Around Maryland

Mayor Brandon Scott’s office called Thursday for an “independent forensic audit” of the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts, and pledged to withhold for now a requested cash infusion of $1.8 million — casting doubt on the future of the besieged event-planning agency. “The picture presented by BOPA at this afternoon’s board meeting is deeply troubling and raises more questions than it answers,” a spokesman for the mayor wrote in a prepared statement.

Baltimore’s lawsuit against opioid distributors is “the biggest and most important case in the history of this city,” offering a chance to hold drug companies accountable for the hundreds of millions of painkillers they shipped into the metro area and the addiction and overdose crisis that followed, a city attorney told jurors Wednesday.

As Towson prepares for Saturday’s game at 2 p.m. at No. 2 and nine-time Football Championship Subdivision champion North Dakota State (2-1), two members of the 2013 team that lost to the Bison in the FCS championship game on Jan. 4, 2014, said they are encouraged by what they have seen in the current squad.

As pleased as he was by Towson’s performances thus far, coach Pete Shinnick is taking a pragmatic view of his team’s development.

“I think we’re close, but we’re still far away,” he said. “You’ve got to find ways to come out ahead in games like that. Winning close games is what propels a team to the next level.”

Towson at No. 2 North Dakota State

Saturday, 2 p.m.

Dozens of immigrant families who have been resettled in Montgomery County, Maryland, face eviction and may soon be homeless, according to advocates that are working to stop that from happening. The families are from several nations including Syria, Ethiopia, Central and South America, but most are from Afghanistan. Resettlement organizations paid their rent for six months, but the money has run out.

When Dorchester County Public Schools Superintendent Jymil Thompson stepped into a third grade classroom at Sandy Hill Elementary during one of the first weeks of the school year, he saw sheer energy.

Nothing brings out Ryan Arist’s sentimental side like a story that meshes lacrosse and family.While visiting Kenya this summer on a two-week expedition designed to introduce lacrosse to schools around the East African country, he connect particularly with one young man. Vincent Onyongi, a member of the Kenyan national team, was both a counselor for daily camps and a benefactor of Arist’s teachings.

Since that cold March morning, when María del Carmen Castellón Luna learned her husband was among those who died in the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse, her grief has been eased by unexpected warmth. Much of what has happened during the past six months might have seemed like a blessing, she said, if it had all happened for a different reason.

Each weekday, Baltimore-area motorists lose more than 20,000 vehicle-hours due to effects of traffic caused by the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse, and each day, the state gets infinitesimally, but incrementally, closer to rebuilding the felled structure. The Maryland Transportation Authority — the bridge’s owner — has applied for a Water Quality Certification and a Tidal Wetlands License, which are among the approvals it needs from the Maryland Department of the Environment.