Decline

McLean, Va.-based Science Applications International Corp. said Thursday that it plans to split into two public companies, taking a major step to unwind a strategy that attempted to more tightly integrate its historically independent units. The decision comes just months after SAIC appointed its fourth chief executive, retired Air Force Gen. John P. Jumper, with a mandate to re-energize the business. SAIC has been known as an especially entrepreneurial contractor. Founded by a physicist who led the business for more than three decades, SAIC allowed its units to operate autonomously, and managers were encouraged to pursue their own work.

Baltimore's Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation decided not to vote on the ouster of the commission's executive director Monday. During a closed-door meeting, the commission opted not to take a vote on the removal of Kathleen Kotarba because "no action was requested of us," said a member of the commission who declined to be named because personnel discussions are confidential. Public notice of the meeting was made less than a week ago. It is not clear who in Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's administration initiated the meeting to discuss Kotarba's job performance.

No recent development has underlined the decline of political party clout more than beleaguered Senate Republican nominee Todd Akin's refusal to accede to GOP leadership demands that he withdraw from his race against Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri. In spite of his asinine declaration that the female reproductive mechanism can somehow neutralize the pregnancy-creating sperm of a "legitimate" rapist, Mr. Akin has vowed to press on. He is bolstered by equally fervent anti-abortion organizations determined to show the Show Me State they are not to be denied.

A 20-year decline in male circumcision has cost the country $2 billion in medical costs that could have been prevented, Johns Hopkins researchers say in a study released Monday. In what is believed to be the first look at the economic impact of male circumcision on the health care system, the Hopkins scientists say that boys who are not circumcised are more prone to sexually transmitted diseases and other health problems over a lifetime that are costly to treat. "The economic evidence is backing up what we already know medically," said Dr. Aaron Tobian, a Hopkins health epidemiologist and pathologist and senior researcher on the study.

On Sunday, The Sun revealed that a dozen area businesses, nonprofits and federal government organizations owe the city of Baltimore more than $10.5 million on water bills that are past due by at least six months. In some cases, the businesses haven't made any payments on their accounts in years. It was the latest in a series of articles that Sun colleague Julie Scharper and I have written since February about Baltimore's problems issuing and collecting bills associated with its aging water system.  We've reported on the city refunding $4.2 million to customers after an audit found widespread problems with water bills; and uncovered voluminous problems of our own , including a $100,000 overbilling of Cockeysville Middle School and a Randallstown woman who's been receiving her neighbor's bills for seven years -- both of which were fixed after our inquires.

The number of serious violent crimes not reported to police fell from 50 percent to 42 percent from 1994 to 2010, but in recent years the percentage of crimes unreported because of concerns about police has doubled, according to a study released today by the Bureau of Justice Statistics.  Highlights from the report include:  -Rape and sexual assault continue to be unlikely to be reported to police at a startling rate - 65 percent went unreported...

According to the state public safety department, there's been 11 assaults in the Baltimore City Detention Center's youth annex this year. Yet in court, a 17-year-old who stands just 5-foot-1 and weighs less than 110 pounds, testified under oath that he alone had been beaten up some six times in a matter of a few weeks - attacked in his sleep by other youths in the 16-to-32-to-a-cage living areas for youth being held on adult charges. Others, in a series of hearings viewed by The Sun, told similar stories, and said they were threatened with more attacks if they told.

For years we've been passing laws to make it safer for teen drivers. In Maryland, we have a graduated licensing system that sets curfews and other restrictions on provisional drivers. We've raised the age when kids can get a driver's license to 16 and 6 months. But ironically, it seems many kids aren't that bothered about driving anyway. A new study from the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute is the latest to report a steady decline in the percentage of teens getting their driver's licenses.

Declining to follow the footsteps of Baltimore County's pension plan, Maryland's state employee retirement system decided Tuesday to leave unchanged its assumption about how much it will earn on investments. The 14-member pension board voted 11-1 to keep the rate at 7.75 percent, in the middle of the pack for public retirement plans nationwide. By keeping the rate where it has been for almost a decade, Maryland will avoid the roughly $12 million gap that a change might have created in next year's state budget.

Few people, from politicians to commenters on Facebook, expressed surprise when The Baltimore Sun reported Thursday that the city's population has continued on a downward trajectory. Some did wonder, though, whether the minuscule number of people lost was worth reporting and how the U.S. Census Bureau arrived at its estimates. Baltimore's loss was teensy. Only 0.2 percent of Charm City's population - 1,500 people - departed in the 15-month period following the April 2010 Census, according to the Census Bureau's first city population estimates of the decade.