News Digest
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Jim Mehsung/DN
“Pistol-packing grar inas’ fight off robbers
MOSES LAKE, Wash. — Two “pistol-packing grandmas” were
honored for foiling the plans of some would-be robbers.
Four intruders forced their way into the home of 75-year-old Dor
othy Cunningham and 61-year-old Marty Killinger late last week and
demanded their car keys.
While Killinger argued and struggled with one of the intruders in
the living room, Cunningham got her Luger from her bedroom and
ordered the young men to head for the hills.
“I said some strong words to them that I don’t usually use,” she
said. “I told them to get out or I’d shoot and kill them.”
The men ran outside but continued taunting the two women —
until Cunningham fired four shots over their heads.
“I was raised in the Tetons and whenver I wasn’t herding sheep or
cattle or working in the fields, I’d take a .22 rifle and target shoot,”
explained Cunningham. ‘I’m not afraid of guns and I know how to use
them.” _
A 20-year-old and three teen-agers were arrested on suspicion of
burglary and attempted robbery.
And Cunningham and Killinger got some official attention of their
own..
“Henceforth* Dorothy Cunningham and Marty Killinger will be
t , a&IhfrPismlrEnelptg.Grandmas,” Grant County, Sheriff SiH r, r
Wiester said Friday during a ceremony at the couhty courthouse.
Arkansas to revive memory
of 1957 desegregation war
LITTLE ROCK, Ark, (AP) — An
old gas station with shattered windows
and peeling yellow paint began a
transformation Monday into a visitor’s
center for one of the primary battle
fields in the fight against segregation.
The dilapidated building across
from Little Rock Central High School
will be restored to the way it looked
in 1957, the year that nine black stu
dents were allowed into the all-white
high school.
More than $700,000 will be spent
to put vintage gas pumps where rusted
pipes now stand, replace broken cor
rugated tiles on the rooftop and turn a
grimy interior into a plush center
ready to show a slice of history.
“Having this on President’s Day is
significant because it was a president
who ultimately let those students in,”
Gov. Mike Huckabee said at the
groundbreaking. “Little Rock needs to
make what was a very unpleasant
memory into a reminder that some
thing like that will never happen
again.”
Gov. Orval Faubus claimed he was
acting in the public interest when he
deployed National Guard troops to
keep black students from entering the
school in September 1957. President
Eisenhower nationalized the Guard
and sent in U.S. Army soldiers to clear
a path.
Admission to the visitor’s center,
which opens in September, will be
free. It will include rooms for show
ing film of the first black students en
tering the school and photographs
documenting scuffles between stu
dents, parents and soldiers.
|8gon/|ggrt|j^^^^
Virginia retires controversial state song
RICHMOND, Va. — Not a single discordant note was sounded
Monday as Virginia's House of Delegates voted to retire a state song
that critics say glorifies slavery with words like “darkey” and “massa.”
The House voted 100-0 to make “Carry Me Back to Old Virginia”
the state song emeritus. There was no debate.
“This puts the song where it belongs — in history — and it won’t
be troubling us any further,” said Delegate William P. Robinson Jr.
The first repeal attempt was made in 1970 by then-state Sen. L.
Douglas Wider, a grandson of slaves who became the nation’s first
elected black governor.
Similar legislation became an annual fixture* rejected every year by
lawmakers who said the song was an important part of Virginia’s heri
tage!
This year, they were persuaded by arguments that the song is so
offensive, it’s no longer taught to schoolchildren and hasn’t been per
formed at an official state function in two decades.
North Korea contemplates
accepting Hwang's defection
Despite tension,
South Korea will give
humanitarian aid to
neighbor.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -—
North Korea indicated Monday that
it might accept the defection of Hwang
Jang Yop, the high-ranking North
Korean official who has been holed up
in South Korea’s Beijing consulate.
“Our stand is simple and clear. If
he was kidnapped... we will take de
cisive countermeasures,” a North Ko
rean Foreign Ministry spokesman
said. “If he sought asylum, it means
that he is a renegade and he is dis
missed.”
Previously, North Korea had re
fused to accept the defection, accus
ing South Korea of kidnapping Hwang
and threatening retaliation. Hwang, a
key communist theoretician and
former tutor of North Korean leader
Kim Jong II, is the highest-ranking
North Korean to seek asylum in the
South.
Hie North Korean spokesman,
who spake on customary condition of
anonymity, told Pyongyang’s official
Korean Central News agency that the
North had asked Beijing to investigate
Hwang’s “disappearance.”
Monday’s comment was the first
sign of a possible solution to the tense
standoff created by last Wednesday’s
defection. North Korea had previously
rejected the possibility that Hwang had
defected.
South Korea also said Monday that
it will provide North Korea with hu
manitarian aid and nuclear reactors,
despite tension caused by Hwang’s
defection and a suspected North Ko
rean attack on another key North Ko
rean defector.
Lee Han-young, 36, a nephew of a
former wife of the North Korean
leader, was shot and critically
wounded Saturday.
South Korean police continued
their investigation Monday but said
they had no definite evidence proving
North Korean involvement in the
shooting.
Seoul officials believe that
Pyongyang ordered the attack as re
venge for the defection of Hwang, 73,
a member of its highest decision-mak
ing body,-the Central Committee of the
ruling Workers Party.
Ban Ki-moon, President Kim
Young-sam’s national security adviser,
said his country will accept a U.N.
appeal for fresh humanitarian aid for
North Korea, as well as sending a team
of nuclear technicians to survey a site
in North Korea where two reactors
will be built under a 1994 U.S.-North
Korean accord.
The tense standoff over Hwang’s
defection had threatened the accord.
It was aimed at freezing North Korea’s
nuclear program, suspected of being
used to build atonic bombs.
China kept silent Monday on the
fate of Hwang as the Koreas fought a
tense, diplomatic tug-of-war.
Heavily armed police, backed by
an armored car and water cannon,
guarded the South Korean consulate
where Hwang has been hiding.
Challenged several times by North
Koreans keeping a vigil outside the
consulate, police blocked surrounding
streets with their cars and tire-shred
ding spikes.
China faces a dilemma in decid
ing whether to allow Hwang to leave
for South Korea. It does not want to
infuriate North Korea, a longtime ally
on whose side it fought in the 1950
53 Korean War. But China also has
diplomatic relations with South Ko
rea and wants to encourage growing
commercial ties.
In Bonn, Germany, U.S. Secretary
of State Madeleine Albright said Mon
day she is “very concerned” about ten
sions between South and North Ko
rea.
•3
White House aides
speculate that Starr
does not intend to.
indict President
Clinton.
WASHINGTON (AP) t
Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr
will step down from the probe to take
a job at Pepperdme University, the
school said Monday.
The announcement raises ques
tions about whether Starr’s investiga
tion of President Clinton and the first
lady is at an end.
The Whitewater investigation,
which Starr has led for the past 214
years, is at a critical juncture with
prosecutors weighing the evidence
involving the president and Hillary
Rodham Clinton.
Starr and the Whitewater
prosecutor’s office were silent after the
announcement by Pepperdine Univer
sity in Malibu, Calif.
But a lawyer familiar with the
Whitewater probe cautioned against
reading too much into Starr’s stepping
down from the investigation.
Starr will decide what, if any, ac
tion to take against the Clintons and
“he will have ample time to consider
all matters,” said the lawyer, who
spoke on condition of anonymity.
The lawyer said the question of
precisely when Starr will leave the
Whitewater prosecutor's office has yet
f-lfi ..t ' ' -
to be decided.
A former presidential aide sug
gested indictments won’t be forthcom
ing. “Is Starr going to indict the first
lady and then leave for the West
Coast? I don’t think so,” said the aide,
speaking on condition of anonymity.
Hie White House had no official
comment, though aides also privately
speculated the prosecutor must not
intend to indict the first family.
? The Clintons’ Whitewater lawyer,
David Kendall, amid not be reached
for immediate comment.
In a press release, Pepperdine Uni
versity said Starr would become dean
of its law school Aug. 1 and founding
dean of its new school of public policy.
In an interview, Pepperdine Presi
dent David Davenport said Starr felt
comfortable with his decision.
“My assumption from talking with
Ken in the interview process es that
the investigation will go forward,”
Davenport said.
“I think he feels confident that
there is a good team of people in place
who are working on it and he has sev
eral more months to be part of the in
vestigation before he reports fpr duty
out here,” Davenport said.
Starr has faced criticism from
Clinton loyalists for maintaining his
private law practice and representing
corporate clients who oppose the
Clinton administration at the same
time Starr investigates the president
and the first lady.
Also, right-wing groups have ac- 1
cused Starr of failing to adequately 1
address questions surrounding the 1
death of deputy White House counsel
Vincent Foster, which twice has been
ruled a suicide. Starr has not yet an
nounced his conclusions in the death
probe.
Word of Starr’s planned departure
comes amid other upcoming develop
ing involving Whitewater:
■The Clintons’ former
Whitewater partner, Jim McDougal,
is to appear in court April 14 for sen
tencing on his conviction on 18 felony
charges. Prosecutors may give further
clues on to what extent he has been
cooperating with investigators since
turning against the president and first
lady last summer.
■ Former Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy
Tucker faces another fraud trial. He is
accused of trying to avoid the payment
of millions of dollars in taxes on a
cable television deal which turned him
into multimillionaire.
Now in private practice with the
Washington office of the law firm
Kirkland & Ellis, Starr was appointed
a federal judge by President Bush’s
solicitor general — the government’s
chief courtroom lawyer.
Starr, 50, previously taught at
Pepperdine’s law school and he has
served on its board of visitors since
1992 and has spoken at university
events, receiving an honorary degree
from the school last year.
Starr will remain a partner at
Cirkland & Ellis as a resident in the
inn’s Los Angeles office, at the same
ime working full time at Pepperdine.
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