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.

Baltimore County Public Schools are redrawing attendance boundary lines once again. It’s a regular occurrence and often involves multiple schools to ease overcrowding. That’s the case with this next batch of changes, but the school system also wants bus routes to be considered when lines are drawn. The decision to potentially change where kids go to school lies with the community.

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.

Frederick County leaders are urging state officials to put money to complete design of improvements to U.S. 15 through the city of Frederick back into the state’s long-term transportation plan, as transportation officials prepare to visit the county in October.Proposed cuts of $1.3 billion to the state’s 6-year Consolidated Transportation Program would eliminate $14.3 million from the plan for design, engineer, and other work on a project to widen U.S. 15 from Interstate 70 to Md. 26, a longstanding transportation priority for the city and county.

The proposed redevelopment of a public surface parking lot in downtown Bethesda into a 12-story multifamily apartment building with up to 59 units for sale is moving forward now that Montgomery County planners have approved the project’s latest plans. The project, led by Broad Branch Partners of Washington, D.C., also includes the construction of a public park that will be part of the downtown Bethesda Eastern Greenway, an element of the 2017 Bethesda Downtown Plan. The building will be located near 4702 West Virginia Ave. to the east of Wisconsin Avenue.

University of Maryland student activists on Tuesday made good on their threat to sue the university after administrators blocked demonstrations on campus planned for the Oct. 7 anniversary of the bloody Hamas attack on Israel, which has led to a wider war in Gaza. The group University of Maryland Students for Justice in Palestine filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, seeking an injunction that would bar the university from canceling the event.