Welcome to the Bronx News Roundup. These are the Bronx stories we’re following today.

Lots of coverage this week on the death of Pattycake, a Bronx Zoo institution for decades. The NY Times takes a look at her life from her highly-publicized birth to her years as a matriarch among Bronx Zoo gorillas.

Amazingly, 35-year-old Alyssa Wilcynski survived a brutal attack in her Mott Haven apartment in mid-March after being stabbed 40 times, including one blow that pierced her heart, the NY Post reports.

NYC & Company, the city’s tourism marketing team, is launching a campaign to promote a handful of neighborhoods and destinations in the South Bronx, amNY reports. Specifically, the campaign mentions Bronx General Post Office art gallery (now with its future in doubt with the pending sale of the post office, which opposed by Bronx elected officials), the Pregones Theater and the Clock Bar.

DNAinfo breaks down the 20 new high schools opening in the Bronx next fall.

So many angles to the bribery scandal that has ensnared several New York politicians, most notably State Senator Malcolm Smith and City Councilman Dan Halloran, both Queens reps. But it wouldn’t be a political money scandal without some Bronx flavor, so here it is: Bronx GOP Party Chairman Joseph “Jay” Savino allegedly asked for $25,000 to help Smith get on the GOP ballot for mayor. Ah, it seems like just yesterday Pedro Espada was going to jail for embezzlement. Here’s the Times story on the scandal. Here’s Daily News coverage.

Another Bronx angle: Smith’s arrest deals a big blow to the coalition government in the State Senate. Bronx State Senator Jeff Klein’s Independent Democratic Conference, which shares power with Republicans, recruited Smith, a Democrat, to join the conference and he did, become the group’s only minority member. Now, Klein may lose an ally and, as the Times points out, he also loses some credibility. Klein said he formed the breakaway conference because he was tired and frustrated with the Espada-like scandals that had roiled the Senate in the past.

Brooklyn/Queens Congressman Hakeem Jeffries put it bluntly to the Times: “Raw political ambition gave birth to the IDC, and raw political ambition will likely be its demise.”