Bronx News Roundup Aug. 18

A talented boxer from the Bronx was shot dead on Saturday, following an argument in a bodega on Clinton Avenue in East Tremont. Ronney Vargas, 20, had a bright future ahead of him, said his manager. [NYT] and [Daily News]

The severely premature baby of a woman who was struck by a bus on Webster Avenue last Thursday, is now stable. The boy - who weighed just 3-pounds 6-ounces - was born by emergency cesarean section. His badly injured mother, a traffic cops, died just hours later. [NY1]

The search continues for a 12-year-old Bronx girl who was swept into the rapids near Niagara Falls last Wednesday. [Buffalo News]

Mothers on the Move, a Hunts Point non-profit, is rallying against the noxious fumes that plague the neighborhood. On Saturday the group organized a "Toxic Bus Tour" along the waterfront to bring attention to the issue. They say the smell is caused by a fertilizer company and the Hunts Point Water Pollution Control Plant. [NY1]

In this week's "The Hunt" column, a technology consultant buys a three-bedroom co-op at 1100 Grand Concourse for $265,000. [NYT]

The Czech Republic's Lukas Dlouhy (world ranking 164) won the GHI Bronx Tennis Classic in Crotona Park on Sunday. Elena Bovina of Russia, a former top 20 player, won the women's singles. [International Herald Tribune]

And now to chess. According to The Times:

"a dispute involving members of the governing chess organization in the United States has erupted into a legal fight that has all the passion of a Bobby Fischer tantrum. There are claims of fake sexually charged Web site postings, stolen e-mail messages, and rival lawsuits, with one side alleging harassment and the other, slander. Even the Secret Service is looking into the situation." [NYT]

What this got to do with the Bronx? Well, the man at the center of the dispute, Samuel H. Sloan, lives on Davidson Avenue in Morris Heights. Sloan is something of an attention seeker with a colorful and, some say, unsavory past (just Google him). He's also the only Bronxite (that I know of) who claims to have lunched with Osama bin Laden.