Yields

T. Rowe Price Group closed its high-yield bond funds to new investors as of Monday, the Baltimore money manager announced Tuesday. They include the investor class shares and advisor class shares of the $9.2 billion High Yield Fund as well as the $2.5 billion Institutional High Yield Fund. While Price will not accept new investors, existing shareholders can continue to invest in the funds. The funds were last closed in February 2004 and reopened three years ago. Investors have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into both funds in the last year.

With 369,000 square feet under roof, it would seem McCormick & Co.'s sprawling distribution center in Belcamp would have an eye-popping power bill, with some 3,300 light fixtures and a refrigerated storage area big enough to drive forklifts in and out. But in the past year, the 81/3-acre Harford County warehouse has generated more power than it has consumed, making it the first "net-zero-energy" building in Maryland and one of a small but growing...

When Brian Cooper traded his short stick for a long pole to imitate Duke long-stick midfielder C.J. Costabile last season, the Crofton native and Archbishop Spalding graduate had no idea he had set the table for a career change. After one year as a midfielder, Cooper, a sophomore, is now a starting defenseman for No. 11 Maryland (6-3). It's a move he never envisioned. “I would mess around in summer ball with my friends and stuff like that,” he said. “I had a couple coaches in rec league joke with me that they should move me to defense because of my style of play.

Give anyone age 40 and older a time machine and they would likely go back to their early 20s — to open an IRA. That's because by 40, many of us have learned the miracle of compound earnings over time. We kick ourselves for not socking away even tiny sums in a tax-sheltered individual retirement account when we were younger. Consider the math: A 22-year-old who invests $100 a month in an IRA for 10 years and then stops will end up with more money at age 65 than a 32-year-old who saves $100 a month in an IRA for 33 years.

Towson forged the program's largest fourth-quarter rally when it turned a 9-3 deficit into a 10-9 win in double overtime against Colonial Athletic Association rival Hofstra Saturday night. It was the Tigers' largest comeback in the second half. The previous mark was a four-goal hole in the third quarter to Loyola in 2001 before that squad notched a 19-14 victory. How that victory will impact the program is undetermined, but coach Shawn Nadelen said he was pleased to see his players' willpower.

As Baltimore's Public Works Department issues more than $4.2 million in water bill refunds, Howard County officials say they will likely avoid similar issues because of recent upgrades to the county billing system. "We just finished a total upgrade of our water billing system in the last two years; we do not use the same system Baltimore uses," county spokesman Kevin Enright wrote in an email. He said the error rates are now at 1 percent. Water meters are read and transferred electronically using a radio interface.

If we really care about the education of young people in poverty, we will stop focusing on test results and pay much more attention to the quality of life students and families endure. The more their parents and the students themselves are employed, the better their housing and transportation, the better their health care and nutrition, the more they learn. Propaganda for testing and fear, however, recently got a boost from media coverage of a well-publicized study out of Harvard and Columbia universities.

Just on their handling of council members' pensions alone, few legislative bodies in Maryland have shown themselves more richly in need of term limits than the Baltimore County Council. Councilman David Marks' recent announcement that he is introducing legislation that would cap council members to no more than three terms in office is completely understandable. After all, one of the attractions of term limits is to promote citizen legislators and discourage career politicians. Towson has seen its share of the latter, and that probably contributed to its excessively generous pension program for council members, one that allowed particularly lucrative arrangements for County Executive Kevin Kamenetz and former councilmen Stephen G. Samuel Moxley and Vincent J. Gardina.

Most people, unless headed to a specific address, will simply drive past the two-story row houses that line the curb along Fleet Street in East Baltimore. Few are wider than 15 feet; their only mark of individuality is usually found in the variety of front doors. Many of these houses, dating to 1910, are examples of exterior brick restoration, while others still bask in the Formstone glory of 1940's exterior home improvement. Alex Dyadyura, a computer programmer with Johns Hopkins Community Physicians, purchased one of these houses less than a year ago. Secure in his position after almost three years of service, the time was ripe for moving from his rented house in Patterson Park.