Space is open for business, and Maryland is now positioned as a player in the space economy. Rocket Lab, a direct competitor of Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, is establishing a footprint in Maryland, moving forward with a facility in Middle River, Baltimore County, at a location that also honors the past. A new aerospace facility is taking shape at an enormous warehouse that has been home to aerospace manufacturing since 1929. A ribbon-cutting ceremony on Friday was low-tech for a facility that’s about as futuristic as they come.

 

Ken Ulman, a one-time rising political star in Maryland who more recently has been a key consultant and influencer in the state on economic development and construction projects, is returning to the political arena. Ulman was overwhelmingly elected the new state Democratic chair Saturday morning, easily dispatching a 22-year-old member of the Baltimore County Democratic Central Committee, Edward Crizer III, and Vontasha Simms, a Charles County Democratic Central Committee member who ran unsuccessfully for a state Senate seat last year. He replaces Yvette Lewis, a venerated figure among many party leaders who stepped down earlier this fall.

 

Joe Richardson looked out at a crowd of young faces Sunday afternoon at the Bar-T Mountainside Summer Camp near Frederick. Dozens of students, ranging from elementary school to high school, were at the camp for the first Youth Environmental Summit hosted by the Rotary Club of Southern Frederick County. Richardson said the mantra of the summit, which will be held annually going forward, was: “It’s no longer OK not to know.”

The design phase of a widening project for part of Route 214 will be fully funded by the end of next year. Meanwhile, money is still being sought to complete design work for other Anne Arundel priorities, including road widening projects on Routes 2 and 3, the state says. “These are where we have traffic bottlenecks, where too many cars are trying to get into the same place at the same time and you’ll notice a lot of them are north-south,” Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman said at a meeting with the Maryland Department of Transportation on Tuesday.

The red-brick warehouse that houses Baltimore’s elections information and equipment is over 50 years old and, by many accounts, is falling apart. Parts of the ceiling are sagging, or have holes. At least one of the metal doors used for unloading equipment has rusted shut. Others have to be pried open with a steel bar. The warehouse, despite boasting 40,000 square feet, is packed with thousands of voting machines, ballot carts, and provisional ballot applications. There is no space to train election judges.

Laurel Park’s horse racing future hinges on a proposal to be made to the Maryland General Assembly next month that could alter Thoroughbred racing in the state as we know it. A determination will come from the Maryland Thoroughbred Racetrack Operating Authority, a commission established by Senate Bill 720 in the 2023 legislative session, to make recommendations on the redevelopment of Laurel Park and Pimlico racecourses – the two most prominent, historic, but aging, Thoroughbred racetracks in the state.

Families in one east Baltimore neighborhood are taking a stand against crime. The Belair-Edison neighborhood already has a community improvement association. Now, they want a neighborhood watch with signs posted throughout the area and neighbors working together to prevent crime. Sherell Sellers said she and her neighbors are tired of the crime. They met Thursday to develop the watch group. Even before the meeting, she said she and a neighbor stopped teenagers from stealing an Amazon delivery truck.

Maryland roads include more than 700 historical markers commemorating famous battles and buildings. Some, like the one introducing Kent Island to motorists, hark back to the years before Catholic settlers even founded the colony in 1634. Others, like the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory that was dedicated on Solomons Island in 1925, are more recent. What they share is that many fail to convey the whole story. They’re not supposed to; at 70 words apiece, the idea is to whet an appetite to learn more. Yet a motorist might well learn the wrong information.

On a nice fall day, the people of Frederick were going about their businesses as usual. All of a sudden, the news hit like a bolt from the blue: Hamas attacked Israel and killed 1,400 men women and children and took nearly 300 as hostages. It was alarming. The United States has been helping to stop aggression in Ukraine. Both Ukraine and Israel are democracies. Their leaders are voted in and out by their people, free to criticize their political leaders.

 

The leader of CASA of Maryland, an immigrant rights organization, says the organization’s apology over comments on the war in Gaza comes after consultation with members of the Jewish community. In an interview with WTOP, Gustavo Torres, executive director of CASA, said that the apology issued by his group came after “receiving comments from a lot of great friends and partners in the Jewish community.”