WWII soldier’s remains returning
Eagle Pass, Texas More than 60 years after his plane disappeared during World War II on a mission to raid a Japanese base, an Army Air Corps soldier’s remains are coming home.
First Lt. James Walter Carver will be buried with full military honors by his mother’s grave in Eagle Pass, the family said.
Carver’s remains were identified through DNA testing using a blood sample taken from his niece, Kathryn Cunningham, whose mother, June Carver Hansen, 86, is Carver’s only remaining sibling.
A navigator, Carver had just turned 22 when his plane disappeared while en route to Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, after a night raid on a key Japanese base. Seven other men were on board.
Symbolic ceremony protests Roe v. Wade
Boulder, Colo. A Roman Catholic church buried the ashes of hundreds of aborted fetuses Sunday, a day after the 32nd anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal, drawing criticism that the church was exploiting women’s grief to make a political statement.
A crowd of 250 parishioners prayed as the ashes were buried in the Sacred Heart of Mary Church cemetery, while a handful of protesters gathered nearby holding signs that read, “This church is a grave robber.”
A mortuary hired by the abortion clinic to dispose of the fetuses had been giving the ashes to the church for years to be buried at a memorial. Dr. Warren Hern, clinic director, said he had no idea such an arrangement had been made and said his contract required the mortuary to bury the ashes in its own plot.
Three firefighters die amid separate blazes
New York A fierce fire in a Bronx apartment building trapped six firefighters Sunday and forced them to jump from a fourth-floor window, killing two of them and severely injuring four others. Later, a third firefighter was killed at a Brooklyn blaze.
The Bronx fire started in a third-floor apartment, and the six firefighters were searching for people on the fourth floor, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.
The dead were identified as Lt. Curtis Meyran, 46, a 15-year veteran of the fire department, and firefighter John Bellew, 37.
The Brooklyn firefighter, Richard Sclafani, 37, died at a hospital after being injured at a fire in the basement of a building, the mayor said.
Nixon’s loyal secretary Rose Mary Woods dies
Columbus, Ohio Rose Mary Woods, the devoted secretary to President Nixon who said she inadvertently erased part of a crucial Watergate tape, has died. She was 87.
Woods died Saturday night at a nursing home in Alliance, Ohio, said Roger Ruzek, owner of a funeral home in Sebring, on Sunday. He did not know the cause of death.
The 18 1/2 -minute gap in the tape of a June 20, 1972, conversation between Richard Nixon and chief of staff H.R. Haldeman was critical to the question of what Nixon knew about the break-in at Democratic headquarters in the Watergate complex three days earlier — and when he knew it.
Woods, who moved to northeastern Ohio after leaving the disgraced president’s staff in 1976, never talked much about her years with the only American president to resign the office.
But Nixon considered her a member of the family.