Vanished

The developer of Seven Oaks, the tony subdivision of townhouses and detached homes in Odenton, recently went to court to evict a handful of residents from the J&J Mobile Home Park, which has problems with unsafe water and sits uncomfortably close to the new development.There appears little reason to doubt that developer Warren E. Halle will emerge victorious in the end. He gave ample notice to residents of the three-acre mobile home park that they would have to find other housing after unhealthy levels of radium were discovered in their water.

A little more than a month ago, the Washington Capitals called a players-only meeting in search of a wake-up call. Off to the fourth-worst start in franchise history at 2-8-1, they sat in last place in the NHL, five points out of a playoff spot. They've gone 8-5-0 in the 13 games since the meeting, at times showing enough noticeable improvement to suggest that things were finally starting to come together under first-year coach Adam Oates. But after losing to the Islanders and Rangers this weekend, the Capitals have little to show for their modest progress.

For some years now, young American directors have been remaking Hitchcock badly, and wearing their failures as a badge of honor. Phil Joanou's "Final Analysis" is only the most recent travesty.Of course, they fail because they don't get it. What made Alfred Hitchcock great wasn't the fancy camera work or the tricky plots, but the subtle way he found of expressing insidious emotional states, of icily building dislocating ideas atop each other until he had constructed a grand edifice of suspense and perversity that was at once mesmerizing and unsettling.

NEW YORK -- In one of the biggest computer errors in banking history, Chemical Bank mistakenly deducted about $15 million from more than 100,000 customers' accounts on Tuesday night, causing panic and consternation among its customers around the New York area.The problem stemmed from a single line in an updated computer program installed by Chemical on Tuesday that caused the bank to process every withdrawal and transfer at its automated teller machines twice.Thus, a person who took $100 from a cash machine had $200 deducted, although the receipt indicated a withdrawal of only $100.

Don't look now, but Maryland's state insect is fluttering away. The Baltimore Checkerspot butterfly, named for the state's founding Calvert family, has dwindled to just a handful of places, mostly in Western Maryland. Experts worry that the butterfly, once fairly common, may disappear entirely from the state. Pockets of dedicated butterfly lovers, though, are trying to slow or even reverse the decline by breeding the species in captivity. One such nursery is in a tent in back of an old maintenance shed at Black Hill Regional Park in Montgomery County.

OCEAN CITY -- A 24-year-old Virginia man was presumed dead after disappearing in the surf near 15th Street, where he was swimming with friends yesterday, Ocean City police reported.The man, whose name was not given, was caught in a current with two friends about 2 p.m. His friends escaped, but he sank, police said.

The Texas-based management team that announced plans last month to reopen Baltimore's Fishmarket has apparently shut down its Baltimore office and left town, raising doubts about whether it will move ahead with its project.The office of Baltimore Management Co., the group formed by Texans Billy Bob Barnett and Spencer Taylor to oversee the reopening of the Fishmarket for developer Frank McCourt, has been locked for more than a week, and its telephone has been disconnected.A telephone inside the Fishmarket at Market Place and Water Street also has been disconnected, according to a recorded message.

Buildings from bygone eras in beer-brewing and theater-going are among Baltimore's most endangered landmarks.The American Brewery and the Hippodrome Theatre are two of 12 threatened properties on a new list compiled by Baltimore Heritage, a preservation advocacy group.The five-story brew house at 1701 N. Gay St. is one of the area's most exuberant Victorian buildings. Wooden towers, ornate brickwork and a fanciful assortment of windows -- some of them stained glass -- combine to create a one-of-a-kind building that can be seen for blocks around East Baltimore.

You can find her works hanging in the county executive's office, in the gift shop at Ladew Topiary Gardens and in many Harford homes.And if you wandered through the Federal Reserve building in Baltimore, you may have seen her paintings there, too.She is featured in Bendann Art Galleries in Baltimore and Towson and may be seen in Artfully Done on Bel Air's Main Street.The popular watercolor artist is Rita Cooper, a Harford County native, who grew up in the Edgewood area and attended schools there.