Bronx Zoo

MIAMI -- "It doesn't bother me," New York Yankees manager Buck Showalter said when asked about George Steinbrenner's possible reinstatement as Boss. "Why would that bother me?"Oh, Buck. Buck. Buckbuckbuckbuckbuck."Why would that bother me?"That's what the Romans said at the report of approaching Huns.That's what the buffalo said when William Cody rode out onto the plains for a look-see.That's what the buggy manufacturers said when the first primitive automobile chugged by.That's what the silent screen star with the lisp said when he heard about talkies.

NEW YORK -- Federal health investigators have found genetic evidence in hibernating mosquitoes collected recently in northeastern Queens that suggests the West Nile virus that killed seven people in the New York region last year survived the winter. Mosquitoes extracted from bunkers at the historic Fort Totten -- in three of 69 samples examined -- had low but detectable levels of a genetic material associated with the mosquito-borne virus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported.

Legislation to rezone 1,000 acres in Middle River for an Asian theme park and trade center met stiff opposition from residents who said Baltimore County officials were moving too fast and that proposed zoning changes for the developer were too flexible.More than 200 county residents jammed the County Council chambers last night for a Planning Board hearing on proposed broad zoning for Worldbridge Centre, a $1 billion project planned by New York developer Dean Gitter.County Executive Dennis Rasmussen, who yesterday appointed an advisory committee for Worldbridge, favors the project because it could bring 4,000 jobs during construction, Frank Robey the county administrative officer, told the audience.

NEW YORK - Two calliope hummingbirds, each one-tenth of an ounce and 2,000 miles off course, are attracting hundreds of people to Fort Tryon Park at the northern tip of Manhattan. The tiny birds are also inspiring debates over the virtues of compassionate interference with nature vs. steely-hearted but scientifically correct Darwinism. The birds ought to be sipping nectar in the Mexican sun by now. Ordinarily, they summer in British Columbia and migrate through the Rockies into Mexico.

In the 25 years since he graduated from Western Maryland College, Alan Rabinowitz has traveled the world as a wildlife ecologist -- helping to establish nature refuges, including the world's only jaguar preserve in Central America.He's pursued the elusive clouded leopard in Taiwan, Indochinese tigers in Thailand and Sumatran rhinoceroses in Borneo, and written a how-to manual for creating animal refuges that is now available in seven languages.Rabinowitz is popularly known for his books on the jaguar and other big cats -- "charismatic species," in fund-raising parlance, he said in an interview from his home in Mahopac, N.Y., an hour from his office at the Bronx Zoo.But his passion and his most likely claim to wildlife fame rests upon the knee-high leaf deer -- a new mammal and a relict of the Ice Ages that Rabinowitz found in 1997 in a wild region of Myanmar near the Tibetan border.

Antonio Margheriti, 72, a prolific Italian film director who sometimes used the name Anthony M. Dawson and specialized in science fiction, horror and adventure movies, died of a heart attack Monday in Rome. Mr. Margheriti started his film career in the 1960s, directing science-fiction films such as Space Men and The Battle of the Worlds. He later moved into the horror genre with The Virgin of Nuremberg, which was released in 1965 in the United States with the title Horror Castle and carried the name Dawson as its director.

Romano Mussolini, 78, a jazz musician and painter who was a son of Italy's World War II dictator Benito Mussolini, died Friday after being hospitalized in Rome. In the 1950s and '60s he was in the vanguard of Italian jazz with his group, the Romano Mussolini All Stars, and he played with American greats including Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington and Chet Baker. He gained even greater international fame with his marriage to Anna Maria Scicolone, the sister of actress Sophia Loren. One of the dictator's three sons and two daughters, he was 17 when he last saw his father in April 1945, 11 days before the dictator was killed.

NEW YORK - They're the color of a lime, not much bigger than a dime and have a new home at the Bronx Zoo in a race against time. "They" are the zoo's newest - and certainly one of its tiniest - denizens: Kihansi spray toads. Trying to save the toad - a rare species found only in a 10-acre spot in southern Tanzania - from extinction, the zoo's World of Reptiles has taken in 250 of them. Mossy home ruined Slightly smaller than a quarter when fully grown, the toads were discovered in 1996 during an environmental impact study for a World Bank-funded power generation dam in Tanzania's Kihansi Gorge.

To the lions, tigers and bears, add a house full of snakes and lizards.Oh my!The Baltimore Zoo will reopen the Reptile House on Friday after an extensive renovation, and it has begun work on a major new exhibit planned to open next year -- a chimpanzee habitat.The Reptile House was built in 1938 and housed aquarium exhibits for the first 10 years of its existence. Reptiles replaced fish in 1948. It was a casual era in Druid Hill Park when only the animals -- and not the zoo grounds -- were enclosed by fences.

As recently as a 100 years ago, it has been said, a squirrel could travel from Maine to Georgia without touching the ground, by hopping from one American chestnut tree to another. But a blight that was first discovered at the Bronx Zoo in 1904 has killed more than 4 billion of the trees and left most of the others too sickly to grow past a few feet tall. So when Columbia residents Larry and Gwen Peters spotted an American chestnut tree growing along Harper's Farm Road, it was a big day for the Maryland chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation.