Louis Sahagun

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. -- Their Yosemite Valley tour was nearing its end, and the church ladies and gents from South Los Angeles had heard enough. Almost.

"He's been telling us stories he thinks we want to hear for two hours," said Ann Hale, 70, heaving a sigh of frustration from the back of the tram.

In fact, guide William Fontana had been regaling his listeners -- most of them white -- with stories about John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt, about fur trappers and rock climbers.

"We're still waiting for at least a few words about Yosemite's African-American Buffalo Soldiers," Hale grumbled to a fellow passenger.

After filing off the tram, some women from Grace United Methodist Church surrounded Fontana on the sidewalk outside the Yosemite Lodge.

"Questions, ladies?" he asked.

SPARKS, Nev. --The fatal shooting of a California Hells Angels leader during a casino melee with a rival gang Friday night has prompted the mayor of Sparks, Nev., to declare a state of emergency and cancel an annual motorcycle event, authorities said.

RUIDOSO, N.M. -- More than 100 hibernating bats hang from the vaulted ceiling of a chilly gallery in central New Mexico's Fort Stanton Cave, seemingly unaware of the lights from helmet lanterns sweeping over their gargoyle-like faces.

The mood is heavy with anxiety as biologists Marikay Ramsey and Debbie Buecher search for signs of white-nose syndrome, a novel, infectious and lethal cold-loving fungus that digests the skin and wings of hibernating bats and smudges their muzzles with a powdery white growth.

"These bats look fine, which is a relief," U.S. Bureau of Land Management endangered animal specialist Ramsey said as she prepared to log the humidity and temperature of the cave in a hand-held computer. "But we still worry that the disease could hit New Mexico this winter or the next. If that happens, we may have to close every cave and abandoned mine in the state."

Biologists across the nation are facing a similarly grim scenario. Since it was discovered in New York four years ago, the fungus has swept across 17 states as far west as Oklahoma, killing a million bats. A majority of the dead were little brown bats, which have lost an estimated 20 percent of their population in the northeastern United States over the last four years. The fungus seems to prefer the 25 species of hibernating bats, but each of the 45 species of bats in the United States and Canada may be susceptible to white-nose syndrome.