It took nearly six years to move a little more than four miles, but Marriott International Inc.’s long-planned headquarters relocation to downtown Bethesda is substantially complete. Executives hosted a media tour Monday of the global hospitality company’s new corporate home ahead of an official ribbon-cutting ceremony next month. The last group of employees moved into the 21-story, 785,000-square-foot building at 7750 Wisconsin Ave. last week, after Marriott (NASDAQ: MAR) announced its intention to relocate from the Rock Spring business park in suburban Bethesda in October 2016. In that time, the company has weathered a global pandemic that significantly impacted its finances and trimmed its workforce.

Jacob Selmer, of Taneytown, combines his love for metal working and his passion for history to make tools and decorative steel products. Selmer’s Iron Works is one of five finalists in this year’s Carroll Biz Challenge, an annual “Shark Tank”-style competition. This year 44 applicants, all local entrepreneurs, pitched their business ideas in the hopes of winning a $10,000 grand prize and additional awards. Finalists will make live pitches to a panel of judges during a finale Thursday in Westminster.

With Montgomery County elections officials gearing for a recount in the race for county executive, incumbent Marc Elrich expressed confidence that his win over fellow Democrat David Blair will hold. In an interview, Elrich said he’s looking forward to tackling the county’s challenges — and working with an almost all-new county council — in his second term.  Following a lengthy vote count, Elrich outperformed Blair by 35 votes in the July 19 primary. The 0.03% margin between the two men — 55,497 votes for Elrich; 55,462 for Blair — fell well within the 0.25% threshold set by state law for a free recount. Blair, as expected, filed a formal petition on Tuesday for a full manual recount of all votes cast. 

. 

It has long been clear that covid-19 school closures led to widespread learning loss, particularly in low-income communities. As some schools prepare for a new academic year, evidence is piling up that the harm was far more extensive, particularly the toll on students’ behavioral and mental health. The National Center for Education Statistics reported last month that more than 70 percent of public schools surveyed saw a rise in chronic absenteeism after the pandemic began. Nearly 60 percent experienced increased classroom disruption stemming from student misconduct, and about half found that students were more disrespectful toward teachers and staff.

It’s home to a car wash offering $14 exterior cleans, but soon, a parcel of land on Baltimore Street in Hagerstown may serve a different purpose: right field. The Maryland Stadium Authority is aiming to build a $70 million ballpark in the Western Maryland city, which will gain a professional baseball team in 2024. To obtain the land where the team would play, the stadium authority has bought a laundromat, a Washington County government building, and the old Herald-Mail newspaper building. The fourth and final parcel of land it needs to purchase is the Hagerstown Auto Spa. The car wash, however, has not yet agreed to terms with the stadium authority after months of negotiations.

Over the course of the next year, lawmakers on the U.S. House and Senate Agriculture committees will draft a new federal farm bill that will shape food, farm, conservation and nutrition programs across the country for the next five years. The omnibus law that began 90 years ago as crop supports now has an impact far beyond the farm, with programs to create wildlife habitat, address climate change and run the nation’s largest federal nutrition program. “Any number of economic policies that we establish in farm bills impact everybody’s daily lives,” said former Sen. Saxby Chambliss, the top Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee during the 2008 farm bill.

If you’ve ever been frustrated that your phone is charging at a snail’s pace (most likely while the charger is overheating), you may be in luck. A Frederick company, Pirl Technology, is working to develop more effective chargers for not only cellphones but also for electronic vehicles and other devices throughout the household. The company’s first product, a multiport cellphone charger, delivers 25-30% more power to the device than other chargers and is cool enough that it doesn’t need a fan to stop from overheating.

Baltimore County police are starting to get back test results from a long-delayed project to process the oldest known collection of DNA evidence from rape cases. Last year, ProPublica wrote about the trove of evidence and the prescient doctor who began assembling it in the 1970s, long before preserving forensic evidence was common police practice. Police have processed DNA from 49 of about 1,800 remaining cases as of the first quarter of this year, according to a department memo obtained through a public information request and follow-up communications with a sergeant in charge of the cold case unit. Ten of the 49 cases yielded actionable DNA profiles, according to the sergeant.

You may not realize it, but Baltimore County is in the midst of a once-in-a-decade opportunity to transform the very “systems” that make county life worth living, from housing and transportation to education and environment, to economic competitiveness and equity. And what is the catalyst for this remarkable moment in time? It is the Master Plan 2030 process. State law requires that each county review its master plan at least once every 10 years. This is a chance for the county to pull together a range of stakeholders, with a special focus on residents and communities, to take stock of where we have been and to plan for where we should go — together.