Court-martialed GI among 11 pardoned by president
Washington – Court-martialed a half-century ago over $50, George Anderson Glenn was among 11 people pardoned Tuesday by President Bush.
Glenn was a 19-year-old Army private when he accepted the money to ride herd on a shipment of goods destined for the black market in South Korea.
“It’s sort of like a big stone been taken off my shoulders,” Glenn, now 69, said from his home in Alexandria, Ala., after he received word he had been pardoned.
Bush has issued 82 pardons and sentence commutations during 63 months in office, mainly to allow people who committed relatively minor offenses and served their sentences long ago to clear their names.
Despite the court-martial in 1956, Glenn served 20 years in the Army. He retired in 1977 as a sergeant after spending time in Vietnam, then worked at nearby Fort McClellan in Alabama as a civilian. Glenn said he handled classified material in that job.
He thought his name had been cleared because of his long military and civilian service. But when he went to renew a permit for his gun a few years ago, an FBI records check turned up the court-martial.
Glenn asked for the pardon three years ago after telling his children about his mistake, he said.
ST. LOUIS
Gunman kills three, himself in rampage
A man killed the mother of his child Tuesday, then went to the catering company where he once worked and fatally shot two women and himself, police said.
Another woman shot at Finninger’s Catering Service was in stable condition, police said.
Police said Herbert Chalmers Jr. killed 53-year-old Sylvia Haynes at her apartment Tuesday morning. Hours later, he was overheard bragging about plans to kill his boss, then went to the catering company.
One of the women killed was 79-year-old Cleo Finninger, who ran the company with her husband, Charles, said a niece. The other was their daughter, Christine Politte, 44, who oversaw payroll, authorities said.
BOSTON
Police shoot driver of stolen SUV
Police shot a man who fled a traffic stop in a stolen sport utility vehicle and smashed into several cars downtown, including one containing four officers.
The driver was hit in the stomach and taken to a hospital.
The suspect had fled a traffic stop a few blocks away before driving over a sidewalk and heading the wrong way on a one-way street.
Police cornered the vehicle and several officers fired their guns because of the danger the situation posed to pedestrians and others on the street, police said.
NEW YORK
70 stranded after tramway loses power
Dozens of people in two cable cars were left hanging hundreds of feet above the city’s East River for hours on Tuesday when the system lost power because of a mechanical problem.
Both cars of the Roosevelt Island Tramway, which goes between Manhattan and Roosevelt Island, stalled at about 5:15 p.m., stranding about 70 people, said Herb Berman, president of the agency that operates the system. No injuries were reported.
A slow-moving, diesel-powered rescue basket that holds about 10 people shuttled up to the cars, and officials began loading passengers and taking them to the island. Police said the effort would take several hours.
About a dozen of those stranded were children or babies, Berman said. He did not know what caused the mechanical failure.
VERACRUZ, Mexico
Bus fell into ravine after driver’s mistake
A bus that careened off a highway and into a 650-foot ravine, killing 58 people, crashed because the driver mistakenly steered the vehicle onto a paved road while trying to maneuver into a gravel emergency lane.
Mechanical failure contributed to Monday’s crash, but the driver was at fault, police said. Rather than slowing to a stop in the deep gravel of the emergency lane, the bus was launched over a cliff from the paved road.
Two girls, ages 8 and 15, remained hospitalized.
BISTRET, Romania
10,000 may flee rising floodwaters
The Danube surged to record levels in parts of Romania and Bulgaria on Tuesday, threatening to spill into more villages as troops and civilians struggled to reinforce dikes and authorities warned that 10,000 people might have to evacuate.
