Business

Recently renovated restrooms at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport have received national acclaim, winning the 2023 America’s Best Restroom contest. The contest is held each year by cleaning supplies and services company Cintas. As the winner, BWI receives $2,500 in Cintas bathroom cleaning products and services, plus a Cintas “UltraClean” restroom cleaning service, the company wrote in a release Thursday.

About 1.5 million Americans suffer from rheumatoid arthritis, a chronic disease in which the immune system attacks healthy cells, typically around the joints, causing swelling and deformity. Generally, doctors prescribe the drug methotrexate, which reduces pain and swelling and can also slow joint damage and disease progression over time. But it doesn’t work for everyone. Next, doctors often prescribe drugs such as Humira and Enbrel — from the seemingly ubiquitous TV ads — that block a molecule called tumor necrosis factor alpha, which regulates the body’s inflammatory responses.

More than 75,000 Kaiser Permanente health-care workers are poised to walk off the job within days as labor negotiations remain stalled over pay, outsourcing and staffing problems, in what could be the biggest health-care strike in U.S. history, with direct implications for thousands of patients nationwide.
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Cheers erupted at a picnic for D.C.-area government workers Saturday as Congress moved to pass a continuing resolution to avert a government shutdown. Members of District 14, American Federation of Government Employees, carried out their annual picnic amid shutdown concerns. The local chapter of the union that represents government workers in Maryland, D.C. and Virginia, welcomed its president Everett Kelley to the afternoon festivities at the Fort Washington National Park in Maryland.

Carnival Cruise Line on Thursday announced it has opened itineraries for cruises to the Grand Bahamas from the Helen Delich Bentley Port of Baltimore. Approximately 400 cruises are open for booking to Celebration Key, Carnival’s exclusive cruise port destination, with first calls in July 2025. The Carnival Pride will set sail from Baltimore for seven-day cruises beginning July 20, 2025 along with a 14-day Carnival Journeys Panama Canal cruise on Jan. 11, 2026.

IKEA U.S. Thursday announced plans to open an IKEA Plan & Order point location with pickup in Annapolis in late 2023. IKEA Annapolis will be located in the Annapolis Harbour Center shopping center at 2512 A Solomons Island Road in 3,219 square feet of leased space. This new type of customer meeting point will offer home furnishing inspiration and personalized interior design planning, plus include an IKEA Pick-up point, allowing customers to pick up their purchases made online or purchased at the Plan & order point location.

A Bel Air property known for its Western ski lodge-themed restaurant sold at auction for over $1 million more than its starting price. The Lodge Restaurant and Bar’s property at 2119 Conowingo Road sold on Sept. 27 for $2.7 million, including a buyer’s premium, according to A.J. Billig Auctioneers, which conducted the sale. The auction, which had an opening bid of $1.25 million, started online on Sept. 25 and ended with an onsite auction on Sept. 27.