The facade of the shuttered Target at Mondawmin Mall is scheduled to be razed on Thursday as a $25 million plan to turn the vacant store into a community center for the surrounding West Baltimore neighborhoods hits the midway point. “We are plowing forward,” Tim Regan, CEO of Whiting-Turner Construction Co., said this week. “This is an effort to lift this community up.” Regan and Calvin G. Butler Jr., incoming CEO of Exelon Corp., have spent the past several years putting together the idea and later a blueprint for the new center with the help of community leaders. Regan announced in March that he had personally bought the Target store property for $1 million to make the community center happen.

As Robert Iger takes the reins at Disney from maligned outgoing CEO Bob Chapek, industry analysis has treated his re-ascension to the helm as a necessary antidote for the struggling company. But the fact that Iger is retaking the CEO role demonstrates real limitations and blind spots in his own leadership. Chapek, of course, was Iger’s hand-selected successor. While many of Disney’s current challenges may have come about from Chapek’s stilted rule and ill-devised decisions to focus on profit over culture, it is also clear that he was not set up to succeed.

A district public defender, an administrative law judge and a longtime lawyer with Offit Kurman are the latest to receive judicial appointments from Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan. Hogan announced Monday he appointed Alex M. Allman to the Harford County Circuit Court, Tracey Johns Delp to the Harford County District Court and Allison Sayers to the Howard County District Court. “The appointment of qualified individuals to serve across our state’s justice system is paramount to upholding our responsibilities to the people of Maryland and the rule of law,” Hogan said in a news release.

Maine lobster has become somewhat controversial in recent months, as conservation groups identified the gear fishermen use to trap lobster (specifically, the vertical lines used to retrieve traps) as a threat to the already-endangered North Atlantic right whale. Critics took issue with the propriety of serving lobster to French President Emmanuel Macron — even if butter-poached with American Osetra caviar — at the first state dinner of Joe Biden’s presidency on Dec. 1. And Whole Foods announced last month it would stop carrying Maine lobster in its stores, as it was no longer regarded as sustainable by the nonprofit Marine Stewardship Council or California-based Seafood Watch. Yet getting entangled with lobster gear in the Gulf of Maine or Georges Bank is not the only threat facing right whales.

Reeling from a midterm election in which they lost every statewide race in a landslide and every competitive county contest, Maryland Republicans on Saturday chose a new leader tasked with trying to unite a fractured party and broaden its appeal. Nicole Beus Harris, a political consultant married to Maryland’s lone Republican congressman, Andy Harris, was named chairwoman of the state party, defeating Gordana Schifanelli, the 2022 candidate for lieutenant governor, and Baltimore businessman Tim Fazenbaker. The Maryland Republican Party announced Beus Harris’s victory on social media. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A marketing consultant who has done work for Republican candidates, including her husband, she wrote before the vote that the party needs “a complete rebranding” and a stronger fundraising machine.

One day before she was scheduled to have coronary bypass surgery at University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center after suffering a heart attack at 52, Danielle Giles focused her attention on painting a picture of a sandy beach. Watching an instructional video that played in her hospital room in early August, the parishioner of Church of the Nativity in Timonium carefully applied bright colors to her paper canvas. “It’s not very beautiful or anything,” Giles said with a laugh, “but just the act of touching the brush to paper is the relaxing part. It’s a good way to be distracted when you have heavy stuff going on.” Beginning in Summer 2021, University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center, Towson, has offered patients such as Giles the chance to relax and express themselves creatively through the hospital’s “Heart Cart” outreach.

Maryland health care advocates are lining up a list of priorities for the upcoming General Assembly session, which they hope will bring the state closer to their goal of ensuring that all residents have health insurance. The advocates have a news conference scheduled for Tuesday in Baltimore to spotlight their agenda. They are hoping that whatever passes in the upcoming session will help shrink the state’s uninsured population, which currently stands at about 6%. 

Environmental activists pushing for more development of offshore wind turbines in the Atlantic Ocean released a report exploring potential economic windfalls for electric consumers in Maryland. The new report estimates that if regulators approve 6,000 megawatts of offshore wind projects, three times as much that’s already permitted, electric consumers may see a smaller bill. That calculation is based on what’s known as the standard offer service rate, which is how much electric utility companies charge, but does not include extra fees or other considerations. New Jersey-based energy consulting firm Gable Associates, estimates that by 2031 if Maryland bets big on offshore wind the price for standard offer service could drop from 8 cents per kilowatt to 4 cents per kilowatt.

Maryland’s laws prohibiting many semi-automatic rifles, including some AR- and AK-style weapons, could be in jeopardy. Federal judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit are weighing arguments between a plaintiff representing a group of Maryland gun owners and Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh (D) over whether the state’s current gun laws are unconstitutional in light of a recent Supreme Court ruling. The case now hinges on whether these semi-automatic rifles are “in common use for self-defense today,” as claimed by the plaintiffs. The Fourth Circuit heard around 45 minutes of oral arguments for the case Dominic Bianchi v. Brian Frosh last week.