Montgomery County Public Schools is providing new guidance over how administrators should respond to hateful acts involving its students, reserving contacting police for only the most serious incidents. The school system — Maryland’s largest with over 160,000 students — will now have a “tiered” response system, with the most egregious or violent acts designated as a “level red,” according to the district’s website.

The populations of Howard County’s biggest places are trending in opposite directions. Ellicott City grew in 2023; Columbia shrank, new population counts released last week show. Ellicott City added about 1,300 people, a growth rate of nearly 2%, but its Hispanic population shrank, bucking a trend seen in many places across Maryland where gains in the Hispanic population offset losses in white and Black populations. (Photo: Kylie Cooper/The Baltimore Banner)

A draft agenda for state, Annapolis and Anne Arundel County elected officials’ trip to Sweden at the end of September includes meetings with Swedish leaders, cycling tours and reviews of electric ferries. The 17-person delegation, composed of representatives from the state departments of commerce and natural resources, Anne Arundel County, the City of Annapolis, Anne Arundel County Economic Development Corporation, Visit Annapolis & Anne Arundel County, and the Resilience Authority will leave Sept. 28.

For decades, overdoses and other substance use-related harms have ravaged our city. Like communities big and small across the country, Baltimore has been hit hard, but the situation has worsened in recent years as the drug supply continues to change. Today, fentanyl and adulterants like xylazine are unavoidable in the street drug supply. Overdose rates and the incidence of serious wounds have soared.

The Maryland State Board of Elections completed the installation Wednesday of 286 ballot drop boxes across the state for the general election. Marylanders can use any drop box to cast their mail-in ballots, which may arrive in homes as early as next week. “What you see now is a huge shift towards mail-in voting,” Maryland’s State Administrator of Elections Jared DeMarinis told Capital News Service.

Mayor Brandon Scott’s office called Thursday for an “independent forensic audit” of the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts, and pledged to withhold for now a requested cash infusion of $1.8 million — casting doubt on the future of the besieged event-planning agency. “The picture presented by BOPA at this afternoon’s board meeting is deeply troubling and raises more questions than it answers,” a spokesman for the mayor wrote in a prepared statement.

As communities across the globe continue to face extreme heat, intense storms and other extreme weather, it is clear that there is no time to waste in making serious and enduring investments to combat the climate crisis. Thanks to President Joe Biden’s Investing in America agenda, we are tackling climate change head-on while sparking job growth and ensuring that every community shares in the economic opportunities of this new era.

More than 100 women gathered in the backroom at Checkerspot brewery Wednesday evening with three goals: to elect Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Angela Alsobrooks; to make Vice President Kamala Harris the first female president; and to enshrine reproductive rights into the state constitution.

Baltimore’s lawsuit against opioid distributors is “the biggest and most important case in the history of this city,” offering a chance to hold drug companies accountable for the hundreds of millions of painkillers they shipped into the metro area and the addiction and overdose crisis that followed, a city attorney told jurors Wednesday.

The federal government accused the operators of the container ship that brought down the Francis Scott Key Bridge of negligence and mismanagement, alleging that the Dali’s crew “jury-rigged their ship.” The new claims provide the most detailed account yet of what led to the bridge’s total collapse early March 26. The Justice Department on Wednesday filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of Maryland seeking to recoup $100 million in costs associated with recovery and cleanup, as well as punitive damages, from the Dali’s owner, Singapore-based Grace Ocean Private, and its manager, Synergy Marine Group.