Holiday Weekend

Anne Arundel County police will target drunken drivers with increased patrols starting Black Friday and running through the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Police said that officers will be assigned specifically to drunk-driving enforcement, police said. They will focus on roads around the county where drunk-driving crashes and arrests have taken place in the past, though police did not indicate any specific roads or intersections. andrea.siegel@baltsun.com Text NEWS to 70701 to get Baltimore Sun local news text alerts

A powerful stench was in the air Saturday at the Inner Harbor as 12-year-olds Alison Chase and Marissa Westerbeke hunched over the water's edge, studying tiny crabs floating to the surface. The girls were in town from Connecticut for a relaxing annual vacation with Alison's family, but the pervasive smell of dead fish and rotting plant matter — caused by a massive algae bloom — had them totally grossed out. "It's, like, sad and disgusting," said Marissa. "It's gross.

Travelers faced crowded roads and airports Sunday at the tail end of the Thanksgiving holiday, but few encountered significant delays, transportation officials said. Holiday-related congestion was heaviest on Interstate 95, particularly close to the Delaware border, and traffic was compounded by two NFL games in Washington and Baltimore, as well as a cruise from the Port of Baltimore. No major incidents had been reported by late afternoon. At Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, there were sporadic delays from cities including Dallas, Cleveland and Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Flights to Philadelphia and Atlanta also were reported as delayed on the airport board.

The Howard County Police Department is launching a new, volunteer mounted patrol unit, just in time for Memorial Day weekend, the department announced Friday. The unit, made up of 12 volunteers and their horses, will patrol parks, pathways and other locations in the Savage area, acting as a "high visibility deterrent to crime," according to a news release from the department. It is the county's first mounted patrol. The volunteers, who will ride in pairs, will watch for and report violations and concerns, and assist in investigative and administrative work.

Doug "Buxy" Buxbaum is wrapping up another summer running Buxy's Salty Dog Saloon in Ocean City, and it's shaping up to be one of the best in a long time. The economy has perked up. And the weather has cooperated. But not this week. With Hurricane Earl expected to glance off the coastal resort town just ahead of the Labor Day holiday, hotels, restaurants and other tourism-dependent businesses are bracing for uncertainty — and cancelled trips — at the traditional end of summer.

HOLLYWOOD -- Warner Bros. Pictures hopes Superman Returns will be able to leap an extremely long weekend in a single bound. The studio has decided to move up the release of the film to June 28, getting a two-day jump on what for many people will be a four-day weekend, with July 4 falling on a Tuesday. It had been set to open June 30. The decision was made with an eye toward the past successes of competitors' films, when Sony's 2004 Spider-Man 2 and Paramount's 2005 War of the Worlds opened early ahead of long July 4 weekends and did well in the weekend box office.

A Baltimore County man missing for nine hours yesterday wa found dead by relatives less than a mile from the hospital where he worked, the victim of Maryland's fourth fatal traffic accident during the holiday weekend.Daniel Stephen Martin, 54, of the first block of Coatsbridge Court in Parkville apparently lost control of his motorcycle, hit a curb and was thrown 24 feet into the woods on Charles Street, north of the Greater Baltimore Medical Center in Towson.County police said Mr. Martin twice hit a curb for an unknown reason about 5 a.m. near Greenwood Road.

AT THE END of a busy week, we can take comfort in this phrase: long holiday weekend.Those fortunate among us will be getting away for the weekend. The rest will be catching up on long-overdue chores, cruising the stores for holiday bargains or charring burgers on the backyard grill.For those vacationing in Pasadena over Labor Day, Downs Park presents music by the Chesapeake Bay.The Annapolis Symphony Orchestra will perform works of Strauss, Gershwin, Rossini and Bizet at 5: 30 p.m. tomorrow.

Beginning today, state police in Westminster and across the state will be working overtime to patrol highways, looking for speeders and drunken drivers during the Labor Day holiday weekend, said 1st Sgt. Dean Richardson, a barracks spokesman."

Howard County police will be out in force this holiday weekend as part of a grant from the State Highway Administration to reduce drunken driving and accidents.About 30 extra officers will be using radar, laser and VASCAR speed calculators to enforce speed limits along heavily traveled roads over the three-day Labor Day weekend, said Sgt. Steven Keller, a Howard County police spokesman. Officers also will target seat belt use and set up sobriety checkpoints."By making people slow down, wear their seat belts and getting drunk drivers off the roads, we can reduce the number of accidents," Keller said.

Starting Friday evening, the Northwest Expressway — Interstate 795 — will be undergoing resurfacing between the Baltimore Beltway and Owings Mills Boulevard in Northwest Baltimore County, officials said. The road work is expected to continue until next fall, according to a statement Monday from the State Highway Administration. There will be single lane closures in both directions of the expressway between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. on weekdays and throughout the weekend. Double lane closures will largely take place during evening and overnight hours.

The numbers are preliminary overnights, but based on the 6.0 rating for last night's prime-time game between the Ravens and 49ers, the NFL Network is declaring it the largest Thursday night audience in the channel's history. A tweet from network spokesman Dan Masonson this morning also said the audience for last night's 16 to 6 Ravens vistory was up 43 percent from that of last Thanksgiving. This is the network's sixth season of prime-time Thursday night games. Since it is a holiday weekend, it could be a while before we get more definitive ratings.

Anne Arundel County police will target drunken drivers with increased patrols starting Black Friday and running through the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Police said that officers will be assigned specifically to drunk-driving enforcement, police said. They will focus on roads around the county where drunk-driving crashes and arrests have taken place in the past, though police did not indicate any specific roads or intersections. andrea.siegel@baltsun.com Text NEWS to 70701 to get Baltimore Sun local news text alerts

IndyCar officials confirmed Friday that the Baltimore Grand Prix will return Labor Day weekend, but they will hold off on releasing the series' complete schedule until after Sunday's season finale in Las Vegas. "Baltimore was a big win this season for a business like ours," said Terry Angstadt, president of the IndyCar Series commercial division. "The entire city was behind it, from the mayor's office to the fans. The grandstands were full with happy, engaged people. When that happens, we're winners.

The Mount Royal Tavern closed temporarily Thursday night after it failed an inspection by the Baltimore City Health Department.  The failed inspection was a result of a lack of hot water running in the bathrooms and a fruit fly infestation, according to Brian Schleter, spokesman for the health department. Schleter confirmed the bar's owner addressed both of the issues Friday morning, which included installing a new hot water tank. He says the inspection came after the department received a complaint.

Thanks to Hurricane Irene and the town's first evacuation since 1985, the number of visitors to Ocean City for summer 2011 may fall just short of last year's total. According to estimates from the Ocean City Department of Tourism, the town hosted 4,086,639 visitors from Memorial Day weekend though Labor Day. Last year during the same period, there were 4,108,725 visitors. The difference is less than 1 percent, which would give the city a fairly flat summer, despite such high profile events at The Dew Tour.

Astronomers will tell you that summer arrives with the solstice on June 21, at 6:09 p.m.But Maryland highway officials, innkeepers and the thousands of families with a pent-up urge to soak up sun at the beach or head for the mountains know otherwise: Summer begins today, with the start of the Memorial Day holiday weekend.And at Ocean City, where the economy follows the weather, tourism officials will be starting the season with a good omen -- a near-ideal forecast of mostly sunny days and fair nights.

The sunny holiday weekend brought Marylanders outdoors but carried a note of tragedy as six people died in traffic accidents and three others apparently drowned.One of the traffic deaths and one apparent drowning were reported in Ocean City -- both firsts of the year -- as the resort was packed with a near-record crowd celebrating Memorial Day weekend's official opening of the summer season.Ocean City police said Allen Christopher Mrozinski, 22, of the 9000 block of Satyr Hill Road near Carney in Baltimore County, died after performing water rescue exercises during a tryout for the Beach Patrol about 2:40 p.m.Sgt.

Those planning ahead to the summer of 2012 can likely figure on Indy race cars returning to the streets of Baltimore for Labor Day weekend. Will Power had barely crossed the finish line Sunday to win the IZOD IndyCar Series race at the inaugural Baltimore Grand Prix, but event organizers, IndyCar executives and Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake were already looking ahead to next year. All were in agreement about how well a holiday weekend worked. The crowds, estimated by organizers at well over 100,000 for the three-day event, seemed to back that up. So did the effusive comments of the drivers, who said the combination of the challenging course and enthusiastic fans made it as attractive a site as there is on the series.

No justice was served for little Caylee Anthony ("Casey Anthony not guilty," July 6). First of all the judge should have realized he's had a jury in hold for 33 days. It was a holiday weekend, the court system could've arranged for them to go somewhere for a family outing with some kind of security for them so facts would not be talked about. Had the court system done that, maybe this jury, tired of being kept in seclusion all that time, might have come back, looked over all the facts more clearly and come back with a different conclusion.