Around Maryland

There’s insomnia. Frantic group texts. Obsessively reloading websites. It’s summer camp sign-up time, and we parents are stressed out right now. The good news is there are a dizzying number of camps to sign up for in the Baltimore area. Your child can learn to sail, build a robot, perfect their lacrosse skills, act in a play or gallop across fields on horseback. The bad news is most camps are expensive — sending our three kids to a premium camp for two weeks would be like taking out a second mortgage. And the logistics are overwhelming.

The University of Maryland surgeons who conducted the world’s first pig-to-human heart transplants say they will be ready to perform a third operation as soon as a suitable patient is found. The two path-breaking surgeries, known as xenotransplantations, took place in 2022 and 2023 at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore.

As a Palestinian American, Ruba Abukhdeir said she often feels unheard. This has been particularly true, she said, since she learned that the Howard County Council will not allow public testimony Monday night on a resolution calling for a cease-fire in war-torn Gaza. “If they think this is not local, it is local because my community feels neglected, unheard and not included,” Abukhdeir said at a press conference Friday morning in front of the county government building.

Tables with posters were set up all around Hood College’s Whitaker Campus Center on Saturday for Mobilize Frederick’s Second Annual Climate Summit. In the Hodson Auditorium, panelists spoke about environmental concerns and solutions and answered questions from rapt listeners. “There’s a lot of angst around climate change, rightly so,” said Barb Trader, Mobilize Frederick’s board president and co-founder. “And we find that in order to generate the kind of movement, we need to do more faster, we need to encourage people that there’s already a lot being done.”

At the Community College of Baltimore County, 85% of students attend school without paying tuition, but that could change because of proposed cutbacks in Gov. Wes Moore’s budget. CCBC President Sandra Kurtinitis said a proposed cut to the state funding of community colleges may force her 48,531-student institution to roll back one of its biggest aid programs, an offer of free tuition to any student whose family makes less than $150,000 a year.

As environmental advocates begin to push an audacious plan to make polluters compensate the state for the ravages of climate change, they are now armed with a poll showing voters want policymakers to be tough with fossil fuel companies. The Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN) released the poll Tuesday, as lawmakers start to consider legislation that would make the 40 largest emitters of greenhouse gases in Maryland pay vast sums of money to the state for environmental degradation.

In a bus lot in East Baltimore, city school officials, members of the Biden administration and school bus manufacturers braved the cold on Tuesday to cut the ribbon for 25 new electric buses for Baltimore City Public Schools. These are not the noisy, sputtering, diesel-stenched yellow behemoths of many a childhood; in fact the vehicles are practically silent when turned on.

Several local agencies have teamed up to form the Allegany County Resuscitation Committee — a groundbreaking partnership focused on improving out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survival rates in Allegany County. The committee is composed of members of the Cumberland Fire Department, UPMC Western Maryland and Allegany County Department of Emergency Services.

The Maryland State Department of Education is looking for public and private nonprofit organizations willing to serve as meal sites for the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP). The SFSP is a U.S. Department of Agriculture summer program that provides free, nutritious meals to children and teenagers who depend on their schools for meals while school is in session.