Around Maryland

PJM, the nation’s largest grid operator, is changing how it plans transmission upgrades needed to ensure reliable service for the 65 million people who live in its footprint. The effort comes after plenty of criticism of how the regional transmission organization, responsible for coordinating the flow of electricity in all or parts of 13 states and the District of Columbia, including Maryland, has traditionally conducted planning.

The world’s largest library has launched a new campaign to record and archive millions of COVID-19 pandemic stories. The Library of Congress is calling for many different American voices to share their experiences for posterity. “You can read something in a history book, but to hear someone’s voice tell of their lived experience is immensely powerful,” said Nicole Saylor, director of the library’s American Folklife Center, which is leading the project.

At 8:30 a.m. each day, before the doors of Baltimore’s National Aquarium open to the public, its resident bottlenose dolphins begin the first of their six daily training and feeding sessions, structured much like a school day for human children. Lessons are taught, knowledge is tested, and rewards given by the humans who represent the center of their universe.

Chants of “three, two, one...LEGO!” rang out repeatedly on Sunday in the Urbana High School gym, where 32 teams of students were participating in the Frederick County qualifier for the FIRST LEGO League Challenge. The FIRST LEGO League Challenge is an engineering competition for elementary and middle school students between the ages of 9 and 14. Each team has at least two adult coaches and can have anywhere from two to 10 members.

Baltimore County’s superintendent of schools proposed cutting hundreds of jobs, but the school board won’t know which ones until after it votes on the $2.5 billion budget at the end of February. That was by design. When Superintendent Myriam Rogers proposed her fiscal 2025 budget at the beginning of January, she highlighted $29 million in savings from eliminating around 500 positions, most of them vacant.

There’s insomnia. Frantic group texts. Obsessively reloading websites. It’s summer camp sign-up time, and we parents are stressed out right now. The good news is there are a dizzying number of camps to sign up for in the Baltimore area. Your child can learn to sail, build a robot, perfect their lacrosse skills, act in a play or gallop across fields on horseback. The bad news is most camps are expensive — sending our three kids to a premium camp for two weeks would be like taking out a second mortgage. And the logistics are overwhelming.

The University of Maryland surgeons who conducted the world’s first pig-to-human heart transplants say they will be ready to perform a third operation as soon as a suitable patient is found. The two path-breaking surgeries, known as xenotransplantations, took place in 2022 and 2023 at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore.

As a Palestinian American, Ruba Abukhdeir said she often feels unheard. This has been particularly true, she said, since she learned that the Howard County Council will not allow public testimony Monday night on a resolution calling for a cease-fire in war-torn Gaza. “If they think this is not local, it is local because my community feels neglected, unheard and not included,” Abukhdeir said at a press conference Friday morning in front of the county government building.