A coalition of Baltimore technology companies more than tripled the percentage of Black employees on staff from 6.5% to 19.8% in a single year. How did the Baltimore Tracks coalition do it? The more than 20 companies instituted four reforms to the hiring process. They eliminated college degree requirements, began paying interns, shared qualified candidates with each other and swapped insight into how to improve diversity, equity and inclusion. The findings of the Baltimore Tracks second annual report, released this month, provide a roadmap for other employers who hope to become more diverse and reach a larger pool of applicants that they are likely missing.

Zion Rice, a 16-year-old rising junior at Annapolis High School, was walking around downtown Annapolis this summer when a man pulled up in a car and handed him a business card. The man was William Rowel, a senior adviser to Mayor Gavin Buckley. “I was walking a friend home from a sleepover not far from City Hall when Mr. Rowel pulled up beside us,” Rice said. “He talked to us about our future and told us about an internship he was heading up in the mayor’s office. My friend said he was too lazy but I applied and here I am.”

On its best days, WSSC Water, the largest water and sewer utility in Maryland, seamlessly serves 2 million residents in Prince George’s and Montgomery counties. But it’s also a sprawling organization with 1,700 employees that receives very little public scrutiny. The leaders of the two counties appoint WSSC’s governing commission, which in turn hires and oversees its general manager, but the lines of authority and accountability are often blurred. Some policies and operational procedures are set by state government, rather than the counties WSSC serves. And the agency’s gleaming headquarters overlooking Interstate 95 in Laurel is often the object of wonder and resentment in the quotidian world of local government.

The Montgomery County Board of Elections on Saturday certified the results of the July 19 primary election, with County Executive Marc Elrich leading the democratic primary for that office by 35 votes over challenger David Blair. Blair, who narrowly lost the party nomination to Elrich four years ago by 77 votes, has indicated he will seek a recount in the close contest. His campaign has 72 hours from the election’s certification to make a formal request.

The term “long covid” came from early patients who called themselves “long-haulers” when their pandemic maladies lingered for months. It is now increasingly apparent that long covid presents a potential tidal wave of suffering — afflictions stemming from covid-19 that refuse to go away. The scope of the problem is still unknown. But a new study from the Netherlands offers important clues. In a paper published in the Lancet, Aranka Ballering and colleagues at the Lifelines Corona Research Initiative report on an effort to discover the nature and prevalence of post-covid conditions based on a large population sample.

Johnson & Johnson announced it is severing ties with Gaithersburg-based Emergent Solutions after the pharmaceutical company was forced to destroy another 135 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine made at Emergent’s troubled Baltimore production plant because of quality issues. Congressional panel leaders announced the action Thursday, which follows a report in May that detailed how more than 400 million vaccine doses made at the plant had to be trashed. The doses more recently slated for destruction were made between August 2021 and February, the House members said.

On a recent day, a man in a red shirt came into the Pennsylvania Avenue branch of the Baltimore library system and thanked the workers for saving his life. “He got Narcan from the library,” said Donna Bruce, a peer recovery supervisor for the Enoch Pratt Free Library System. “He came in to say thanks. To the library. And then he went to work.” Narcan is a brand name for naloxone, a remedy for opioid overdoses, and Bruce, with a sigh of satisfaction, said it’s a measure of success for a program launched in December at the branch that has aided hundreds of people and families affected by substance use and mental health issues.

I have never understood people who blow it — that is, people who appear to enjoy great success and have many reasons to be happy but fritter away their bliss on irrational choices and petty grievances. I have never understood the guy who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, then used it to dig himself into a hole. Or, to deploy a baseball metaphor — because I’m addressing the Angelos family feud today — consider the guy who was born on third base and thought he hit a triple, and even then, takes too big of a lead off the bag and gets picked off. He blew it!