Page One

You can decide M&M’s new color 

NEWARK, N.J. — Seven years after blue became a part of its chocolate rainbow, the maker of M&M’s wants the world to decide on a new color from choices the Easter bunny might like. 

The maker of the multicolored chocolate candies will add either purple, pink or aqua M&M’s to the mix by August, said Bob Gamgort, vice president and general manager of chocolate for Hackettstown-based Masterfoods USA. 

The company’s market research shows that these three colors are consumers’ top choices to add to the red, green, blue, yellow, brown and orange candies already in the bags, Gamgort said. 

Masterfoods said it was advertising in 78 countries and taking votes on its Web site to decide what the new color will be. The site and a toll-free telephone number will take votes from March 6 to May 31, and the company will announce the winning color June 19. 

Gamgort said the new color will be available in all flavors of M&M’s in August through the end of the year, when the company will decide whether to include it permanently. 

The company introduced the color blue in the same way in 1995. 

Man robs bank to stay out of jail 

LOCK HAVEN, Pa. — A man arrested for robbing a bank said he only committed the crime so he could pay his bail bondsman and stay out of jail, police said. 

Donald S. Guthrie, 27, was arrested over the weekend in an armed robbery of the M&T Bank in Avis, about 70 miles north of Harrisburg. He was already facing criminal charges for an alleged burglary at a coin-operated laundry. 

Guthrie had written a check to his bail bondsman and robbed the bank to cover the check so he wouldn’t go back to jail, police said Guthrie’s friend told them. 

After allegedly robbing the bank of $9,000, Guthrie fled in his car until he hit a tree stump. A passer-by stopped to help and gave Guthrie a ride. 

Officers, who had seen Guthrie’s image on the bank surveillance tape, put two and two together after discovering that the time and location of the accident would have allowed him to rob the bank. 

Guthrie was charged with felony armed robbery, theft and receiving stolen property. He was charged with burglary, theft, and other charges in connection with the earlier burglary. 

A call to Guthrie’s court-appointed attorney was not answered Monday. 

——— 

BOSTON (AP) — A woman rummaging through papers in her attic has found a letter from a father — a founding father. 

Among the dusty documents was the two-page letter, dated Aug. 14, 1811, from Thomas Jefferson to Henry Dearborn, a former cabinet secretary. 

“Apparently it was just one of those classic moments where someone went poking into papers that had not been disturbed for 50 years in an attic and discovered Thomas Jefferson,” said Kenneth Gloss, who bought the letter recently from members of an estate in Belmont who wished to remain anonymous. 

The Belmont house in which the letter was found once belonged to a lawyer distantly related to Dearborn. 

In the letter, Jefferson, then two years out of the White House, criticizes Bostonians’ lack of appetite for the upcoming War of 1812. 

“The powers & preeminences conferred on them are daggers put into the hands of assassins, to be plunged into our own bosoms in the moment the thrush can go home to the heart,” Jefferson wrote. 

Also among the papers were letters from John Quincy Adams. Those were donated to the Massachusetts Historical Society. 

“A sensational little find,” said William Fowler, the society’s director. 

Gloss, owner of Boston’s Brattle Street Book Shop, said he expects to sell the Jefferson letter for more than $45,000. 

——— 

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — It took nearly 60 years but Elbowoods High School has finally been recognized as North Dakota’s 1942 state Class B boys basketball champion. 

Elbowoods fell to Lakota 32-31 in the 1942 state championship game, but officials later discovered Lakota had used an ineligible player. 

The North Dakota High School Activities Association recognized Elbowoods as the champ in 1943 by default, but changed its mind a year later and decided that no team would be listed as champion. 

Officials said the ineligible player left the Lakota tournament games in doubt for that era, and a number of teams might try to claim their share of the crown. 

Since 1944, the phrase “No champion” has been listed next to 1942 in the state basketball record books. 

That changed over the weekend, when the High School Activities Association board voted to give Elbowoods the title. 

The whereabouts of the 1942 state championship trophy is unknown. The association took the trophy from Lakota after ruling the school ineligible. School officials do not know where it went.