Postal Service U S

In a move to reduce pollution, the U.S. Postal Service's Long Beach district sent 15 delivery vehicles to a Wilmington junkyard Thursday for the engines to be crushed and recycled. The disposal of the 1981 station wagons, which were used to deliver millions of letters in the Long Beach area, is part of its environmental program to reduce automobile emissions. The Postal Service is testing electric delivery vehicles in Harbor City.

The parents of a young man whose cremated ashes disappeared from a post office truck during shipment to their house have sued a mortuary for failing to deliver the remains. John L. Vahradian, 22, a graduate of Mission Viejo High School, who was crushed to death when a wall collapsed last March 11, was cremated at the Everly Funeral Home in suburban Washington, D.C. His ashes were to be shipped to his family's home.

Two women were arrested Friday on charges of operating a $10-million telemarketing scam and conspiring with a longtime postal inspector to destroy boxes of evidence before law enforcement officials could conduct a search of the operation. Five other people were also named in the federal grand jury indictment unsealed Friday, following criminal charges that were lodged against the postal inspector, Charles M. Yarton, earlier this year.

Hedging his bets on a verbal confirmation, Rep. Brad Sherman said Monday he's absolutely certain the U.S. Postal Service has finally agreed to grant Oak Park its own ZIP Code: 91377. "We don't have an official signature on a document yet," Sherman said at a press conference. "But the decision was conveyed to me orally by telephone a few hours ago."

The U.S. Postal Service, which has experienced an extraordinary number of shootings and other violent episodes in its ranks, has begun a confidential and potentially controversial study to determine the type of employee most likely to commit such acts.

A former Postal Service official has been convicted of stealing $16,818 in postage stamps, part of what officials have described as the nation's biggest theft of its kind. James S. Gall Jr., a former marketing director, was found guilty Friday of two counts of theft of postal property. Prosecutors said he stole stamps, stamp collecting kits and stamped envelopes.

A fired mail carrier stormed through the loading dock of the post office here Thursday and opened fire with a sawed-off rifle, killing three of his former co-workers and wounding seven before turning the weapon on himself. Authorities identified the gunman as Thomas McIlvane, 31, a former employee at the suburban Detroit post office, whose appeal of his firing for time card fraud had been turned down Nov. 8.

Fifteen years after his death, Elvis Presley has another No. 1 hit. Only days after a mass mailing of some 800,000 brochures to people who voted in the "young Elvis/bloated Elvis" popularity contest last April, telephone orders began pouring in for a 29-cent stamp that is well on its way to becoming the best-selling piece of gummed paper in U.S. history. And now, although the Elvis stamp will not be available until Jan.

Purdy Tran, the newly crowned Rose Queen, will unveil the design for a new rose stamp today at her coronation ceremonies. The stamp, to be issued in late 1998, is the latest collaboration between the Tournament of Roses and the U.S. Postal Service, said Terri Bouffiou, a Postal Service spokeswoman. Last year, booklets of yellow rose self-adhesive stamps were issued with a salute to the Rose Parade on the cover.

U.S. postal officials are considering whether to use radiation technology to sanitize mail and mail facilities to defend against anthrax, and experts say a range of effective systems is available. Radiation sanitizing systems are common in hospitals, where they are used to sterilize medical devices and kill airborne bacteria, and in the food and pharmaceutical industries. The systems rely on high-energy light beams that can kill viruses and bacteria.