Monday, October 7, 2024 | Baltimore, MD
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Around Maryland

Baltimore City Health Department ends emergency response to mpox outbreak

The Baltimore City Health Department is ending its emergency response to the mpox outbreak that started last year, citing low transmission of the viral disease over the past two months. There are currently zero cases being monitored by the city health department, which announced in a Thursday news release it was demobilizing its Incident Command Structure response to mpox. The disease formerly known as monkeypox was first detected in Baltimore in June 2022.

Read More: Baltimore Sun
Baltimore County Public Schools earned fewer stars in Maryland Report Card ratings than pre-pandemic

The Maryland State Department of Education released report cards Thursday grading the state’s public schools for the 2021-22 school year, and Baltimore County Public Schools fared poorly, counting more one- and two-star schools than before the coronavirus pandemic. This is the first time since the 2018-19 school year that the school report card data has been released. For the new scores, the U.S. Department of Education allowed states like Maryland to make one-time adjustments to their rating formulas. Factors such as standardized test scores, absenteeism and graduation rates, to name a few, were taken into account.

Read More: Baltimore Sun
Policeman watching the St Patrick's parade
A new fight over local control is brewing: How much control should Baltimore have over its police force?

After Baltimore residents overwhelmingly voted in favor of the city having control of its police department last November, debate swirled early this year around the timeline of formalizing the city’s authority. Advocates came out in force against a proposed delay — and appear to have gotten their way. Now, there’s a new wrinkle emerging, pitting the police commissioner and Mayor Brandon Scott’s administration against those same advocates and some of the Baltimore City Council.

Read More: Baltimore Sun
Montgomery County plans to help new farmers get growing

The appetite for farm-fresh, locally grown food is strong in Montgomery County, Maryland, where there’s an effort to provide guidance to a growing segment of farmers — those from various racial and ethnic backgrounds, including Black and Indigenous farmers. A new guide put out by the Montgomery Countryside Alliance and the county’s Office of Agriculture offers a range of resources for those eager to dig in to food production.

 

Read More: WTOP
How Maryland’s top schools official is tackling poverty and the teacher shortage

Maryland State School Superintendent Mohammed Choudhury — a self-described data geek — arrived from Texas 18 months ago with a plan in his back pocket to redesign an essential formula for how the state calculates levels of family poverty. Now the state education department has refined that Texas plan into a model for Maryland to target money more precisely for schools with the neediest children.

Md. high court will weigh when consent to search can be withdrawn

The Maryland Supreme Court will consider whether a person’s consent to a warrantless search of his or her computer’s digital data can be withdrawn after a consented-to copy has been made by law enforcement. The justices last week agreed to hear the state’s appeal of a lower court decision that law enforcement officers were constitutionally bound to honor a suspected child pornographer’s withdrawal of his consent to their pending warrantless search of his computer even though a week had passed and they had already copied the hard drive.

Concerns linger on driving under the influence of cannabis as Maryland’s legalization of recreational use moves forward

While a large recreational cannabis industry bill is taking up most of Maryland lawmakers’ time on the issue, a proposed pilot program would start allowing police to test drivers who officers believe are impaired by cannabis.

Read More: Baltimore Sun
D.C. who? Baltimore has its own historic cherry trees along the water.

You don’t need to hop on a MARC train or fight the crowds in Washington, D.C. to see cherry blossoms this month. Fort McHenry, in South Baltimore, is the home of two groves of Yoshino Cherry trees, the very same kind that surrounds the Tidal Basin in D.C. Peak bloom — the time when 70% of the blossoms on the tree are open — for the cherry groves at Fort McHenry is estimated to be from March 24-28. It’s about the same timeframe as last year, when peak bloom was predicted to be from March 25-28.

 

 

Spike in sleep-related infant deaths alarms Baltimore city and county officials

A spike in sleep-related infant deaths in the Baltimore metro area is alarming medial providers and health officials and causing them to double down on safe sleep education efforts. Eleven babies have died in Baltimore since Dec. 1, according to preliminary data provided by Baltimore Health Commissioner Dr. Letitia Dzirasa on Wednesday. For comparison, 14 babies died in 2020 and 16 died in 2021, according to data from the city health department.

Read More: Baltimore Sun
Leaders want FBI headquarters to move to Maryland

Maryland leaders made their case to the FBI and General Services Administration Wednesday to move the FBI’s headquarters to the state. Leaders present included Gov. Wes Moore, Sen. Chris Van Hollen and Sen. Ben Cardin, among others. Landover, Greenbelt, and Springfield, Virginia are the three sites in contention for the new FBI headquarters. Van Hollen said, unlike Springfield, Maryland’s proposed locations are more in line with President Joe Biden’s ideology.

 

 

Read More: WBAL-TV

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