Around Maryland

A year ago, Saran Plork left 14 years in the hair industry to follow in her parents’ footsteps. She started selling Cambodian food. “I didn’t know that I was going to fall into this. I steered clear away because I know how hard of a work it was,” Plork said. “But I’ve always took to food. Like I love food. I love serving people. Even though it’s hard work, it’s still — I’m happy.”

The $5.8 million renovated Conowingo truck weigh and inspection station is now open. The Maryland State Highway Administration said the facility was built to improve safety by providing screenings of commercial vehicles and their drivers who travel along U.S. Route 1 in Darlington, Harford County. "The renovations to this critical asset along U.S. 1 will improve overall operational efficiency and accessibility for commercial trucks," SHA Administrator William Pines said in a statement.

Titanic: The Exhibition comes to National Harbor for a seven-week run starting Oct. 21. The exhibition, produced by exhibitions creator and producer Musealia, is coming to the D.C. area after extended runs in London and New York. It features more than 200 objects and personal artifacts from passengers and crew members. It also includes life-size recreations of some of the ship’s interiors.

Parents are calling for more collaboration between Montgomery County Public Schools and local police following an outbreak of violence in downtown Bethesda that injured at least three students after a high school football game Friday night. Families of students at Bethesda-Chevy Chase and Walter Johnson high schools in interviews said they wanted the perpetrators held responsible but overwhelmingly expressed a desire not to see their athletic teams bear the repercussions for the violent acts of “a few bad apples” via canceled matches or other schedule changes.

A key state board approved a revised contract for Maryland’s vehicle emissions stations on Wednesday, allowing the stations to implement a change in the program: New cars, trucks and SUVs will be exempt from testing for the first six years instead of the first three years. The reasoning behind the change, which is expected to take effect this fall, is that 99% of those newer cars pass the Vehicle Emissions Inspection Program tests anyway, at a cost of time and money to the drivers.

The graphics on this page are based on government data. The Maryland Department of Health releases new surveillance data on Tuesdays and no longer publicly compiles testing or vaccination data. To guide prevention decisions, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracks hospital admission levels by county, which it updates on Mondays.

Ocean City, Maryland, beach lifeguards put the labor into Labor Day weekend, making 380 ocean rescues of swimmers over the course of Saturday and Sunday. Storm remnants strengthened rip currents near the city’s 10-mile span of beach, taking swimmers hundreds of yards out to sea. Whereas city beach lifeguards have enough staff to operate 90 lifeguard stands during the summer, they have the manpower to staff only 33 stands once August ends and school and college resume.

At the end of June, as many Marylanders eagerly anticipated buying recreational marijuana legally for the first time, Sgt. Thomas Morehouse was worried about the safety of Baltimore County’s roads. Morehouse, a certified drug recognition expert for the Baltimore County Police Department, was concerned about residents lighting up and then getting behind the wheel after July 1.

Kamiara West positioned her plate to take advantage of the midday light streaming through the windows, angling her phone to capture an artful view of her chicken Caesar salad with a garlic knot on the side. She took a few photos, then turned her phone to show them off. The snaps could easily be those of a food influencer-in-the-making. But the subject wasn’t a trendy new Baltimore restaurant. Instead, West, 18, was photographing one of the meals of the day in the cafeteria at Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School.