Baltimore will exhaust its federal eviction relief money by mid-March, officials told members of Baltimore City Council Tuesday, making the city the latest to sound the alarm about dwindling funds. Since 2020, the Mayor’s Office of Children and Family Success has received $82 million dollars in local, state, and federal funding for emergency rental assistance as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The money is paid directly to tenants who lost income during the pandemic and have fallen behind on rent and is sometimes paid directly to landlords preparing to evict tenants for nonpayment.

Gun violence is so regular an occurrence in the United States that no incident, however tragic, comes as a surprise. But events in recent days deserve special attention all the same, as they underscore a core truth about responding to gun violence: changing just one or two rules would not be enough. Early this month, a 6-year-old boy shot and wounded an elementary school teacher in Newport News, Va. This, according to authorities, was no accident: The first grader pulled out a handgun and fired a bullet through his instructor’s outstretched hand and into her chest. His family says he has an “acute disability”; The Post reports that administrators brushed off concerns about the boy after he threw furniture in class, barricaded the doors to a room and threatened to light a teacher on fire and watch her die. The day of the shooting, his backpack was searched after a tip that he may have had a weapon.

Rockville’s RegenxBio Inc., which is developing treatments for retinal and neurodegenerative diseases, has launched another clinical trial in a bid to get multiple products to market in the next few years. The clinical-stage biotech said Monday it has started a phase 1/2 trial of a gene therapy candidate for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a rare genetic disorder that causes progressive muscle weakness and atrophy. The study, now underway and recruiting patients, aims to evaluate the safety, tolerability and efficacy of the company’s one-time experimental treatment, called RGX-202.

Workforce development for life-sustaining careers and a stubborn digital divide remain two of Maryland’s biggest access-related challenges to solve. On Thursday, Maryland Tech Council’s 2023 Annapolis Day Advocacy Summit convened technologists and organizations from around the state to listen to panel discussions on the life sciences workforce and equitable internet access, among other issues. “This has been a growing passion project for me, to see this industry grow and succeed in the state,” said Brad Stewart, the life sciences panel moderator, who is also SVP of business development at the Montgomery County Economic Development Corporation.

Morgan State University has lost the chance to win a lucrative partnership with the United States Air Force that could have brought billions of dollars to Baltimore. The Air Force instead choose to work with Howard University to build a university-affiliated research center, or UARC, to develop new engineering and technology innovations for the military. The Air Force will funnel $12 million a year over five years to Howard to fund faculty, research, and student stipends around tactical autonomy. The university will receive an additional $2 million a year from both the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment and the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering for the center.

Maryland’s unemployment rate dropped to 4% in December 2022, according to preliminary data released Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. The department also announced that the state’s number of total jobs remained effectively stagnant, decreasing by just 200. The mining, logging and construction sector experienced the most growth with an increase of 2,200 jobs. Other sectors adding jobs include other services (1,600), education and health services (1,100), and government (400). Sectors that experienced a decline were professional and business services (1,200), trade, transportation and utilities (1,200), information (1,000), financial activities (800), manufacturing (700), and leisure and hospitality (600).

School staff would receive protection from lawsuits stemming from discipling students under a proposed bill from Del. Robin Grammer, R-Baltimore, that is set to be heard in the General Assembly on Wednesday. “We have significant problems with public education,” Grammer told Capital News Service on Thursday. “The discipline issues are real, very real, despite the politicking around it.” Teachers are afraid to intervene in bullying and other disciplinary problems for fear of lawsuits, and, he said, that’s meant fewer teachers or teachers leaving the profession early.

Sometime in 2025, an Australian boat builder plans to float a 426-foot, all-electric ferry that can carry up to 2,100 passengers and 226 vehicles. The company, Incat, says the ferry will be the largest of its kind, with a power range of 100 nautical miles. A South American ferry operator, Buquebus, will use it to carry passengers between Argentina and Uruguay. The original design called for the ferry to be powered by liquefied natural gas, but, with advances in battery technology, both Incat and Buquebus decided to go electric. That is the case in many other ports of the world, where ferries are either being constructed or retrofitted with electric engines for service in waterfront communities.

Gov. Wes Moore (D) began rolling out cabinet appointments a week after his election, and he’s picked more than 20 individuals to head state agencies over the past 2 1/2 months, along with dozens of staffers to play key roles in his new administration. Moore’s State House news conference Tuesday nominating Paul Wiedefeld, a veteran transportation administrator, to run the Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT), was the first time that he was accompanied at such an announcement by validators who sang his nominee’s praises. The optics spotlighted the importance of transportation in the Moore administration’s overall agenda — and served as a reminder that Wiedefeld, though well-respected by many local leaders, has endured rocky periods during his management of vital regional transportation agencies and may not be universally beloved.

The top two officials of a state college funding agency pledged Tuesday to improve communication while resolving interest calculation issues that have plagued at least 500 account holders. Maryland 529 Executive Director Anthony Savia and interim board chair Geoffrey Newman also told members of two state Senate committees that the agency would look to other states with 529 plans as models as it works to help families unable to access their Maryland Prepaid College Trust balances or whose accounts failed to accrue promised interest. In addition, the agency has hired a liaison to work with lawmakers and contracted with Pressley Media Group to handle communications, Maryland 529 spokesperson Michelle Winner confirmed via email.