Mails

The e-mailed threat was stark. "How would you like it if your sister went missing?" The next message was an insult. "Whore," the writer said, and taunted, "You called the cops but they can't do anything. " Todd Hart, 26, had reason to believe his boast was accurate. The victim, an ex-girlfriend he threatened for weeks last June, had called police about earlier disturbing e-mails. They immediately asked for copies. Problem was, the e-mails had all disappeared. Twenty minutes after the woman opened each electronic message, it somehow automatically deleted itself from her computer's in-box.

The Secret Service is investigating a hacker's apparent theft of a trove of personal e-mails and photos belonging to the Bush family after they were posted late Thursday by the Smoking Gun website. A report by the Smoking Gun said the e-mails covered the period from 2009 to 2012, and that a total of six accounts appeared to have been compromised. Among those hacked were Dorothy Bush Koch, daughter of President George H.W. Bush and sister of President George W. Bush; as well as sportscaster Jim Nantz, a Bush family friend.

Question: I'm married with a child and another on the way. I've seen a couple of e-mails on my wife's phone related to dating websites, like eHarmony.com. After a little investigation, it appears that there is no way to sign up to receive those e-mails without posting some type of profile. I am suspicious that she is or was out looking for alternatives. I just don't know what to do. Should I approach her or, because I don't know for sure, just let it go? And I don't know what I'd do if she were out there trolling, as it were.

Former Gov. Jon Corzine owes New Jersey taxpayers $127,000 - the amount of state funds he spent on a legal fight to hide his e-mails with former lover/labor leader Carla Katz. Corzine said he had no relationship with Katz when his administration negotiated a new state contract with her union, the 37,000-member Communications Workers of America. But recently published e-mails confirm the public's suspicions that an embarrassing conflict of interest was playing out behind the scenes.

Leonard P. Luchko, the former aide to indicted State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo who pleaded guilty yesterday to charges of trying to thwart the probe of his old boss, implicated himself in a series of e-mails that the FBI later recovered. Prosecutors had charged Luchko and another indicted aide, Mark C. Eister, with a concerted campaign to clean computers used by Fumo, his aides and associates. They say even as the pair demanded that Fumo staffers delete e-mails from their computers, they failed to cleanse their own devices - an oversight the FBI exploited to obtain copies of hundreds of e-mails.

Prosecutors continued yesterday to mount their obstruction-of-justice case against former State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo, even as his lawyer said he was buoyed to get hold of a "treasure trove" of e-mail that he hoped would ultimately benefit Fumo. Defense attorney Dennis J. Cogan told U.S. District Judge Ronald L. Buckwalter that the defense had been combing through thousands of pages of newly discovered e-mails from computer technician Leonard P. Luchko. In them, Luchko, who worked in the once-powerful Democrat's South Philadelphia office, regrets agreeing to testify against Fumo and contradicts his own guilty plea by insisting he had done nothing wrong.

SOME OF THE bad words that readers used on me after Monday's Michael Vick column: Hypocrite. Elitist. Hater. Neo-Con. Socialist. Judgmental. And the all-purpose tool of the all-around fool: Racist . Oh! Also God , but not in a good way. Here are some excerpts from the hate mail, with answers. (Since I can't verify the sender's identity, first names only.)   "I was wondering if Rick Pitino has your respect," asks e-mailer Rochkar. "He paid for the MURDER of an unborn CHILD.

Call it the many moods of Vince Fumo. In an e-mail war with federal prosecutors, the defense lawyers for former State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo released their own selection Friday of Fumo's electronic messages from prison. The defense team said the messages show him to be a different and far more attractive man, or least a more sympathetic one, than the vengeful figure sketched out by prosecutors in their Fumo e-mail dump. In the new round of e-mails, Fumo worries about his weight and his mortality.

Joe Paterno's family called Monday for the public release of e-mails written by top Pennsylvania State University administrators in response to a 2001 allegation of child sex abuse lodged against Jerry Sandusky. The documents - portions of which have been leaked to several media outlets over the past month - allegedly show that the late head football coach and a handful of others debated and ultimately decided against notifying outside authorities after a graduate assistant walked in on Sandusky and a 10-year-old in a sexual position that year.

HARRISBURG - A Corbett cabinet member's undoing was an e-mail exchange with his wife about last month's falcon-banding event at the Capitol complex. Gov. Corbett on Thursday announced in a tersely worded news release that he had asked for Richard Allan's resignation as secretary of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. He did not identify a reason. The Inquirer reported that Allan, who is white, was fired for having used what could be perceived as racially charged language in an e-mail to describe a black employee in another department.

HARRISBURG - Gov. Corbett fired a member of his cabinet Thursday over an e-mail containing racially charged language referring to a state employee, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the matter. Corbett announced Thursday morning that he had asked Richard J. Allan, 60, secretary of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, to resign effective immediately. In the statement, the governor did not give a reason. Spokesman Kevin Harley also declined to discuss the firing, saying only that it was a "personnel decision.

WASHINGTON - Officers with a finger on the trigger of the Air Force's most powerful nuclear missiles are complaining of a wide array of morale-sapping pressures, according to internal e-mails obtained by the Associated Press. The complaints shed fresh light on dissatisfactions roiling this critical arm of the Air Force, an undercurrent that has captured the attention of the service's leaders. Key themes among the complaints include working under "poor leadership" and being stuck in "dead-end careers" in nuclear weapons, one e-mail said.

The U.S. Military Academy men's rugby team has been temporarily disbanded after cadets forwarded e-mails that were derogatory to women, academy spokesman Lt. Col. Webster Wright said Monday. The 60 cadets on the club-level team violated the academy's conduct codes through an e-mail chain that included content that was immature, unprofessional, disrespectful and unacceptable, he said. "It was locker-room trash," said Wright, who would not detail the contents of the e-mails. The cadets were required to complete a supervised rehabilitation program.

HARRISBURG - A Western Pennsylvania legislator who has tangled with natural gas drillers apologized Thursday for using false names or anonymity when he posted online comments criticizing the industry. State Rep. Jesse White (D., Washington) issued a statement after a Pittsburgh television station reported that industry backers had linked him to an online comment posted in a constituent's name. KDKA reported Wednesday that an industry-funded group had traced anti-drilling posts that appeared under the constituent's name to White's state e-mail address.

WASHINGTON - The FBI has intercepted a letter addressed to President Obama that may contain the poisonous substance ricin. A spokesman in the FBI's Washington Field Office said that a "suspicious letter" sent to Obama was intercepted at a White House mail facility on Thursday morning. The FBI is investigating the letter and does not yet know whether the letter tested positive or negative for ricin. The Secret Service confirms that the letter appears similar to a ricin-laced letter addressed to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

NEW YORK - Two threatening letters containing traces of the deadly poison ricin were sent to Mayor Michael Bloomberg in New York and his gun-control group in Washington, police said Wednesday. The anonymous letters were opened in New York on Friday at the city's mail facility in Manhattan and in Washington on Sunday at an office used by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the nonprofit started by Bloomberg, police said. Chief New York Police spokesman Paul Browne said that preliminary testing indicted the presence of ricin in both letters but that more testing would be done.

SPOKANE, Wash. - A 37-year-old janitor who has been charged with threatening to kill a federal judge in a case that involves letters containing the deadly poison ricin is a registered sex offender who lived in a rundown apartment building near downtown Spokane. Matthew Ryan Buquet remained jailed Thursday after appearing in federal court a day earlier and pleading not guilty to a charge of mailing a threatening communication. "He sticks to himself," said Scott Ward, who lives across the hall from Buquet's apartment.

WASHINGTON - The White House released 100 pages of e-mails Wednesday that reveal differences between intelligence analysts and State Department officials over how to initially describe the September attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya. The internal debate did not include political interference from the White House, according to the e-mails, which were also provided to congressional intelligence committees several months ago. Since the assault that killed four Americans, Republicans have accused President Obama and his senior advisers of mischaracterizing the attack during a close reelection campaign.

A POSTAGE stamp for Wilt? According to a recent report, the late Wilt Chamberlain, an NBA star who starred at Overbrook High, is on the short list of those being considered for next year's U.S. Stamp Program. In the upcoming May 27 issue of Linn's Stamp News, Bill McAllister reports that Wilt, the Beatles, Elizabeth Taylor, Steve Jobs, Julia Child, Sarah Vaughn and James Brown are among those on the list. According to Donald Hunt, of the Philadelphia Tribune, the Chamberlain stamp is tentatively scheduled to be issued in February, which coincides with Black History Month.