Featured Articles from the Baltimore Sun

Municipal bonds traditionally have been a refuge for the risk-averse, as many are backed by the full faith and credit of state and local governments, but those same investors lately have been bailing out at a record rate. A few factors can be blamed for this sudden retreat, but the one making all the headlines is the fear that cash-strapped states and municipalities issuing the bonds will renege on promises to investors. Those simmering concerns were stoked last month when respected banking analyst Meredith Whitney warned on "60 Minutes" that 50 to 100 or so cities and counties will default on "hundreds of billions of dollars" of municipal bonds.

Baltimore County police have identified the men whose bodies were found inside a Perry Hall condo last week, a department spokesman said. Kraig David Krixer, 59, of 70 Jumpers Circle, was found dead with a roommate, John Bradford Gurklis, 58, inside their home after a relative of one of the men called police because they had not seen the man recently and grew concerned, said police spokesman Lt. Robert McCullough. Police are investigating the deaths as suspicious. The results of the autopsies are still pending, he said.

Superstar rapper Lil Wayne and his prot���©g���© Nicki Minaj headline a star-studded lineup for the "I Am Music II" tour, which will come to Baltimore's 1st Mariner Arena March 20, according to concert promoter Live Nation. The pair will be joined by Miami-based rapper Rick Ross and Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker. The tour, which will be Wayne's first tour since his prison release nearly three months ago, kicks off March 18 in Buffalo, N.Y., and ends May 1 in East Rutherford, N.J. The "I Am Music II" tour is also scheduled to stop at the Verizon Center in Washington on April 3. Wayne, a New Orleans native, has become a fan- and critic-favorite with his unique voice, witty lyrics and catchy beats.

The body of a man who went missing during Wednesday's snowstorm was found in Lothian Friday morning, Anne Arundel County police said. Officers found Antonio Delonte Sesker, 31, after a lengthy search in a creek near Sands and Wallace roads about 9:30 a.m., police said. Sesker, of Blackstone Avenue in Cheltenham, was last seen around 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at a residence in the 5100 block of Sands Road. Police say preliminary information indicates nothing suspicious, but they have not determined the cause of death.

Under Armour's first foray into cotton will be a $25 T-shirt that it plans to begin shipping to stores in February. The Baltimore sports apparel company built its business on performance wear geared toward the hardcore athlete, but is now developing a new venture with the material it once deemed the "enemy. " "We've built a $1 billion foundation without cotton to date," Under Armour founder Kevin Plank told analysts during a quarterly earnings conference call Thursday. "This is a whole new category for Under Armour that makes us relevant to a whole new consumer.

From a distance, it looks like Tal Broustin is lighting up a cigarette, right in the middle of Arundel Mills, a clear no-no. And he is trying to get others to take drags, too, luring passersby to his kiosk by asking if they are trying to quit smoking. Up close, it is clear that Broustin is taking puffs not from an actual cigarette, but from a battery-powered gadget designed to look like the real thing. Called an "e-cigarette," or electronic cigarette, it contains no tobacco, gives off no smoke but instead is a nicotine delivery device that gives off heated water vapor.

Nothing is so heartening to job-seekers nowadays as word that thousands of openings are headed their way. That's the siren call of BRAC — the military base realignment and closure effort that's relocating jobs to Aberdeen Proving Ground in Harford County, Fort Meade in Anne Arundel County and other installations in Maryland. About 12,000 jobs are moving to the two Baltimore-area bases between August and next summer, along with thousands more off-base contractor jobs. And they are coming as unemployment is still near generational highs.

Baltimore County Councilman Todd Huff has postponed consideration of a housing development near Timonium that has drawn strong opposition from neighbors. Huff has pulled his resolution seeking council approval for 33 attached homes on Pot Spring Road near Old Bosley Road, the first of several approvals the developer will need to complete the project. The matter will not go before a council work session next week or come up for a vote the following week, as had been scheduled. An aide to Huff said he wanted to give the developer, Jeffrey C. Kirby, time to revise the proposal after a Monday night meeting that drew a crowd of about 200 residents, most of whom were opposed to the plans.

Meteorologists say this week's crippling rush-hour snowstorm was a nightmarish mash-up of an unusually dynamic storm, some uncommonly sticky flakes and a pinch of bad luck. And it all combined to snare evening commuters who should have gone home an hour earlier. But it was also part of a complex weather pattern that has made winter storms especially hard to forecast this year, particularly with the kind of scale and precision the public may expect. "While it seems like we should be able to do it, even today we're not quite able to precisely indicate where the smaller-scale features in a larger storm will set up," said Pennsylvania State University meteorologist Fred Gadomski.

For the second year in a row, Maryland schools were ranked No. 1 among states in the nation for school achievement and educational policies by a respected trade publication. Education Week gave Maryland a B-plus, far above the national average of a C. New York ranked second and Massachusetts third in the survey; Nevada, Nebraska and the District of Columbia did particularly poorly. The survey looks at numerous factors, including student achievement on national tests, how well schools are financed, what state policies are in place and the overall chances a child has of success in school while living in a particular state.

Kathleen Harwell can't imagine what life on the streets would be like for a 59-year-old woman with diabetes and high blood pressure, but she's afraid she'll soon find out. After nearly two years without work and no luck finding a new job, the Laurel resident is on the brink of homelessness. She has run out of savings and unemployment benefits. She's too young for Social Security. And she's not the only one in this frightening fix. A burgeoning group of older, jobless people — here and nationwide — have found everything they worked for over the decades snatched away by the sharp downturn and slow recovery.

Hardy, adaptable and prolific. We should all be so lucky. Instead, we are left to curse those traits in northern snakeheads, the toothy aliens that appeared by the hundreds in a tiny Crofton pond in 2002, touched off a national media frenzy and now have made themselves comfortable in the Potomac River. "Thousands and thousands of them" call the Nation's River home, from Georgetown to Mount Vernon to where it empties into the Chesapeake Bay, says Steve Minkkinen, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist.

Maryland has long been a leader among the states in acting to make health care more affordable and accessible, and state leaders should be commended for continuing that tradition through the work of the Health Reform Coordinating Council ("State releases plan to implement health care reform," Jan. 10). AARP supported the new health care law because it includes vital benefits for older Americans, and the state's 16-point plan takes a proactive approach to maximizing those benefits.

Casino operator Penn National Gaming emerged Friday as the new owner of bankrupt Rosecroft Raceway and made clear its intentions to push for slot machines at the Prince George's County track and to restart racing there. Penn National agreed to pay $10.25 million in cash for the harness track in an auction, outbidding Baltimore lawyer and Orioles owner Peter G. Angelos and one other unidentified bidder, said Michael J. Lichtenstein, the attorney representing the bankruptcy trustee, who oversaw the private sale.

Doctors have called Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' recovery so far nothing short of spectacular. But as she begins rehabilitation at a facility in Houston, many Maryland experts on traumatic brain injury caution that what awaits her is a long, arduous road full of uncertainties. The work of retraining the brain after a severe gunshot wound like the one Giffords sustained two weeks ago can take years, beginning with months of intensive speech, occupational and physical therapy to teach the Arizona congresswoman to master basic functions many of us take for granted: dressing herself, eating and, perhaps, uttering a few words.