American Scene

ALASKA

French climber dies in Mount McKinley fall

JUNEAU | A 51-year-old French climber died Sunday after falling more than 1,000 feet down Alaska’s Mount McKinley into a crevasse.

The National Park Service said Pascal Frison died after trying to keep his sled from sliding off a ridge. He and a partner were about 12,000 feet up on the West Buttress route.

Park rangers were considering recovery options.

CALIFORNIA

Salesman offers doomsday bunker

BARSTOW | A salesman with a doomsday plan is taking money for what he promises will one day be a comfortable, nuclear-proof bunker in the Mojave Desert.

Robert Vicino, who runs the Del Mar-based company Vivos, is taking reservations for the bunker in Barstow. He said the 13,000-square-foot underground structure will include an atrium, gym and jail on the inside and sloppy joes and pearl potatoes on the menu.

Researchers say the demand for bunkers is growing because of strong earthquakes, terrorism and predictions that the world will end in 2012 when the ancient Mayan calendar ends.

About $50,000 will get you a spot in Mr. Vicino’s facility. He said half of the 132 spaces planned in the bunker have been reserved, and he’s still taking deposits of $5,000 for adults and $2,500 for children. Room for pets is free.

MASSACHUSETTS

Harvard student accused of fraud

WOBURN | A Delaware man has been charged with faking his way into Harvard and duping the Ivy League school out of $45,000 in financial aid, grants and scholarships.

Prosecutors said Adam Wheeler, 23, of Milton, got admitted to Harvard by falsely claiming he had earned a perfect academic record at Phillips Academy in Andover and during a year of study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, even though he did not go to either school.

Middlesex District Attorney Gerry Leone said Mr. Wheeler’s attempts to be an overachiever were his undoing. Harvard started to probe Mr. Wheeler’s background after he sought the school’s endorsement for Rhodes and Fulbright scholarships.

NEW JERSEY

’MacGyver’-type bomb defused at pizzeria

JERSEY CITY | Authorities defused a primitive bomb inside a vacant pizzeria Monday, foiling what they described as a potentially deadly plot that might have stemmed from a landlord-tenant dispute.

Deputy Police Chief Peter Nalbach called the bomb “very rudimentary.” Described as a gas can rigged with a wire, the device was set to go off if someone opened the door on the ground floor of a three-story building, police said.

“If you watched ’MacGyver’ as a kid, you could probably figure out how to do it,” Chief Nalbach said, referring to the 1980s TV show. “But if it had gone off, there would have been major destruction.”

NEW YORK

Former top cop begins prison term

WHITE PLAINS | Former New York City police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, who was proclaimed a hero after the 2001 World Trade Center attacks, reported to federal prison Monday to begin a four-year sentence for tax fraud, lying to the White House and other felonies.

He went behind bars as inmate No. 84888-054 at the Cumberland Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Md., said Felicia Ponce, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons. She said Kerik, 54, reported at about 1:45 p.m., 15 minutes ahead of his deadline.

Before showing up at the prison, the feisty former commissioner issued a statement saying he had been wronged.

In a statement dated Sunday and posted on his website, Kerik said he could not remain silent “in the face of what I believe has been a grave injustice.” He complained about the judge and prosecutors and said he pleaded guilty because he was “financially helpless” and could have spent a year behind bars just awaiting trial.

NORTH CAROLINA

Waitress fired for Facebook gripe

CHARLOTTE | A waitress is out of a job after griping on her Facebook page about the $5 tip she got from a couple who sat at their table for three hours. The waitress said the customers kept her at work an hour after she was supposed to clock out.

The Charlotte Observer reported Monday that Ashley Johnson, 22, felt slighted after waiting on the couple at Brixx Pizza.

She blasted the couple on Facebook, calling them cheap and mentioning the restaurant by name.

Brixx officials told Miss Johnson a couple of days later that she was being fired because she violated a company policy banning workers from speaking disparagingly about customers and casting the restaurant in a bad light on a social network.

VERMONT

After 20 years for DUI, convict charged again

ST. ALBANS | A 54-year-old Vermont man who spent nearly 20 years in prison for a fatal drunken-driving crash was held without bail Monday on a DUI charge just one month after he was released.

A judge said Monday that Douglas Gardner, of Highgate, is a threat to public safety and can’t be let out of jail.

Vermont State Police say Gardner drove a car down an embankment Saturday in Highgate, near the Canadian border. He was released from prison April 14 after being convicted in a 1990 crash that killed Billy LaBier III.

He faces charges including drunken driving and aggravated operation of a motor vehicle without the owner’s consent.

VIRGINIA

Cockpit fire prompts emergency landing

CHANTILLY | Investigators are looking into whether long-known problems with the heating system in a cockpit window of the Boeing 757 played a role in a fire that forced an airliner to make an emergency landing near Washington, federal safety officials said Monday.

United Airlines Flight 27, en route from New York to Los Angeles with 112 people aboard, made an emergency landing at Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia on Sunday night because of a cockpit fire, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration said.

The fire was extinguished before the plane landed and no injuries were reported, FAA spokeswoman Holly Baker said.

Keith Holloway, a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board, said the board dispatched three investigators to examine the cockpit in an effort to determine the cause of the fire.

“We haven’t narrowed down what the issues are with this incident yet,” he said. However, he added that the board will be investigating whether the cause of the fire was the result of “a recurring problem” involved in previous 757 cockpit fires, or a new issue.

• From wire dispatches and staff reports