NASA on Monday named the four astronauts who will fly to the moon by the end of next year, including one woman and three men. The three Americans and one Canadian were introduced during a ceremony in Houston, home to the nation’s astronauts as well as Mission Control. “This is humanity’s crew,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. The four astronauts will be the first to fly NASA’s Orion capsule, launching atop a Space Launch System rocket from Kennedy Space Center no earlier than late 2024.

I had made a grave error. “Do you have memories of eating pickled onions?” I asked in a post on the Facebook group “Baltimore Past & Present Photos.” I had shared a photo of a jar of whole sour onions I had purchased at Baltimore’s oldest Italian deli. I was quickly — and repeatedly — corrected by members of the more than 89,000-person-strong Facebook group: In Charm City, they’re called onion pickles, not pickled onions.

Diesel-belching trucks are rumbling down Maryland 550 in Woodsboro at high rates of speed. It’s a pretty remote stretch of highway in Frederick County, surrounded mainly by cornfields. Many of the trucks are stopping at Laurel Sand and Gravel, a massive quarry and mining operation off the main road, where 600,000 tons of small stones are ground into powder every year. The powder, known as aggregate, is sold to the concrete industry as a thickening agent.

The Howard County Council voted unanimously Monday night to approve legislation that puts in place additional procedures the county auditor is required to follow during certain special investigations, after a description of race in a February report published by the office sparked public protest and calls for the county auditor to be fired.

Free internet and computer access in your own home is now available to borrow from your local branch of the Carroll County Public Library. In November, the library system acquired, via a state grant, 225 Acer Chromebook devices, which can be checked out from libraries just like any book. The Chromebooks also provide their own internet, and Lisa Picker, the public library’s director of communications, said that can be especially helpful for families connecting multiple devices to the internet at the same time.

Last fall, following an unusually violent summer for teenagers, Mayor Brandon Scott announced an initiative aimed at intervening in school conflicts before they erupt into gunfire. Five months later, teenage gun violence in Baltimore has surged, even as nonfatal shootings and homicides in the city have receded. Scott’s school violence intervention pilot has yet to get off the ground — and likely won’t be fully implemented until the fall. Even so, the scope of youth violence — with its sudden surge — is outpacing the city’s capacity to respond.

Friday marks International Transgender Day of Visibility, and while anti-transgender legislation is being introduced across the country, Montgomery County experienced a week of vocal support for LGBTQ+ residents from the County Council, school board and a local grassroots organization. The Montgomery County Council adopted a resolution on Tuesday reiterating the county’s intolerance for anti-transgender acts and voicing support for LGBTQ+-friendly events such as drag story hours as “important and joyful ways to celebrate the diversity of our community.”

Former Gov. Larry Hogan (R-MD) gave his support to the efforts of the FBI and United States Marshals to track down his former chief of staff, Roy McGrath, who failed to appear in court in Baltimore on March 13. “Governor Hogan fully supports local, state, and federal law enforcement efforts to resolve this situation,” a Hogan spokesperson said. After McGrath failed to appear in court for his criminal trial in Baltimore, a federal arrest warrant was issued. Federal authorities are now offering $20,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.

A 17-year-old boy was killed and a man was injured in two separate downtown Towson shootings in the space of eight days, sparking fears that big-city crime was taking root in the rapidly growing heart of the suburb north of Baltimore. But new data from the Baltimore County Police Department shows crime in downtown Towson rebounded last year to 2019 levels after a dip during the first two years of the coronavirus pandemic, when many businesses and retailers initially shut down.

Some Montgomery County Public School staff say the district lacks willingness to more vocally support its LGBTQ-inclusive policies in the face of backlash. The school district recently revised its policy regarding the use of LGBTQ+ inclusive books in schools, saying families should not expect to receive prior alert when their student engages with these materials.