The COVID-19 pandemic hit small business owners hard, forcing virtually every business to explore new ways to reach their customers. For many, the challenges to keep the lights on led to some surprising results. The term “pivot” emerged as a buzzword to describe how businesses were changing the way they operated. Some of those changes were so impactful, they have become permanent fixtures. Here’s how two Maryland companies incorporated their pivot into daily operations.

For a quarter-century, it appeared the law was settled: Silicon Valley’s internet platforms were private companies, full stop, with absolute control over what content to promote or suppress. As the platforms tightened political control over user speech in recent years, conservatives complained about “Big Tech Censorship,” but legal experts scoffed. Scoffing will no longer suffice. Supposedly settled law can be altered when its political foundation erodes. Liberals now take a dimmer view of free speech than they did at the dawn of the tech era, while conservatives take a dimmer view of corporate power. That has created an opening for a frontal assault on the rules that govern America’s digital public square. Now the Supreme Court is being asked to weigh in.

A Baltimore developer plans to build a new residential neighborhood in South Baltimore’s nascent Port Covington area on the site of a former industrial plant. Mark Sapperstein said his 28 Walker Development closed on the 26-acre property Thursday. A neighborhood to be called Locke Landing at Port Covington will be built on the site of the former Locke Insulators manufacturing plant, according to the parent company of Rockville-based DRB Homes. DRB Homes said it has been tapped by Sapperstein to construct town houses for the waterfront neighborhood, which will include an apartment building, town homes, a community pool and trails. The homebuilder plans to start next summer.

A court filing that would allow Maryland to begin counting mail-in ballots early for this fall’s gubernatorial election lies in the hands of a Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge following a hearing Tuesday. The legal action, filed by the Maryland State Board of Elections, hopes to avoid delays in results similar to those experienced during the July primary as officials counted a deluge of mail-in ballots that have become commonplace since the coronavirus pandemic. Current law, which predates the widespread use of mail-in ballots, only allows such ballots to be opened and tallied starting the Thursday after Election Day. That’s the latest start in the nation to the counting of mail-in ballots.

The spread of new monkeypox cases is slowing in Maryland and the District of Columbia. However, newly released data from the Maryland Department of Health shows that monkeypox cases in Maryland are disproportionately affecting Black communities, mirroring national demographic data as health officials grapple with how to stop cases of the viral disease. Most cases are affecting gay men, bisexual men and men who have sex with other men. Individuals of any gender or sexual orientation can contract monkeypox through close personal contact, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Black and Latino individuals are disproportionately affected nationally.

A day after a Baltimore City judge overturned Adnan Syed’s murder conviction, a new episode of the hit podcast “Serial” that first made his decades-old case famous details the decision to free him. The approximately 17-minute episode, “Adnan is Out,” opens with Syed attempting to make collect call from prison before fading out to news reporters announcing, “a major development” and “a stunning reversal” in his murder case. Baltimore Circuit Judge Melissa Phinn vacated Syed’s conviction for the 1999 killing of ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee and ordered his release Monday after prosecutors found there were alternative suspects and unreliable evidence used at his trial.

Entrepreneurs take great pride in building a business from scratch, developing financial security, and planning for the future. For Ian Mulira, however, success is about something more. “It allows me to sleep at night, which was tough for the first eight years or so,” he said with a smile. An electrical engineer by trade, Mulira was working for the U.S. Department of Defense as a civilian contractor during the early 2000s. His specialty was building automation systems (known in the trade as BAS), which connect and automate building functions from heating and air conditioning to fire and security systems. “I loved what I was doing,” he recalled in a recent interview in the Greenbelt office of his company, Conquest Solutions.

A workgroup created by Maryland’s judicial branch to undertake studies and conduct hearings on how best to choose judges kicked off its effort with an initial meeting Monday evening. Formally titled the Legislative Committee Workgroup to Study Judicial Selection, the group — consisting of representatives of interested organizations as well as attorneys and current and retired judges — will issue a report “on the current state of judicial elections” and make recommendations “for change or to retain the status quo,” according to a statement on its website. The group has an end date of March 1, 2023 — although it appears to be aiming to wrap up earlier, with a tentative last meeting set for Jan. 9.