Business

Amazon, which recently resumed openings of new Fresh grocery stores after a yearlong pause, held “grand reopenings” for two of its D.C.-area stores Saturday. The redesigned Amazon Fresh stores, in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and Franconia, Virginia, followed similar redesigns of Fresh stores in Chicago and Southern California.

College Park-based quantum computing company IonQ Friday announced it has signed a $54.5 million contract with the United States Air Force Research Lab (AFRL). With a quarter remaining in the fiscal year, IonQ has announced $72.8 million in bookings year-to-date and reiterated its confidence in meeting or exceeding its bookings guidance of $75 million to $95 million for the year. Governments, businesses and academia are investing in quantum computing to tackle complex, multibillion-dollar problems in areas such as health care, finance and chemistry.

Long-awaited heat protection regulations for workers have been finalized and will go into effect Monday – two days after the official end of a deadly “heat season” that took the lives of dozens of Marylanders this summer. With just days left in the annual Heat-Related Illness Surveillance Report monitoring period – the so-called heat season – the Maryland Health Department had recorded 25 deaths and just under 1,200 emergency room visits due to heat-related illnesses this year.

With a strike deadline looming, the group representing East and Gulf Coast ports is asking a federal agency to make the Longshoremen’s union come to the bargaining table to negotiate a new contract. The U.S. Maritime Alliance says it filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board alleging that the International Longshoremen’s Association is not bargaining in good faith.

Potomac Edison has sent a group of approximately 30 line workers to the Carolinas to assist Duke Energy with anticipated outages related to Tropical Storm Helene. The crew members are from service centers throughout Potomac Edison’s Maryland and West Virginia service territory and left early in the morning on Wednesday, Sept. 25.

A growing youth and amateur sports company is launching its first social pickleball club location complete with a beer garden and a nearby cafe. Coppermine’s latest venture, Copper Union, will celebrate its grand opening at the company’s complex at 5700B Cottonworth Ave. in Mt. Washington on Oct. 4-5. The more adult-centric club, which is open to the public, is accompanied by a beer garden area next to its eight courts and the Copper Cafe & Soundbar on Falls Road.

The Maryland Department of Health has agreed to renew Kaiser Permanente’s contract as a Medicaid provider, averting an outcome that one prominent health care advocate said would have amounted to a blow to public health. Gene Ransom, CEO of the independent Maryland State Medical Society, said Tuesday that a tentative decision made by the state health department last week to remove the health care giant from its list of managed care organizations (MCOs) that provide care through Medicaid would have left about 110,000 Marylanders without health care coverage and seeking new doctors with little time to adjust their status.