Business

A historic farmhouse in Brooklandville has been repurposed and today is available on Airbnb for visitors who want to stay at the former homestead of a signer of the Declaration of Independence. The house at 10938 Falls Road hit the rental market in August and has attracted several bookings since, said Michael Tsakalos, who acquired the property for $700,000 late last year with partner Brian Diamond.

Your mission this entire week is to work up an appetite to do some serious eating this weekend. The 31st annual Taste of Bethesda returns to Bethesda, Maryland, this Saturday, Oct. 7 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. “We haven’t been able to have Taste of Bethesda since 2019, so we are incredibly excited to be back bringing food, drinks and entertainment,” Stephanie Coppula, director of marketing and communications, told WTOP.

Greater Baltimore’s banks cut 24 branches over the last 15 months, a sign that the pace of branch cuts may be slowing after a slew of closures amid the pandemic. There are now 541 bank branches in Greater Baltimore as of Sept. 30, 2023, down 24 from the 565 branches Baltimore’s banks operated as of June 30, 2022, according to data from the Federal Insurance Corp. and the Office of the Comptroller of Currency.

Hej — yes, “hi” in Swedish — IKEA fans. Two more IKEA locations will open in Maryland, bringing more access to customers closer to the Eastern Shore and farther west across the state. By the end of the year, Annapolis and Gaithersburg will have the popular Swedish furniture store, which is known for its affordable and seemingly easy-to-assemble furniture, and of course, the cafeteria featuring Scandinavian fare.

Atlas Restaurant Group is expanding its Harbor East portfolio again, with plans to open a new restaurant and move its headquarters. The local group signed a 21,000-square-foot lease at 1425 Aliceanna St. in the historic E.J. Codd Co. building, Atlas announced Monday. The space at the corner of Aliceanna and Spring streets will hold a “moderately priced” restaurant along with the company’s new corporate headquarters. Atlas expects both to open later next year.

Recently renovated restrooms at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport have received national acclaim, winning the 2023 America’s Best Restroom contest. The contest is held each year by cleaning supplies and services company Cintas. As the winner, BWI receives $2,500 in Cintas bathroom cleaning products and services, plus a Cintas “UltraClean” restroom cleaning service, the company wrote in a release Thursday.

About 1.5 million Americans suffer from rheumatoid arthritis, a chronic disease in which the immune system attacks healthy cells, typically around the joints, causing swelling and deformity. Generally, doctors prescribe the drug methotrexate, which reduces pain and swelling and can also slow joint damage and disease progression over time. But it doesn’t work for everyone. Next, doctors often prescribe drugs such as Humira and Enbrel — from the seemingly ubiquitous TV ads — that block a molecule called tumor necrosis factor alpha, which regulates the body’s inflammatory responses.

More than 75,000 Kaiser Permanente health-care workers are poised to walk off the job within days as labor negotiations remain stalled over pay, outsourcing and staffing problems, in what could be the biggest health-care strike in U.S. history, with direct implications for thousands of patients nationwide.
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Cheers erupted at a picnic for D.C.-area government workers Saturday as Congress moved to pass a continuing resolution to avert a government shutdown. Members of District 14, American Federation of Government Employees, carried out their annual picnic amid shutdown concerns. The local chapter of the union that represents government workers in Maryland, D.C. and Virginia, welcomed its president Everett Kelley to the afternoon festivities at the Fort Washington National Park in Maryland.