Worcester County officials are scrambling for options — and money — after learning that state transportation officials are pausing a top transportation priority — the widening of Route 90 and the replacement of its two bridges. Worcester is just one of the counties given tough news in the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s release of an updated draft of the Consolidated Transportation Plan, the state’s six-year transportation plan.

Sometime in August, dump trucks delivered the final load of Patapsco River mud, dredged from the sea bed during the cleanup of the Key Bridge collapse, to the Kinsley landfill in Deptford Township, New Jersey, about 15 miles outside Philadelphia. The mud, which contained random debris that came up with it and had to be picked clean, was the last of the materials contractors disposed of after the remnants of the bridge were dismantled and removed.

Novavax Inc.’s updated Covid-19 vaccine received emergency-use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration Friday, sending its shares up about 9% in late-day trading. The updated shot is authorized for people 12 and older and will target the JN.1 strain of the virus. The green light from the FDA will allow Gaithersburg-based Novavax (NASDAQ: NVAX), whose vaccine is protein-based, to compete with Pfizer and Moderna’s mRNA shots heading into the fall.

As artificial intelligence rushes to the mainstream, local governments and engineers have already found some efficiencies. Still, due to questions about what the software ultimately does with the information that’s inputted, Maryland officials say they are approaching the emerging technology with extreme caution. “As a government, we don’t beta test,” said Chris Martin, acting director of information and technology for Baltimore County.

Dozens of noisy protesters greeted the business leaders, elected officials, union members and other interested parties who were gathered at Frederick Community College Thursday for a conference on data centers in Maryland. The demonstrators were there to express outrage over a proposed power transmission project that would run from a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania to Northern Virginia, the biggest hub for data centers in the world.

Progress and potential. That is how the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) described current Chesapeake Bay cleanup efforts in its latest two-year milestone report. In its report, the EPA commended states’ achievements toward our 2025 pollution reduction goals. They included reducing pollution from wastewater treatment facilities and agriculture, as well as forest buffer initiatives.

Perhaps to little surprise, Vice President Kamala Harris holds a commanding lead over former President Donald Trump in Maryland, according to the first part of the September 2024 Gonzales Poll released Tuesday. Statewide, if the presidential election were held today, 56% of respondents said they would vote for the Harris\Gov. Tim Walz ticket while 35% would vote for the Trump\Sen. J.D. Vance ticket and 9% remain undecided.

Donald Trump is trying to crush Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’ persona as a force of change and to destroy her personal credibility as a potential president as their still-fresh competition careens into the final nine weeks before Election Day. In recent days, the ex-president has unveiled a broad assault using the insult-driven politics with which he won power in 2016, even as his advisers have been pleading with him to focus his attention on top voter concerns including high prices and immigration.

After legal fights, counter-campaigns and bureaucratic wrangling all year long, as things stand today, abortion questions in 10 states are heading to ballots in November. After abortion rights were upended federally in June 2022, Kansas voters got a chance to weigh in on a ballot measure that was something of a test balloon just a couple of months later. Defying expectations, nearly 60% of voters rejected an anti-abortion constitutional amendment.

The University of Maryland has revoked the ability of student organizations to hold on-campus demonstrations on the anniversary of the Hamas attacks in Israel after at least one group reserved a location for a vigil commemorating Palestinian victims of the war. University President Darryll Pines wrote in a letter Sunday that only university-sponsored events would be permitted on Oct. 7 “out of an abundance of caution.”