Around Maryland

Conditionally certified teachers in Maryland have received an extension from the state’s Board of Education, giving them two more years to become fully licensed teachers. Maryland districts employed more than 3,500 conditionally certified teachers during the most recent school year, double the number employed five years ago, according to a statement from Mohammed Choudhury, Maryland’s state superintendent of schools.

Through the DC Metroplex BWI Community Roundtable, which acts as a liaison between communities and the FAA, residents have pushed for changes that would address noise pollution. A bill the group supported that would have created a commission to study the airport’s health impacts failed in the General Assembly this spring. BWI Roundtable member and former chair Mary Reese was pleased about the newly announced mitigation funds but said the majority of Maryland residents who have raised concerns about BWI flight noise live farther from the airport itself.

Crafts, entertainment, ice cream, fireworks and farm animals will be on hand at the 125th Carroll County 4-H and FFA Fair, which opens this weekend. The weeklong fair, which has been held since 1897, runs through Aug. 5 with activities at the Carroll County Agriculture Center, 706 Agricultural Center Drive in Westminster. Admission is free, but parking is $5 after 4 p.m. Parking will be free all day on Sunday. According to a history published in the 1997 Carroll County Fair Guide, the current version of the fair traces its roots to a picnic held Aug. 14, 1897, at the Otterdale Schoolhouse, in Taneytown. The fair moved to Westminster in 1954, to what is now known as the Carroll County Agriculture Center.

While Maryland sports bettors grow increasingly impatient waiting for mobile betting to be approved, the amount of potential tax revenue the state is losing grows as well. Despite Governor Larry Hogan’s fiery push to have online sports betting ready for the kick-off of the 2022 NFL season, no launch date has been set. How much money has Maryland left on the table as a result of the mobile betting delay? Let’s look at some numbers.

It’s been a lean season for crabbers and crab lovers alike, with the Chesapeake Bay’s popular crustaceans at their lowest level in more than 30 years. Commercial crabbers in Maryland and Virginia aren’t catching their limits, and the harvest in the first few months of the season was so meager that some gave up trying.

A group of public health academics is urging Baltimore leaders to speak up and act quickly to curb the rise of monkeypox, warning that the virus already is disproportionately harming the city’s LGBTQ community. Anyone can get monkeypox, an infectious disease that causes painful lesions, fever, chills, swollen lymph nodes and more. It is painful and can require multiple weeks of quarantine and isolation, but is rarely fatal. Monkeypox spreads through direct or close contact with an infected person and so far in the U.S. has been affecting predominantly men who have sex with other men.