February 9, 1996

ACCIDENTS of death provide the raw material from which scientists reconstruct the history of life. Some creatures die by a stream and are almost immediately buried in silt, their bones preserved as mineralized fossils to be discovered someday and recognized as the fabulous dinosaurs of yore or an early human ancestor. The fate of others can be more exquisitely beautiful and often more revealing. They die trapped in the resin of trees and spend an eternity entombed in amber. "Study amber and you come away with a feeling that there is no other substance like this on earth," Dr. David A. Grimaldi was saying as the final touches were being put on a new exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. He is an entomologist and curator of the show, "Amber: Window on the Past," which opens tomorrow and will run through Sept. 2.

They all had slept in public spaces before -- park benches, a cardboard box in Chinatown, the ferry terminal. But for the seven homeless men on the foldout cots in the marble hallways of Staten Island's Borough Hall Wednesday night, this public space was different: there were murals and mahogany, as well as the scent of old grandeur and maybe a bit of political opportunism. "A politician opening up his building for the homeless all of a sudden -- sure I'm suspicious," Tony Barnes said. "Who wouldn't be?" Mr. Barnes, a part-time welder and full-time occupant of the streets, said of Borough President Guy V. Molinari's decision to let a handful of homeless men spend nights in the 90-year-old French Renaissance-style building: "But I'm grateful, too. It's warm here. And it stays warm."

IF you're of the opinion that all is glitter and stardust in sending chiseled male models down a runway dressed in, oh, let's say a double-breasted lame jacket worn over charcoal wool stretch pants, you've got another think coming. This is serious work, putting on a fashion show.

A casino official was indicted yesterday by a Federal grand jury in Newark on charges of laundering $124,000 by converting the money into chips at eight other casinos. An undercover agent for the Internal Revenue Service set up a sting operation that led to the charges against the casino official, 43-year-old Stephen McClintock, who worked at Tropworld. Prosecutors described Mr. McClintock as a casino vice president, while a TropWorld spokesman said he was a "table game sales executive" in the marketing division. SUSAN JO KELLER

In his book-lined study here, Ivan Klima, the Czech author, recalls the days a half-century ago when surviving Jewish families like his finally fled the concentration camps to find their land awash in killing and chaos. He was then 14 years old and, even in the final days of the Second World War, he said, so many Czechs were shot by their Nazi German occupiers "for nothing" that humanity seemed lost. Karl-Heinz Wunderlich, a psychologist from the ethnic German minority in Czechoslovakia, remembers that period, too.