National Zoo

State police on Friday charged the driver who investigators said pulled out in front of a tour bus carrying a group of Kent County kindergarten students and parents to the National Zoo in Washington. Carl Trenz Jr., 49, of the 100 block of Big Holly Court in Stevensville faces reckless driving, negligent driving and related charges after the Queen Anne's County crash that sent 17 people to area hospitals on Thursday. Trenz was driving a 2010 Volkswagen Toureg and pulled out from White Marsh Road onto southbound Route 213, directly into the path of the southbound tour bus, state police said.

WASHINGTON -- On the afternoon after, the Panda House at the National Zoo was stone-cold silent and empty. The last of the zoo's two celebrity pandas, Hsing-Hsing, had been put out of his pain Sunday by lethal injection, by zoo keepers who knew they could not keep the creature one more day.The skin and skeleton of the 28-year-old panda will be on display early next year in the rotunda of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. The panda's tissue and organs will remain at the zoo for study.

And on the 100th day, he was named. All you panda groupies who log on to the National Zoo's Web site to watch the panda cub stretch and snooze now have a name to go with that ridiculously cute face: Tai Shan, as the panda was ceremoniously named yesterday before Chinese and U.S. officials in Washington. Tai Shan (Tie-Shun) is Chinese for "peaceful mountain." He could have been named China Washington or Washington China - two other options in the zoo's naming contest - or even "dragon mountain."

WASHINGTON - The Truman Show is now playing at the National Zoo, and it's a hit. But this time the star is not Jim Carrey, portraying a man living in a manufactured city populated by actors pretending to be his family, his every move captured on camera and beamed around the world. No, the star now is a baby panda that doesn't even have a name but has already won a place on the computer desktops, and in the hearts, of thousands. "Oh my God, he's so cute," said Beth Lacey Gill, a publications specialist at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, who logs onto the panda's Web site daily.

Kids cut school, adults skipped out of work, and even seasoned keepers at the National Zoo in Washington couldn't help but get swept up in the panda-monium this week as Tian Tian and Mei Xiang, those cuddly black-and-white bears, were introduced to an adoring public. The pandas, whose sprawling, $1.8 million renovated home nearly rivals the cost of the Washington abode recently bought by Bill and Hillary Clinton, are expected to more than pay for their keep: Their playful presence is expected to increase the number of visitors to the zoo by 20 percent annually.

Just as the inspection of the National Zoo in Niamey, Niger, was getting started, a baboon escaped.After a 20-minute chase, the animal lay unconscious, hit by a dart from a blowgun fired by Dr. Michael Cranfield, chief veterinarian at the Baltimore Zoo. Officials at the zoo in Niger's capital city were impressed with the blowgun's effectiveness. Their zoo has an animal collection that includes lions, baboons, chimpanzees and hyenas, but no blowguns. When an animal escaped, workers just chased it until it collapsed from exhaustion, or called police to come out and shoot it."

A deadly virus has stricken Samson, the only elephant born at the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore in its 137-year history, but zoologists are hopeful that he will recover because the strain is thought to be less serious in his species. Samson also has survived longer than others with the virus. Caretakers first noticed the soon-to-be-5-year-old male looking lethargic Feb. 26, and feared it was a sign of what is known as elephant endotheliotropic herpesvirus. They began treating him for the disease, which can kill within days, and tests confirmed the virus.

National Zoo's Asia Trail If you've yet to see the panda cub Tai Shan (and his parents Mei Xiang and Tian Tian) at the National Zoo in Washington, this week would be an ideal time to make the visit. Tuesday marks the grand opening of the zoo's new Fujifilm Giant Panda Habitat and Asia Trail. At the Fujifilm Giant Panda Habitat, visitors will be able to view the pandas playing, climbing and relaxing in an area that mimics the terrain of their native China. The new habitat adds more than 12,000 square feet to the panda exhibit and features pools and streams, rocks, shrubs and trees, a water-cooled grotto and a fog grove.

YOU'VE SEEN it all before. Somebody with a gun lets loose in a public place and leaves several children wounded. You've heard it all before. A mass shooting spurs debate over our love affair with the gun. But when will we have seen our fill? When will we have heard enough to do something? In the shootings Monday outside the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., many of the symptoms of our society's sickness reared their heads in a single, vicious outbreak. You've got the underage victims and the likelihood that they were gunned down by someone close to their own ages.