Spring into summer with the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony (BARS)!  Eric Jansen's guests on this live edition of Out in the Bay are BARS principal clarinetist Susan Barnes; and San Francisco Opera violinist and Oakland East Bay Symphony co-concertmaster Dawn Harms (pictured), who is featured guest soloist for BARS' March 24 concert. They'll play selections from upcoming BARS concerts and tell us about this four-year-old LGBT community orchestra that's been called "a breath of fresh air" in the Bay Area classical music scene.

Rick Santorum waded into a controversial issue today when he gave an interview to El Vocero, one of the biggest newspapers in Puerto Rico.

The issue? The island's primary language.

The paper asked the former Pennsylvania senator if he would back Puerto Rican statehood if Spanish along with English remained its official languages.

If you missed the premiere of Bravo’s “Shahs of Sunset” on Monday, you’re not alone. I did, as did another colleague who was planning to watch. Perhaps ethnic reality TV has become less of a must-see. Not that most of these shows have been must-sees in the first place, though some have tried harder than others.

Governor Jerry Brown and the California Federation of Teachers are expected to announce a compromise on competing state tax initiatives by the end of today. The new joint plan would raise the state sales tax by a quarter percent, down from a half percent in the previous proposal. It's a bit late in the signature-gathering season to put forth a new proposal, but sources at the Teachers Federation expressed optimism about the effort.

Mississippi and Alabama were big wins for Rick Santorum in the fight for the GOP presidential nomination.

While never considered strong for Mitt Romney, those states further revealed the vulnerabilities of his campaign, specifically, problems identifying with many elements of the Republican base.

The next big contest is Tuesday in Illinois.

It's a state rich in delegates (69) and in something else that should be good news for Romney: more moderate Republicans. But he still needs to connect with even those voters.

In a deal with prosecutors, the longtime girlfriend of mob boss James "Whitey" Bulger pleaded guilty to helping him evade capture from police.

Bulger, if you remember, was captured in Santa Monica, Calif., last June. He is the most notorious mob boss in Boston and was wanted for his alleged role in 19 murders.

Women should get screened for cervical cancer far less frequently than doctors have long recommended, according to new guidelines released Wednesday.

More than 12,000 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer every year in the United States, and more than 4,000 die from the disease.

For years, doctors have recommended that women start getting Pap smears every year or two to try to catch signs of cancer early, when it's easiest to prevent and treat.

Disease outbreaks with imported foods are on the rise, and fish and spices are the foods most likely to cause problems.

It's not that imported foods are any nastier than home-grown, according to a presentation today from researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's that we're eating a lot more of them.

Time for a few unconventional thoughts:

• Newt Gingrich is still in good enough shape to win the Republican presidential nomination at a brokered convention in Tampa.
• By staying in the race, Gingrich actually helps, not hurts, his rival Rick Santorum.
• Gingrich's situation resembles Abraham Lincoln's in 1860.