 302 consumers who own CDs scheduled to expireduring the next six months. CD yields have fallen to between 5 percent and 6 percent, giving pause to many customers who invested in CDs when rates were much higher.

NEW YORK -- U.S. bonds posted the second-biggest gain of %% the year yesterday, driving yields down to the lowest level in more than 14 months, as a sharp drop in durable goods orders buttressed expectations for an economic slowdown. %%%% But stocks closed mixed after seesawing throughout the day in response to the unexpectedly weak economic report. The Dow Jones industrial average managed a 1.72 gain, to a record 4,438.16.The benchmark 30-year Treasury bond soared 1 5/8 , or $16.25 per $1,000 bond, in the biggest one-day jump since May 5. That drove yields down 12 basis points, to 6.74 percent, the lowest tTC since Feb. 28, 1994.

Summer is almost here, and with it likely some blistering hot days. A recent study suggests the elderly should beware when the temperature spikes, because they face an increased risk of winding up in the emergency room short of breath on those days. And that's just a taste of what health problems to expect as global climate change cranks the heat up in many places. Researchers for Johns Hopkins, Harvard and Yale universities reviewed a nationwide health database of 12.5 million older Americans on Medicare and found that increases in outdoor temperatures raise the risk for the elderly of being rushed to the hospital with respiratory disorders.

A Harford County farmer has been honored as a state winner in the 2012 National Corn Yield Contest, sponsored annually by the National Corn Growers Association. Harrison Rigdon, of Jarrettsville, placed first in the state in the A No-Till/Strip Till Non-Irrigated Class with a yield of 268.9818 bushels per acre. The hybrid used in the winning field was Pioneer P1395XR. Rigdon was one of 421 state winners nationwide. The 2012 contest had 8,263 entries from 46 states. Of the state winners, 18 growers - three from each of six classes - were named national winners, representing 13 states.

Times are good these days at the Linde Corp., where despite a sluggish economy nationally, the company is on a hiring binge. The construction company, based near Wilkes-Barre in northeastern Pennsylvania, has seen its workforce nearly triple over the past five years as it switched from helping to build big-box stores to laying miles of natural gas pipelines connecting hundreds of gas wells drilled in the rolling rural terrain here in Susquehanna County....

Emergency equipment responding to incidents for assistance need the right of way. The Laurel Volunteer Fire Department's fire technicians or drivers have been instructed by county fire department driving regulations to come to a complete stop at all red traffic lights and stop signs, but we still need everyone's help to ensure that we can get there both quickly and safely. It could mean the difference between life and death. When you see lights or hear sirens, we ask you to: Immediately yield the right of way. This can be done by calmly and carefully pulling to the right edge of the roadway.

We know that universities often use forgiving admissions criteria to admit top athletes who wouldn't otherwise get in. But what happens to these football and basketball players once they arrive in their college classrooms? Do their grades ever catch up to those of other students? Do they get degrees? Six months ago, I started filing open-records law requests to try to find out. I filed with Maryland, Georgia Tech, North Carolina, N.C. State, Florida State and the other public schools in the conference - as well as some in the Big Ten. The findings - that special admits tend to maintain worse college GPAs, graduate at a lower rate and leave school at a higher rate than other athletes - raise more questions.

The third and final debate between President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney included a few memorable lines - Mr. Romney's promise that in his administration, Russian President Vladimir Putin would be on the receiving end of "more backbone," and Mr. Obama's "horses and bayonets" to describe his opponent's outdated ideas about the size of the military. But perhaps the most trenchant remark was the president's summary of Mr. Romney's approach to foreign policy: "You'd do the same things we did, but you'd say them louder, and somehow that that would make a difference.

A young man asked about a good place to put $1,000. He will need the money for school expenses in a year and doesn't want to worry about it in the meantime. With interest rates about as low as they're going to get before heading back up, a one-year certificate of deposit, or even a six-month CD, risks locking in today's low yields while overall rates are rising.When he was shown current yields on money-market mutual funds -- about 5.5 percent -- the young man's reaction summed up many investors' dismay:"That's all?"

NEW YORK -- Stocks closed sharply higher yesterday as Treasury bonds rose for the ninth straight session, dropping yields to another record low.The Dow Jones industrial average soared 39.31 points, or 1.13 percent, to 3,530.20. The Dow is now 0.7 percent below its record closing high of 3,554.83, set May 27.Advancing common stocks on the New York Stock Exchange swamped declining issues by a margin of 13-to-5. Trading was moderately active, with about 242 million shares changing hands.Banking and other financial stocks paced the market's rise, amid expectations that such companies will benefit from lower interest rates.

The unblinking eye of the camera is increasingly all around us. On the street corner, inside the convenience store, in office building lobbies - not to mention in the hands of everyone with a cellphone. So it's not surprising that the Maryland Transit Administration's plan to activate microphones on buses is raising concerns about privacy. But while there is a good conversation to be had about the slippery slope of lost privacy in Baltimore and elsewhere, this doesn't appear to be the place to draw the line.

Each year in Arundel on the Bay, the neighborhood's power goes out five, six or seven times, leaving residents in the dark with refrigerators of spoiling food and without water, since their well pumps run on electricity. "There's a part of me that's really incredulous," resident Tim Hamilton said this week, unloading years of simmering frustration during a meeting with Baltimore Gas and Electric Co.'s supervisor of reliability. "I've never lived in a place where people buy generators like they live in a Third World country.