Lightbridge Academy, an early childhood education company, opened its 69th location with a grand opening for its newest facility in Timonium. The new center, located at 35-B East Padonia Road, was awarded to franchise owners and local residents Pratik Chandarana and Avani Patel. It will offer educational child care for ages six weeks through kindergarten.

Rowan Digital Infrastructure, a Texas-based company, is looking to build a 750,000-square-foot data center on a 151-acre site as part of the planned Quantum Loophole campus in Adamstown. On Tuesday, the Rowan Frederick project team held an open house forum at Camp Shoresh to share their plans with area residents, local business leaders and members of the county’s data centers work group.

Prince George’s County Council members Mel Franklin (D-At Large), Sydney Harrison (D-District 9) and Calvin Hawkins (D-At Large) are supporting legislation banning home appraisal bias. The Real Estate Appraisal Ban of 2023 would prohibit real estate appraisers from considering race, ethnicity, color, religion, sex, gender identity, age, disability, familial status or national origin in their real estate appraisal analysis.

A national cookie chain known for its ever-changing weekly lineup will open its first Harford County location this week. Crumbl Cookies, a Utah-based company, will debut during a grand opening on Oct. 27 at 551 Baltimore Pike in Bel Air. The store will mark the chain’s 11th location in Maryland, with another planned for Lutherville-Timonium in the next two months. It currently has locations in Baltimore, Anne Arundel, Charles, Frederick, St. Mary’s and Montgomery counties.

U.S. Rep. Andy Harris, the only Republican in Maryland’s congressional delegation, backed Louisiana’s Mike Johnson for House speaker on Wednesday as the GOP-led chamber elected the Louisianian to the leadership post. Harris told The Baltimore Sun that Johnson projected the sort of values the country needs, and would approach the threat of a federal government shutdown in the right way.

The Jeremiah Program (JP) disrupts the cycle of poverty two generations at a time. In Baltimore, the program celebrates its one-year anniversary this week having impacted 43 single moms and 94 children, supporting both generations in their schooling with coaching, food, housing, and all the necessities needed to thrive.

 

Baltimore has continued to allow millions of dollars to go unpaid for utility permits issued by the city despite the release of a 2021 report calling attention to the problem, the city’s inspector general found this week. The latest report shows the city failed to properly invoice two companies, both unidentified, allowing large unpaid sums to accumulate. One company, identified as Company 2 in the report, had a balance of $3.9 million as of April.

Maryland, the District of Columbia and 40 other states are suing Meta, alleging that its platforms cause harm to children by building addictive features, Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown announced Tuesday. “Our country is facing a youth mental health crisis fueled by young people’s extensive and compulsive use of, and reliance on, social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram,” Brown said at a press conference outside Hampstead Hill Academy, a Baltimore public school. “This has placed an entire generation of young people in jeopardy.”

Nearly one year after a critical report recommended sweeping procedural reforms to protect Baltimore’s first responders — the investigation spurred by the tragic deaths of three firefighters in a Stricker Street blaze in 2022 — the city is once again mourning. EMT/firefighter Rodney Pitts III, 31, was killed last week in a fire that spread across four rowhouses, only two of which were occupied, in Woodmere. Three other firefighters were treated and released from medical care. A fifth remains hospitalized.

Could Maryland become the center of predictive health care in America? That’s what state officials and business leaders hope with the designation Monday of the Baltimore Tech Hub. The hub is one of 31 designated across the country by the U.S. Department of Commerce. The designations are meant to spur investment in globally competitive emerging technologies and are a recognition of a region’s potential for growth.