Estimate

Officials of a New Jersey health care company said yesterday that state Sen Larry Young's consulting firm has been paid a total of $46,300 since September 1996, not the $84,000 estimate published by The Sun yesterday.Mafalda Arena, a spokeswoman for Merit Behavioral Care Corp, said yesterday that company records showed Young's firm, the LY Group, has been paid $26,300 during the current year at a monthly fee of $7,000. Last year, she said, records show he was paid $20,000 for four months work at the $5,000 per month rate.

Joe Datsko was an admitted workaholic for the first 25 years of a 47-year career as a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Michigan. Datsko likes to say that until he was in his early 50s "most of my exercise was writing on a blackboard. " That changed in the early 1970s when the younger of Datsko's two sons - he also has three daughters - was invited to the 1972 U.S. Olympic trials in cycling. Robert Datsko, who was in high school at the time, failed to secure one of the 12 spots, finishing in the top third of the 66-person field.

Convinced that an estimate of a continued sharp decline in Baltimore's population is off-base, city officials are planning a formal challenge to the U.S. Census Bureau figures released this week. Census officials - acknowledging "some degree of uncertainty" in the first post-census 2000 estimates for more than 3,000 jurisdictions nationwide - say they would welcome added data from the city and would issue a corrected estimate if the information warrants it. "To let that estimate go unchallenged does damage to the progress we've been making," Mayor Martin O'Malley said.

Customers of Baltimore's water system would see their water bills go up 15 percent - more than expected - under a proposal the Department of Public Works announced Monday. The projected rate hike follows years of increases and will bring a typical customer's annual bill to nearly $800, up from about $500 a decade ago, city officials said. Public works officials had previously said an increase of about 12 percent might be needed for the year that begins July 1. They said Monday the 15 percent increase is necessary to meet state and federal mandates, accelerate plans to replace aging water lines that frequently break and update meter and billing systems.

The state health department has dramatically reduced its estimate of how many Marylanders are infected with the AIDS virus -- suggesting that the true number is one-quarter to one-half previous estimates.Cautioning that the lower estimates should not lull people into complacency, top health officials said yesterday they believe that between 16,000 and 28,000 people across Maryland were infected at the close of 1990.That compares with a previous estimate of 60,000, a projection that officials said was based, in part, on an outmoded formula and the belief that infected individuals were transmitting the virus at an unrealistically fast rate.

The state AIDS Administration now estimates that between 16,000 to 30,000 Marylanders were infected with the AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus at the end of 1990.The new estimate is far lower than the previous one of 70,000.AIDS Administration officials agreed yesterday that the revised estimate represents a "significant decrease" in numbers, but urged the public not to be lulled into thinking the magnitude of the state's AIDS problem has diminished."No, we don't need to do less, we need to do more," said Dr. Kathleen F. Edwards, the AIDS Administration director.

The United Nations has radically lowered years of estimates of the number of people worldwide infected by the AIDS virus, revealing that the AIDS pandemic is waning for the first time since HIV was discovered 26 years ago. The revised figures yesterday, which were the result of more sophisticated sampling techniques, indicate that the number of new infections peaked in 1998 and that the number of deaths peaked in 2005. The new analysis shows that the total number of people living with HIV has been gradually increasing - but at a slower rate than in the past.

Government analysts downgraded the annual death toll from obesity yesterday in a study that is certain to bewilder a public already obsessed with dieting and nutrition. In fact, they inexplicably found that people who weigh a few pounds more than the ideal are less likely to die than those who weigh a few pounds less. Taken together, the findings will undoubtedly leave scientists and consumers arguing over obesity's true role in mortality - though no one argues that being overweight is good for you. The latest report by scientists with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that obesity kills about 112,000 people a year, only a third of the number estimated just four months ago. But Dr. Kathleen Flegal, who led the study reported in today's Journal of the American Medical Association, said the lower death estimate should not make consumers complacent about their expanding waistlines.

With all contracts awarded, South Shore Elementary School will cost nearly $6.2 million, some $465,000 over the estimate of $5.7 million.However, the school system will have to pay only the $5.7 million it originally budgeted for the project, said Rodell E. Phaire Sr., director of facilities planning and construction.The reason is a new system that used a construction management firm to develop the cost estimate. Baltimore-based Whiting-Turner Contracting Co. guaranteed it would bring the project in on time and at the estimate it developed.

WASHINGTON -- More people in the United States are infected each year with the AIDS virus than previously thought, according to federal health officials, in a finding that could roil the debate over how much money should be spent on prevention efforts. While the new numbers are sobering, no one is yet sure whether more people have actually been infected in recent years or the figures are simply a better estimate than the old ones. Two more years of data are needed to answer that question.

The Pentagon estimated Tuesday that 26,000 members of the military were sexually assaulted last year, 36 percent more than a year earlier, in a trend so severe that senior officials warned it could threaten recruiting and retention of military personnel. President Barack Obama, reacting to the startling figures, said he has "no tolerance" for sexual assaults in the ranks and pledged to crack down on commanders who ignore the problem. Obama said he had spoken to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and ordered that officers "up and down the food chain" get the message.

A group of alleged Black Guerrilla Family members met last December to discuss a robbery with a confidential source, who, unbeknownst to them, was working with the Drug Enforcement Administration. The price of cocaine in Baltimore City at that moment was "high" at $40,000 per kilogram, agents wrote in court documents, making the proposed robbery "especially lucrative. " "Coke price [is] high and everything, but a better price is free," the source told the group. In a more recent court document, however, that estimate had tumbled by 30 percent.

The city's Board of Estimates on Wednesday formally approved an overhaul of the city's speed cameras and the replacement of a police-towing company accused of overcharging customers. The panel voted 4-1 to approve a $2.2 million payment to Brekford Corp., the city's new speed camera vendor, for a purchase of 72 speed cameras. In January, the city's speed and red light camera system experienced a near-complete shutdown during what city officials called a problematic transition from previous contractor, Xerox State & Local Solutions.

Baltimore Fire Department officials say one person was found dead in a dwelling fire Sunday morning in the 1700 block of N. Broadway, and one firefighter responding to the scene suffered a minor burn while fighting the blaze. Officials said firefighters responded to the report of a dwelling fire and found heavy fire and smoke coming from second and third floor windows. As they ascended to the second floor, firefighters were met with intense heat, heavy smoke and fire, officials said, but pressed on because of reports that people may have been trapped.

A two-alarm fire on New Year's Eve caused an estimated $500,000 in damage to a commercial building in the Keymar area of Carroll County, according to the State Fire Marshal's office. The incident occurred at about 5:50 p.m. at 1060 Francis Scott Key Highway (Route 194), Keymar. According to the fire marshal's account, the building is a concrete and steel structure with a wood-framed roof, and is the home of two local companies - Keymar Tire Outlet and J. P. Donmoyer Trucking Company.

More Marylanders will take holiday trips this year, and most will drive — even though gas prices are the highest they have ever been entering the holiday season, according to AAA Mid-Atlantic. "Gas prices do not appear to be deterring motorists from hitting the roadways," said Ragina Averella, a spokeswoman for AAA, which released its annual holiday travel predictions Tuesday. Many of the state's nearly 2 million travelers are going without the kids, and without family visits at the top of holiday to-do lists — breaking with traditional patterns in Maryland.

Acknowledging that its method of calculating the economic impact of the Baltimore Convention Center overstated that impact, the state has adjusted its formula to provide a range of estimates. Now, instead of offering a single estimate, the Maryland Department of Budget and Management is reporting that the convention center's economic impact was between $227 million and $565 million in the 2002 fiscal year. For years, the state has boasted of huge economic benefits generated by the convention center.

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration reports there are 1.7 million regular users of cocaine, a huge increase over recent government survey estimates.But government officials insist the number of cocaine user, including heavy users, is declining. They say the new figure is not surprising and merely takes into account users missed by the surveys.The major government indicator of drug use has been the national household survey of drug abuse, done for the Department of Health and Human Services.

Current operator SMG is the winning bidder for a new five-year contract to run 1st Mariner Arena and oversee its potential renaming, according to a memo from the city's top purchasing agent. SMG's proposal awaits approval by the Baltimore Board of Estimates but has cleared the rest of the city's bidding process. The board will vote on the contract Wednesday. The Pennsylvania-based management company, which has operated the arena since 1999, beat proposals from Los Angeles-based AEG and Global Spectrum, a subsidiary of Philadelphia-based Comcast-Spectacor.

The Powerball jackpot reached an estimated $250 million, after no winner emerged from Saturday night's drawing. The cash value is $166.8 million, according to the Multi-State Lottery Association. The game is played in 42 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. Virgin Islands. The most recent big winner in Maryland was a couple who bought the winning $128.8 million at a family-owned restaurant and liquor store in Cecil County last Christmas Eve. That was the second-largest winning ticket ever sold in the state, according to the lottery.