Sampling

Anne Arundel County health authorities warned the public Wednesday to stay out of the water at four beaches or recreational areas because of high bacteria levels. People are urged not to swim, ski or have direct contact with the water at Herald Harbor in Crownsville, at Lake Claire in Cape St. Claire, at Magothy Manor in Arnold and at Glen Isle in Riva. Regular testing of the county's recreational waters detected high bacteria levels in samples taken on Monday. Glen Isle has had a swim warning since June 13, though, based on earlier tests.

It's the opening of the year, so far. Chazz: A Bronx Original opens Friday in Harbor East. If you haven't received your VIP invitations, don't panic. The grand opening isn't until June 23. But the "soft opening" will give Baltimore diners (think of them as preview audiences) a chance to see the first results of the collaboration between the Oscar-nominated actor Chazz Palminteri and the Vitale family, the owner's of Aldo's in Baltimore'sLittleItaly. Pizza mavens will get a first taste of the restaurant's "Bronx-style" pizza, which will be baked in a customized coal-fired oven.

A decades-old program to screen newborns for certain hereditary diseases could be at risk because parents across the country have grown concerned about what happens to the leftover blood, according to a Johns Hopkins researcher who has studied state laws. The states keep the samples, for years or decades, for laudable reasons, like research to improve the tests or studies into genetic disorders, said Dr. Michelle H. Lewis, research scholar at the Berman Institute's Genetics and Public Policy Center.

In five years, the District Sample Sale has become the premiere shopping event in the region. The draw of more than 20 of the region's best boutiques selling end-of-season clothes at prices up to 90 percent off regularly attracts 700 shoppers to the twice-annual event. Supermodel Hilary Rhoda, actress Ali Wentworth and New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, have all braved the sea of thrifty fashionistas for a crack at the discounted duds in downtown D.C. "We tell new attendees every year to brace for the chaos," said Barbara Martin, head of the public relations and events firm BrandLinkDC, who founded the event with four other women in 2006.

Girl Talk has gone legit. Gregg Gillis — the Pittsburgh DJ's real name — is still raiding the catalogs of music's biggest stars as shamelessly as a Somali pirate, but a new album of his can now crash servers within 24 hours of being posted online. He's playing bigger venues than ever before, and selling them out faster than some of the people he samples. And the city of Pittsburgh even designated Dec. 7 "Gregg Gillis Day. " His shows have also changed, and when he performs at Rams Head Live on Monday, fans will see a less intimate and more domesticated — even professional — performance.

On a recent Saturday afternoon, a man addressed a crowd of about 50 at a brewery right outside Baltimore and said, "Let us pray. " He raised his arm, looked over his flock and solemnly intoned: "Our lager which art in barrels, thy will be drunk, at the Heavy Seas Beer Tour. Give us this day our foamy heads, and forgive us our spillages, as we forgive those who spill against us. " The man wasn't a tipsy priest, but Hugh Sisson, founder of Heavy Seas, who delivers the same speech before the two or three tours that pass through his brewery almost every Saturday.

Maryland officials announced Friday the arrests of more than 250 suspects through the use of a DNA database previously backlogged with more than 24,000 samples. Since 2007, Gov. Martin O'Malley said, the state has significantly decreased the backlog of DNA that had not been entered into the state's database. State officials say 267 arrests have been made since those samples were entered into the system. At a news conference with Baltimore Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III and other city and state leaders, O'Malley said 28 of those arrests have led to convictions, including four life sentences.

Valerie Neumann was drugged and raped in 2006, but the DNA her attacker left behind is still untested. Her case is not unusual. Government estimates indicate that hundreds of thousands of rape kits and other evidence linger on laboratory shelves, even though DNA evidence and the FBI's nationwide DNA database of offenders have helped convict thousands of criminals. How widespread is the problem? Earlier this year, Human Rights Watch reported 10,500 untested rape kits in Detroit and another 4,000 in Houston.

Dozens of area residents and business people filed into the Maryland State Fairgrounds in Timonium Friday for the first day of the Solar & Wind Expo to see how much it would cost to install solar panels or wind turbines — and how much that would cut utility bills. The expo brings together companies that offer all kinds of renewable energy for home or office, sponsors said. They, the vendors and state officials on hand said there was a real demand for such products now that government incentives and declining prices are making the switch more affordable.

Maryland's teachers will be giving lessons that require students to dig deeper into their subjects and be more analytical if the state adopts new national standards as expected this spring. A sampling of veteran teachers in the region concludes that the standards, which specify what should be taught from kindergarten to 12th grade, would be an improvement. Never before has the state attempted such a quick and large-scale overhaul of what is taught in every public school classroom.