Media company Sinclair may be best known for its empire of television stations and local news programming across the United States, its founders’ conservative bent and its recent failed foray into regional sports network ownership. Now, officials say the Hunt Valley-based company’s future will become more tied to industries outside broadcast. Instead of buying more television stations, the company is shifting its investment strategy to acquire growing, nonbroadcast businesses, Sinclair President and CEO Chris Ripley said in a recent interview.

Along with billions of dollars to build roads, bridges and transit lines, the federal infrastructure law included funding to boost research into the future of the nation’s transportation system. The University of Maryland was awarded $10 million to launch a new research center, in partnership with teams at four other colleges, that will focus on some of the Biden administration’s top priorities. The Center for Multi-Modal Mobility in Urban, Rural, and Tribal Areas will examine how to build fairer, greener transportation networks, while promoting economic growth.

Allegany County will no longer be eligible for federal transportation planning assistance following a record 9.3% drop in population from 2010 to 2020. News that the county will no longer be required to be part of the federal Metropolitan Planning Organization was disclosed at a recent meeting of the Allegany County Board of Commissioners. The MPO is a part of the Federal Transit Administration. The loss of MPO status makes the county no longer eligible for certain planning requirements and assistance through the MPO.

Meghan Marsh calls fighting for the rights of people with disabilities her purpose. After volunteering at a Head Start program and then completing an internship at a children’s psychiatric hospital, she developed the desire to “fight systemic problems” that she saw through her work at both agencies. Marsh, 53, has spent 30 years as a disability rights advocate. In 2020, she was awarded the Benjamin L. Cardin Public Service Award by the Maryland Carey Law Alumni Board.

Five men in graduation caps and gowns filed into front-row seats to cheers and applause. As University of Baltimore faculty sang the men’s praises, large loops of barbed wire were just visible through windows bookending the podium. It was graduation day. Time to celebrate earning bachelor’s degrees in what their valedictorian called the “worst environment possible”: prison. The students marched across the maximum security prison’s library, where they’d taken more than half of their college credits.

In the race for U.S. Senate, Rep. David Trone (D-6~th) announced seven endorsements this week from state and local officials, as well as endorsements from new endorsements from 35 members of Congress and four former representatives.  The campaign said it brings their total endorsements up to 111 in the race. “I couldn’t be more proud to have the support of 111 of my friends and colleagues in this race.

U.S. Rep. Andy Harris confuses the heck out of me.b Most of the time I hardly think about the conservative Republican from Cambridge. He represents Maryland’s 1st District in Congress, which covers the nine counties of the Eastern Shore, plus Harford County and part of Baltimore County. But now, he’s become someone to watch.

By the end of the year, Baltimore residents who don’t speak English will be able to communicate with 911 services in their native language, without waiting for an interpreter. Convey911, which currently provides text-based translation services for the city’s 911 calls, plans to implement a new, AI-backed service in the coming months to improve communication between residents who speak languages other than English and workers taking 911 calls.

Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport has added several new or returning flights this year with more planned going into 2024 as airlines change offerings to meet the post-pandemic leisure travel boom. BWI added at least five routes so far this year, with at least one announced going into 2024. This year’s new routes range from tropical destinations to returned services across the country, many of which had been halted since 2020.

Baltimore’s spending board is poised to approve a $48 million settlement in a case of three men who spent a combined 108 years in prison for a murder they did not commit — a span their attorneys argued is more years served for a wrongful conviction than any in American history The “Harlem Park Three” — Alfred Chestnut, Andrew Stewart and Ransom Watkins — were freed in 2019 by the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office after each served 36 years in prison for the notorious 1983 murder of a Baltimore junior high school student over a Georgetown University basketball jacket.