Maryland

WASHINGTON – Sales tax collections grew at the fastest rate in some of the least likely places in Maryland over the last five years

BALTIMORE – Victoria Smith does not fit the typical 20-something, white, single, female college graduate Peace Corps volunteer prototype

ANNAPOLIS – Women who go to major Maryland hospitals for mastectomies can expect to stay just one night — a stay that in some cases is 75 percent shorter than it was just three years ago

WASHINGTON – Dorchester County may not have a big-name department store, but that has not stopped the county from leading the state in the rate of sales growth over the past five years

CHESTERTOWN – More than 500 people were milling around outside the Dierkers’ tidy white farmhouse and the portable potties still had not arrived

SILVER SPRING – Except for the red fire hydrants and plastic poodles, the cemetery nestled inconspicuously on the corner of Aspen Hill Road and Georgia Avenue looks much like any other

ANNAPOLIS – Over the past 20 years, Maryland has increasingly lost population to states on its eastern, western and southern borders, even as its economy continues to grow

WASHINGTON – Reported oil and chemical spills in Maryland fell by half over the past five years, according to a Capital News Service analysis of Environmental Protection Agency data

CLARYSVILLE – The Clarysville Inn stands at a historic crossroads

ANNAPOLIS – By the time doctors caught Norwood Beauchamp’s lung cancer, the disease had already spread to his lymph nodes