Around Maryland

For patients with cardiovascular disease — who experience a range of problems affecting their heart and blood vessels — getting around is no easy feat. It can be challenging to trek across a hospital parking lot for a doctor’s appointment, and then to venture to different floors to meet with specialists. Starting Wednesday, cardiovascular patients at Baltimore’s MedStar Union Memorial Hospital will be spared some exertion on the day of their tests, checkups and procedures with the opening of the hospital’s integrated heart services center.

Twenty-one fraternities and 16 sororities on the University of Maryland's College Park campus will not be allowed to hold any social events involving alcohol or recruiting of new members. On Friday, the university took action for what they believe are activities by multiple chapters that have "threatened the safety and well-being of members of the University community."

The vast majority of citations issued by Baltimore’s automated speed cameras aren’t going to residents of the neighborhoods where they are located, a new analysis has found. Excluding two cameras located on Interstate 83, the study by planning, architecture and engineering firm Mead & Hunt looked at the nearly 268,000 citations issued in the city from 164 cameras between January and June of last year.

The Maryland Transit Administration will seek approval next month for as much as $425 million in “relief payments” related to delays in the Purple Line light rail project. Officials announced the extra payments along with a roughly 234-day delay that will push the line’s completion back from spring of 2027 to December of that year. “The MTA team has been working incredibly hard and over the past year,” Holly Arnold, administrator of the Maryland Transit Administration, said in an interview Friday.

A few hours before the Maryland State House went on lockdown Thursday, after someone phoned in a threat to Annapolis police, the Senate Finance Committee held a hearing on legislation to create a Center for Firearm Violence Prevention and Intervention. Senate Bill 475 is part of a package released in January by Gov. Wes Moore (D) and led by the legislature’s presiding officers. The center, to be housed within the Maryland Department of Health, would focus on a data-driven public health approach to prevent gun violence and on collaboration between state and local government agencies, hospitals and community-based violence intervention programs.

Maryland’s courts on Monday will resume covering the cost of private home detention for people charged with crimes in the state who can’t afford the service — reviving a program just weeks after shutting it down when money ran out. A federal coronavirus pandemic grant helped pay the roughly $450 per month cost of GPS monitors. The grant was expected to last through the end of the year, but the courts abruptly ended the program last month.

Allegany Museum has been named one of the country’s “Best Small Town Museums,” according to a USA Today 10Best poll. The pubication frequently conducts polls on “hidden gems” across America in a wide variety of categories. The USA Today recently released the top 10 list for small town museums, with Allegany Museum placing second behind the Museum of the Big Bend in Alpine, Texas.

The Washington County Health Department recently joined several downtown partnerships to expand essential health care services to Hagerstown city residents. Every second Tuesday each month, teams from the health department will offer HIV, Hep C and syphilis education and testing at the Community Care Network of Washington County’s event from 4 to 7 p.m. Walk in for these services at 122 N. Potomac St., Hagerstown.

A Frederick County work group’s final report to the County Council recommends changes to the current ordinance on data centers — including the creation of a floating zone — and establishing an upper limit on data center development. The work group, created in June by Frederick County Executive Jessica Fitzwater, issued its final report on Friday with recommendations and considerations for regulating the data center industry, often referred to as critical digital infrastructure, or CDI.