Canary

The Handel Choir of Baltimore will perform Johann Sebastian Bach's ''Mass in B Minor'' at 3 p.m. on Sunday, February 27 at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Annunciation on West Preston Street.Come early. At 2 p.m., a professor from the Peabody Conservatory will explain the work's musical composition. Then you can sit quietly in a pew and prepare yourself for the spiritual experience of this sacred music. But preliminary study and meditation are not required. All you have to do is show up, and Bach's mass will sweep you away.

MADRID -- The Spanish government announced yesterday that Ante Gotovina, a top war crimes suspect from Croatia, had been arrested in Spain's Canary Islands, clearing a major obstacle to Croatia's efforts to join the European Union. Spain's Interior Ministry said Gotovina, 50, was arrested Wednesday night at a restaurant in a luxury hotel in Tenerife. The Croatian government had been criticized by European Union officials as failing to cooperate sufficiently in the search for Gotovina, who is a revered figure in parts of Croatia.

CLEVELAND -- Brian Billick got the last laugh, and something he treasures even more -- the last word.The only way Billick would have been happier yesterday is if his post-game news conference had been broadcast live on Cleveland television."

LONDON -- It rises like an exclamation point on the east end of this low-slung city, up into the smog from Isle of Dogs, a thumb of land jutting into the Thames.The men who run the riverboat tours down to Greenwich always call attention to Canary Wharf and to the tower at its center, 1 Canada Square. It is the tallest in Europe, they say.It may also be one of the emptiest. And it could become emptier still, now that the bankers financing Canary Wharf have decided they have given enough.They made their decision Wednesday after considering a request to lend nearly $1 billion more to the project's developer, Olympia & York Developments Ltd., a Toronto-based developer that has sought bankruptcy protection for most of its Canadian assets.

It's almost spring. The first robins are singing. And the town of Manchester has started spreading sewage effluent over its new spray fields.The town started spraying water at the site March 1, but Thursday was the first day the liquid sewage effluent started flowing. Soon, the spray fields will be green with reed canary grass."When I started work here 15 years ago, I never thought I'd be a farmer," said Steven Miller, Manchester's water and waste water superintendent.The alfalfa and reed canary grass will act as living sponges, absorbing nitrogen, phosphorus and other excess nutrients from the soil, preventing them from contaminating ground water and the Prettyboy Reservoir.

The Northeast High School drama department will present its fall production, "The Cat and the Canary," at 7:30 p.m. next Thursday, Friday and Saturday in the school auditorium on Duvall Highway.The plot features all of the elements of a good whodunit: a deceased eccentric's unusual will; greedy relatives; inherited insanity; an escaped maniac; and murder."You can't tell who the corpses are without a program," said director Ron Price. "Our cast has really enjoyed putting this play together.

Scientists have long suspected a link between mass whale strandings and the Navy's use of powerful sonar systems, but the evidence - dying whales washing ashore when sonar exercises occur - has been mostly anecdotal. Now, international researchers have identified a disorder similar to decompression sickness, or the bends, as the cause of at least some whale beachings, and they say military sonar is most likely to blame. The new findings, being reported today in Nature, are based primarily on necropsies of 10 whales that stranded themselves in the Canary Islands during an international naval exercise last year that included a U.S. ship.

Distraught and weeping, Darlene Rodriguez cradled the body of her pet cat as her Finksburg home was ravaged by fire.Ms. Rodriguez, who has lived in the Todd Village trailer park off Route 140 more than five years, returned from work yesterday afternoon and found firefighters battling the flames engulfing her mobile home.She screamed for the cat, according to firefighters.One of the volunteer firefighters was able to get inside and reach the animal, but found it dead.The 14-year-old cat, a canary and the house trailer were lost.

Philip K. Morris, a retired commercial photographer who worked in space exploration in the 1960s, died of congestive heart failure Tuesday at College Manor in Lutherville. The former Rodgers Forge resident was 93. Born in Baltimore and raised in Hamilton, he attended St. Dominic's Parochial School. He dropped out of high school to help support his family during the Depression. He wanted an education and took evening vocational classes offered by city public schools in 1937. He joined his father and brothers at the Glenn L. Martin aircraft plant in Middle River.

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. -- Texaco Inc. told its employees #F yesterday that it will delay indefinitely moving its London offices to Olympia & York Development Ltd.'s troubled Canary Wharf project.Texaco said it decided to postpone the move because of questions surrounding Canary Wharf's future. The project and its developer, Olympia & York Developments Ltd. of Toronto, are operating under bankruptcy protection.The oil company's Texaco Ltd. subsidiary had planned to move all 1,000 employees at its headquarters in the London suburb of Knightsbridge to Canary Wharf Aug. 17, said Sandy Walkington, a Texaco spokesman in New York.