Around Maryland

A three-year United States Department of Justice investigation released Monday found that University of Maryland Baltimore County knew about allegations of sexual assault, harassment and discrimination by a former head coach and failed to protect the students on his team. The investigation found that the university did not devote enough resources to comply with Title IX, the law that prohibits sex discrimination in education, which allowed Chad Cradock, who coached the men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams, “to do as he pleased without consequence, including engaging in physical sexual assaults” against students between 2015 and 2020.

Part of Nicole Ranoull’s job as Maryland Access Point information and assistance manager at Carroll County’s Bureau of Aging and Disabilities is to help grandparents and older relatives who are faced with being the primary caregiver for young children. Though the bureau does not keep statistics on how many older residents are caring for young children in Carroll, Ranoull said about 20 individuals regularly access the Family Caregiver Support Program. She believes there are many more people who are not taking advantage of resources offered by the program.

A $504,000 study of a proposal to widen Route 97 between Route 140 and Bachman Valley Road in Westminster is expected to be completed soon, Mary Lane, bureau chief of Carroll County’s Bureau of Comprehensive Planning, said last week. Lane spoke at a meeting of the Board of Carroll County Commissioners on Thursday and said the bureau expects the study, which looks at the widening of the road from three to five lanes, including a new intersection at Meadow Branch Road, is slated to be complete this spring.

She was born and raised on Maryland’s Eastern Shore to “a family who was about service.” Major Gen. Janeen Birckhead is the 31st Adjutant General for the state of Maryland and is currently the only Black woman in the country to lead a state military. “I have been fortunate in my positions along the way to really be in good units with good mentors and leaders who have been able to give me some really good guidance about what steps to take next and where to go,” Birckhead told WTOP.

The scaffolding has come off much of Pennsylvania Station, revealing the finely articulated facade that now shines in the March sunlight. It was not always like this. For decades the station’s big windows seemed to be falling apart and the 1911 stone work needed strengthening and repointing. It’s worth a trip to the Station North neighborhood just to take in this visual change that was more than two years in the making.

A disputed affordable housing development in East Towson that has for years divided neighbors over its legality received additional approval this week from a panel of appellate judges to move forward. Developer Red Maple Place Limited, which acquired two parcels of Baltimore County land in 2018 and proposed using one of them to build a four-story, 56-unit affordable housing apartment complex, had its plans affirmed by the three-judge panel of the Appellate Court of Maryland in a decision handed down Thursday.

Two men, holding seemingly identical Glock handguns, stand side-by-side in front of a silhouette-shaped target at an indoor shooting range. They aim their guns and open fire. The man on the left squeezes the trigger 15 times, emptying his clip in a few seconds. The person on the right was able to empty one clip, reload, and empty another in the time it took the other to finish shooting. He only had to squeeze the trigger twice, one time for each magazine. The gun fired so rapidly it sounded like it was jet-fueled.

The Frederick Center hosted a panel on queer history in Frederick Sunday afternoon, with panelists moving a packed room in the C. Burr Artz Public Library to tears. “Thank you for creating the world we have today that [children] can come out at the age of 13, and have their whole teenage years and adolescence ahead of them,” one mom in the audience, who said her child is queer, told the panelists.