With acts such as Bruce Springsteen, Lionel Richie, Janet Jackson, New Edition and Queen already rocking its venue, CFG Bank Arena seems to be striking the right chord with bands and audiences. Seven months after the unveiling of the $250 million revamped venue, it’s also receiving big, international praise. Billboard magazine announced that among venues with a capacity of less than 15,000, CFG Arena was the tenth highest-grossing venue in the world and number four in North America. In 2009, the venue ranked first in North America.

The House Judiciary Committee held its third briefing on juvenile justice reform Tuesday, this time with representatives from a national policy organization, a local judge and six nonprofit organizations that work with troubled youth. The committee organized briefings in the fall to assess juvenile reforms as some lawmakers and community leaders said crime has increased, especially among youth.

It’s been a bumpy road getting students to and from school in Howard County, with the beginning of the school year riddled with bus driver shortages and route mishaps. Now, bus drivers employed by the district’s largest contractor, Zum, are trying to unionize. This morning, Howard County bus drivers employed by Zum Transportation Services joined members of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 1994 to hold a rally ahead of their representation vote scheduled for next week.

For Ben Zaitchik, the moment had arrived. He’d been working at Johns Hopkins University for almost two years on a groundbreaking effort funded by the U.S. Department of Energy to define what it would take to make Baltimore climate-adaptive, resilient and just. Now, he paced nervously in a spacious corridor at Morgan State University’s Center for Built Environment and Infrastructure Studies, not far from Johns Hopkins’ main campus, making sure that everything was in order for the focus group meeting he had been planning for weeks. The topic: the urban heat island effect, his research specialty.

In the wee hours, after sending out amendments that would drastically limit the powers of Baltimore County’s inspector general, the chair of the County Council, Julian E. Jones Jr., summoned his fellow politicians to a private meeting about the changes. “Please see the attached documents,” Jones wrote in his message, sent after midnight on Sunday (December 3).

Hundreds of residents of the Avenel community in Potomac rallied Monday night to fight the decision by Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission, or WSSC Water, to close the area’s equestrian center. The Avenel Equestrian Center is located on the 1,018-acre Avenel farm, which was developed into a residential community, golf course and equestrian facility, according to its website.

A divided County Council on Tuesday voted to approve two water and sewerage plan amendments requested by Avanti Properties Group — a Florida-based company with plans to construct a 923-unit residential development in New Market called Calumet. The planned development has been a point of contention between county officials, the town of New Market and the developer since the Calumet property was annexed into the town in 2014.

The number of schools that received a five-star rating in Maryland dropped last year, according to preliminary Maryland Report Card data shared at Tuesday’s State Board of Education meeting. The final results of the Maryland Report Card, the state’s school rating system, will be released next week. School ranking collected for the 2022-23 academic year resumed accounting for absenteeism, a factor that was left out last year due to chronic absenteeism related to the coronavirus pandemic.

Sparrows Point Alliance, a nonprofit, grassroots organization of Maryland community groups, business organizations, and labor unions, officially launched Wednesday to support the continued revitalization of Sparrows Point and specifically the completion of the proposed Sparrows Point Container Terminal project (SPCT).

Negotiations on a stadium lease agreement between the Baltimore Orioles and the state of Maryland are still underway. Fans cheered as a surprise announcement appeared on the scoreboard at a September Thursday night game at Camden Yards. Officials “agreed to a deal that will keep the Orioles in Baltimore and at Camden Yards for at least the next 30 years,” the announcement said.