Around Maryland

Nate Fleming had pulled up at a gas station in Northeast Washington on his way home when the red minivan appeared out of the corner of his eye. The van sped up and screeched to a halt next to his dark 2014 BMW sedan. Two people — masked and dressed in all black — flung open the doors of the van and jumped out. One pointed a gun at Fleming, who threw his keys and ran, while the other got into the BMW. Both cars then sped away.

In Maryland, it’s easy to forget that the Chesapeake Bay is more than just the wide, glittering body of water that cleaves the state roughly in half. The bay watershed is in fact a complicated network of land and waterways spread over six states and the District of Columbia, through a variety of topography, taking in different cultures, economies and political dynamics.

A large group of Muslim and Christian protesters gathered outside Montgomery County Public School headquarters in Rockville on Tuesday morning carrying banners stating “religious freedom” as they chanted, “Protect our children!” On the other side of the street, a smaller group of counter-protesters waved rainbow flags and danced to Lady Gaga songs playing over a boombox as they chanted back, “Protect all children!”

The Howard County Public School System (HCPSS) awarded a five-year contract to transportation company Zum to provide 250 carbon-neutral buses for the district’s fleet. Zum will provide HCPSS with 250 new school buses and the most advanced technology solution geared toward student safety. Through the Zum app, HCPSS parents will be able to view the complete profile of their child’s driver, along with real-time tracking and notifications about their school bus location and their child’s pickup or dropoff status.

Frederick County Sheriff Chuck Jenkins appeared at a local gun firing range on multiple occasions and had opportunities to see demonstrations of the machine guns at the center of a federal indictment, according to a motion from his co-defendant’s attorney. Jenkins’ attorneys, however, said last week in their own motion that there was no evidence he ever saw the machine guns.

Over two weekends under a reinstated youth curfew, only two kids have come into Baltimore’s city-managed youth centers so far, a result that officials from Mayor Brandon Scott’s administration touted Monday night as evidence of the controversial policy’s effectiveness. Neither of the two kids who have come into the city-managed centers since enforcement began on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend have been transported in the city’s shuttle service, Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement Director Shantay Jackson told council members nearing the end of an almost three-hour budget hearing Monday night.

The Maryland State Department of Education released an interim report last month to assess what hundreds of thousands of state students did months after graduating high school. The 154-page report from the American Institute of Research headquartered in Arlington, Va., shows that about 54% of Maryland’s students who graduated between 2017 to 2021 attended a two-year or four-year college or university the same year after completing four years of high school.

Naomi Cohen recalled taking part in a women’s health care march 20 years ago in Washington, D.C. Looking back at that time, she never would have dreamed that in 2023 there would be a need to fight for women’s reproductive rights, including access to legal and safe abortion. Then again, today she’s also astounded at the growing need to advocate for civil rights — a plight she undertook as a high school student.