Yields

With gas prices continuing a steady upward climb, you may be headed to the dealer in search of something less thirsty at the pump. But which cars' sticker price gives you the most bang for your buck? We asked Edmunds.com to look at the vehicles with the lowest sticker price per fuel-economy rating. The math was simple: divide the car's base price by its EPA rating for combined fuel economy. The result gives a look at how much each mile per gallon will cost you. Photos: Top 10 cars with lowest cost per mpg Topping the list is Ford's C-Max Energi.

When hundreds of federal agents raided four Southern California museums early one January morning in 2008, it set the art world ablaze, suggesting that even amid an international looting scandal, museums had continued to do business with the black market in stolen antiquities. Acting on evidence gathered during a five-year undercover probe, investigators seized more than 10,000 artifacts at the museums and more than half a dozen other locations in California and Illinois. The objects had allegedly been illegally excavated from sites across Southeast Asia, smuggled into Los Angeles and donated to the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, the Mingei Museum in San Diego and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, according to search warrant affidavits.

One day later, and markets already are having second thoughts about Europe's plan to end its government-debt crisis. In a particularly troubling sign, yields jumped Friday on Italian and Spanish government bonds. Those are the Eurozone countries that the rescue plan is meant to save from Greece's fate. A key element of the plan is the expansion of Europe's $600-billion rescue fund for member states and banks. The focus is on boosting the firepower of the fund -- known as the European Financial Stability Facility -- to $1.4 trillion by leveraging it. The fund is expected to eventually issue guarantees on bonds issued by deeply indebted countries, particularly Italy.

SACRAMENTO - California has been flooded with revenue this tax season and is on track to finish the fiscal year with a surplus of billions of dollars, according to officials. State coffers contain about $4.5 billion more than expected in personal income tax payments. Nearly $2.8 billion of it arrived April 17, the third-highest single-day collection in California history, according to government figures. Business taxes have also rebounded and are likely to be $200 million ahead of projections.

With interest rates at near-record lows, these have not been good times for investors looking to generate low-risk income. Money-market accounts are paying an average of 0.5%. (Think about that: A $1-million deposit into an average money-market will yield a whopping $5,000 a year.) Even five-year CDs are yielding just 1.5% on average. So, where's an income-hungry investor to turn? One option is high-yield bonds, which are paying about 6% but carry risk that issuing companies may default, eroding the bonds' value.

The Treasury sold $44 billion in new two-year notes Monday at a higher interest rate than Wall Street expected, as investors demanded a better return to absorb the latest wave of government debt. Treasury note and bond yields have risen sharply in recent weeks, in part on concerns about demand at this week's sales of $118 billion in U.S. securities. Interest rates also have been facing upward pressure from expectations that the economic recovery will continue in 2010. The Treasury, hungry for cash, is trying to raise a big chunk of change in a week when many Wall Street traders and investors typically are absent for the holidays.

Re "U.S. defends food policy," June 5 Your story perpetuates the fallacy, encouraged by the biotechnology industry, that genetic engineering increases crop yields. In fact, nearly all of the crops in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's database of approved genetically engineered varieties have been modified for resistance to certain insects or to tolerate applications of herbicides. None has been shown to increase intrinsic crop yields, nor do any have traits for drought tolerance.

QUESTION: I am shopping around for an IRA and have started my search with newspaper ads. I am so frustrated because they all seem to calculate the interest rate slightly different. No matter how many times I read their ads, I can't tell which of them is really the best deal. I know I could run around town and ask each of them for an explanation. But I'm hoping there is an easier way.

Uncle Sam is getting yet another break on the cost of borrowing. Suddenly, cash is again fighting to get into the haven of shorter-term Treasury securities, driving yields down to levels last seen after the first stage of the financial-system meltdown a year ago. It may look like another fear-driven panic, but this time is different: In large part the latest decline in shorter-term yields just stems from moves by banks and other financial firms to...

Individual investors so far have placed orders for 75% of the $4 billion in tax-free bonds the state of California is selling this week -- a huge turnout that may allow Treasurer Bill Lockyer to boost the size of the deal. The state's brokerage syndicate will continue taking orders from individuals today. On Wednesday, institutional investors such as mutual funds will put in their orders. Heavy demand from individuals shows investors were hungry for the relatively high yields the bonds are expected to pay. For California residents, interest on the securities is exempt from state and federal income tax. Municipal bond yields in general are near or above their levels of June, when the state last sold general obligation bonds to raise money for infrastructure projects.

BOSTON - Authorities have obtained clear images of the faces of two men with backpacks who they believe were acting suspiciously around the time of the Boston Marathon bombings, a potential breakthrough in the search to find who planted the deadly devices, sources familiar with the investigation said Wednesday. A department store surveillance camera caught an image of at least one of the men leaving a backpack near the finish line, a federal law enforcement official said. Another official briefed on the investigation said the image that shows two men is the first indication that more than one bomber may have been responsible for the attacks that killed three people and injured more than 170 at Monday's race.

BOSTON -- Important clues to the Boston Marathon bombings are being collected from the victims themselves: the shrapnel doctors have removed from their injured bodies. At Tufts Medical Center, doctors and nurses were cataloging all of the metal fragments removed from patients and turning them over to police and federal agents. Dr. William Mackey, chief of surgery, said the shards ranged in size from a few millimeters to about a centimeter. At Massachusetts General Hospital,  Dr.

Michelle O'Malley knows good horse poop when she sees it. While at MIT, the chemical engineer scooped up some manure from Finn, a grass-fed horse at a sustainable farm in Concord, Mass. That offal has led to a potential breakthrough in turning grasses and nonfood crops into an alternative fuel in attempts to wean motorists from fossil fuels and stem man-made climate change. O'Malley, a chemical engineer at UC Santa Barbara, has isolated a fungus that could more easily unlock the sugars used to ferment ethanol.

The Obama administration is reportedly considering funding a multibillion-dollar effort to map the human brain. This so-called Brain Activity Map project is inspired by the success of the Human Genome Project in mapping the genetic code. The proposal was outlined in the journal Neuron last summer by a group of leading researchers, among them geneticist George Church of Harvard Medical School, one of the originators of the genome project. This is an endeavor with exciting potential, but we should think about the pros and the cons before proceeding.

Hydrogen. Carbon. Oxygen. Nitrogen. Sulfur. Phosphorus. These elements account for more than 96% of the stuff life on Earth is made from - and all six have been found in a rock sample on Mars. NASA scientists said Tuesday that the Curiosity rover discovered these basic building blocks of life in the very first rock it has drilled from beneath the Martian surface - along with signs that the Red Planet was once capable of hosting primitive microbes. "It definitely has all the indications of being a habitable environment at one point in time," Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program, said at a news conference in Washington.

Jeff Fischer doesn't have a vineyard or a winery. He has no formal training and zero employees. Yet in a short time he's managed to land his small-batch Habit wines in nearly 50 of L.A.'s top restaurants, including the Chateau Marmont, Spago, AOC, Ink, the Hungry Cat, Providence, Hatfield's and Bäco Mercat. "He's on the fast track, and it's kind of crazy," says Caroline Styne of AOC and Tavern, who was the first sommelier to champion Fischer's wines, even writing about them on her popular wine blog, Styne on Wine.

An ancient tar pit exposed when Venezuelan oil workers laid a pipeline has yielded a rich trove of fossils, including a type of saber-toothed cat that paleontologists had never before been found in South America. The fossils are 1.8 million years old and include the skulls and jawbones of six scimitar-toothed cats -- a variety of saber-toothed cat with shorter, narrower canine teeth than other species. Researchers led by Venezuelan paleontologist Ascanio Rincon announced the discovery this month, saying that in addition to proving the cat once lived there, the find also should offer a rare window into the environment shortly after North and South America became connected.

The Treasury said the average yield on $5.75 billion of seven-year notes was up from the last seven-year note issue of 11.67% on Jan. 4. The yield was the highest since the 12.34% figure of Oct. 23, 1984. The Treasury said it received bids of $16.01 billion ranging from 11.82% to 11.85%. The New York Federal Reserve submitted tenders of $14.1 billion, of which $5.14 billion was accepted.

Interior designer Frances Merrill steps inside Phukaw, a new import shop chock-full of traditional Thai home goods, apparel and vintage textiles. It's one of those inexplicable Hollywood Boulevard juxtapositions - authentic design from Thailand's northern hill tribes, adjacent to Jumbo's Clown Room, the pole-dancing club where Courtney Love worked. Merrill grabs a roll of indigo-colored embroidered fabric, a handmade necklace and hair fob to be repurposed as room decoration, and a gingham towel.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has proposed acquiring the troubled Museum of Contemporary Art - a move that would combine the biggest art collection west of the Mississippi with one of the world's most prestigious troves of contemporary art. The acquisition could put to rest long-standing concerns over the financial viability of the Museum of Contemporary Art, or MOCA. But it also faces potential opposition from the region's most influential art patron, billionaire Eli Broad.