Fedex

One of the nation's largest distributors of butane lighters and tobacco products was charged by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Philadelphia yesterday with shipping thousands of unmarked packages of flammable items to avoid the $20 handling charges each of them required. Garden State Tobacco Co., of Neptune, N.J., which does business as H.J. Bailey Co., and chief operating officer Allen S. Roth were charged in a criminal information with one count of unlawful transportation of hazardous materials.

It started with a snitch. A snitch who told State Trooper Jose Torres, an undercover investigator on the hunt for drug dealers in Chester County, about Glenford Thompson. And so Torres arranged to buy a pound of pot from Thompson at a West Chester apartment for $900 in July 1999. Before long, Torres said, he realized he was onto a major drug ring, based in Chester County and West Philadelphia. The drug ring, he said, was annually distributing $12 million worth of drugs in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware, and shipping the cash to a ringleader in California via Federal Express and United Parcel Service.

He was gravely ill, limping and dressed in prison blue. But last week, in Philadelphia Courtroom 608, death row inmate Fred Thomas finally heard the magic words: A witness told of having seen the 1993 murder of a FedEx driver, and said the man who fired the fatal shot was not Thomas. Fifty-six and suffering from liver failure, Thomas is hoping that the testimony will help persuade a judge to grant him a new trial. And he is hoping that he will be exonerated before he dies. But Thomas and his public defenders may have to settle for getting a hearing.

Death-row inmate Frederick A. Thomas finally got his day in court yesterday to try to prove that he was not involved in the 1993 slaying of a FedEx courier, and the first witness backed him up, testifying that the killer was a local drug dealer named "Little Man. " Thomas, 56, who is dying of liver disease, was convicted and sentenced to death in 1995 for the December 1993 shooting death of the courier, William "Skip" Moyer Jr. of Delaware County....

A Philadelphia judge yesterday set a late February hearing for a terminally ill death-row inmate who insists he is innocent, and his lawyer said prisoner Frederick A. Thomas promised he would "try to live long enough" to make his day in court. "He's determined. He wants to be in the courtroom," said defense lawyer Kica Matos, who said that Thomas' hearing is scheduled to begin Feb. 25 before Common Pleas Judge W. Willis Berry Jr. Thomas, 56, who suffers from liver failure, was convicted in 1995 of the December 1993 shooting death of Federal Express courier William Moyer in North Philadelphia.

City officials today will formally celebrate a $1.5 million development project that replaced a polluted tract, with rats said to be the size of dogs, in Philadelphia's Grays Ferry neighborhood with a FedEx distribution center. "We've taken land that was a contaminated eyesore, and brought in a Fortune 500 company that will employ 150 people from the neighborhood," said City Commerce Director James J. Cuorato. "This is a huge win for the city," said Kathleen Murray, who represented City Council President Anna C. Verna on the project.

The economy is slowing, but the U.S. Post Office and the small-parcel carriers are still gearing up for heavy-as-usual piles of holiday mail. United Parcel Service is hiring 2,400 temporary workers in the Philadelphia region, about the same as last year. About 80 percent of the positions are already filled. "They will be working as loaders, unloaders, counter workers, administrative assistants and drivers' helpers," said Wes Southall, human resource manager at the huge UPS Willow Grove terminal, one of the carrier's seven sorting facilities in the Philadelphia area.

Another rash of anthrax threat letters arrived at abortion clinics yesterday, but this time a new delivery system was used: Federal Express. FedEx packets containing a white powder and threatening notes were sent to clinics in the Philadelphia area, as well as in New York, Ohio, Florida, Michigan and Washington, D.C. At least some of the packages were sent from a drop box at the FedEx World Service Center near Philadelphia International Airport....

Applied Materials Inc. will lay off about 2,000 people, or 10 percent of its workforce, as the world's biggest semiconductor-equipment-maker copes with the worst sales slump in the industry's history. The company's move was part of a wave of job cuts and lower earnings announced yesterday, caused both by the yearlong economic slowdown and by last week's terrorist attacks against the United States. FedEx Corp., the world's largest cargo airline, said its first-quarter profit fell 36 percent to $109 million, in part, because the flat economy weakened demand in the manufacturing and high-tech sectors for its premium services.

With flights grounded in the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the three major package-delivery services said they were trying to get shipments to their destinations as quickly as possible by ground. Belinda Kelley, spokeswoman for the Philadelphia District of the U.S. Postal Service, said yesterday: "We are using rail and ground transportation to reroute mail that was going on commercial airlines. "Here in Philadelphia, we're continuing to maintain normal processing and delivery operations and also our collections," she said.