Dollar General, a national convenience store, is trying to reduce the number of food deserts. A food desert is an area where access to healthy, affordable food is limited or even nonexistent. It also includes areas where there is a disparity between an abundance of convenience stores and supermarkets and an absence of fresh food like fruits and vegetables.

Jed Weeks, executive director of Bikemore, feels for the families of victims involved in two deadly incidents last week. Bikemore is a biking organization that advocates for bikers’ rights in Baltimore. Friday afternoon, police said a 44-year-old man was killed after a driver hit his bike near South Caroline and Bank streets in Fells Point.

It’s been more than a year since Maryland flipped a switch, turning the state’s string of medical cannabis stores into retailers open to anyone 21 and older. Ahead of the rollout made possible by a ballot referendum, lawmakers deftly set regulations and taxes based on what’s worked and what hasn’t worked elsewhere. One goal? Make room for new businesses by attempting to suppress illegal sales.

A coalition of governments in the Washington, D.C., metro area declared a regional drought watch on Monday. Frederick County — one of the 24 members of the Washington Metropolitan Council of Governments — encourages residents to limit their daily water usage to help conserve water and make sure the area has a sufficient supply, a press release on Monday said.

Small minority-owned businesses in Baltimore and elsewhere that struggle to access financing could get help through a new public-private federal partnership announced Monday in East Baltimore. Officials with the U.S. Department of Commerce finalized a national agreement with St. Louis-based nonprofit Urban Strategies Inc. to bring resources such as access to capital and technical support to minority-owned businesses in Baltimore and about two dozen other metro areas.

With visitors numbering in the hundreds of thousands each year, Rocky Gap State Park is one of the most popular recreation destinations in the state of Maryland. It was first opened in July 1974. This year, the park is observing its 50th anniversary, and celebrated this important milestone throughout the month of July. Those events concluded Wednesday with a free paddle boarding lesson.

 

The Montgomery County government and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) announced Monday a partnership to bring a life sciences hub to North Bethesda. The proposed development is expected to increase the county’s stature as a national center for life science and medical research as well as promote economic development and transit ridership, county and WMATA officials said during a press conference at the North Bethesda Metro station on Monday.

U.S. median home prices hit a record high for the second month in a row as sales continued to fall in June, with potential buyers lying in wait for lower mortgage rates, according to a new report. Existing home sales fell 5.4% from May to June, when median home prices reached their highest level since prices were first tracked by the National Association of Realtors in 1999.

Gov. Wes Moore (D) has been a soldier, a business owner, the head of a national anti-poverty philanthropy and, most recently, a successful practitioner in the dirty world of politics. But friends, admirers and staffers will sometimes say, half-jokingly, that he is most comfortable on a stage, earnestly discussing the top issues of the day. Moore had two opportunities to do just that in downtown Baltimore Monday, sitting in plush armchairs at back-to-back events, talking first about small business development and later about expanding educational opportunities for Maryland’s poorest residents.

With the Democratic establishment — in Maryland and across the country — quickly coalescing around Vice President Kamala Harris to replace President Biden at the top of the White House ticket, it’s easy to forget that her first foray into presidential politics, in 2019, wasn’t nearly as triumphal. But she had a hardy band of supporters in Maryland then who are reveling in the moment now.