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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 8, 1999)
Woman walks in on robbery - A 37-year-old Lincoln woman walked in on two men stealing jewel ry and video games from her apart ment early Wednesday morning, offi cer Katherine Finnell said. Both men fled when she arrived home just after midnight, Finnell said, taking with them $4,127 in property. Finnell said the men entered the apartment in the 1400 block of South 19th Street through a screen window on the building’s south side. * Student charged with possession of paraphernalia A Lincoln Southeast High School student fled from a police officer Wednesday after the officer saw a pipe in the student’s car while stop ping him for parking in a no parking zone, Finnell said. A search of the student’s car revealed a small amount of a sub stance believed to be hash, 27.1 grams of marijuana, a scale and another pipe, Finnell said. The stu dent was charged with possession with intent to deliver, possession of drug paraphernalia, refusing to com ply and resisting arrest. Police: Would-be robber trips while chasing victim A 27-year-old Lincoln man escaped a robbery Wednesday after the would-be robber tripped when chasing the man, Finnell said. The man told police a male grabbed the back of his shirt on the 3800 block of South 14th Street and demanded the 27-year-old’s wallet, Finnell said. The 27-year-old broke out of the robber’s grasp and fled the scene. In the ensuing chase, the robber tripped, and the man got away, police said. Compiled by senior staff writer Jake Bleed. Korean man recalls tragedy u I was a cowardly father ... I left my family to the killers Chung E un-young former Korean policeman NO GUN RI, South Korea (AP) - It was July 1950. Rumbles of the Korean War were approaching his village, and Chung Eun-yopng was deeply worried. Chung, then 28, was a former policeman. Word spread quickly among-streams of refiigees from the north that advancing communist troops were singling out policemen for execution. His wife urged him to flee. “The kids and I will be OK,” she said. As Chung left the mountainous village of Chu Gok Ri, his tearful, 5 year-old son bolted toward him. “Daddy, please take me with you, please!” His wife, Park Sun-yong, held back the boy. The scene haunted Chung for the next 49 years. Two days after he fled, Chung said, his son and 2-year-old daughter, along with hundreds of other helpless refugees, were killed by American sol diers while sheltering under a railroad bridge in the nearby South Korean hamlet of No Gun Ri. His wife was seriously injured. After months of research and interviews, The Associated Press reported last week that a dozen ex GIs, supporting Korean survivors’ accounts, said their battalionmachine gunned those refugees in late July 1950. The veterans told the AP that U.S. troops feared enemy North Korean soldiers were hidden among the refugees as they fled south with retreating U.S. and South Korean forces. “I was a cowardly father ... I left my family to the killers,” Chung said in an interview with AP. “Bringing the truth about their unjust death to light is the last thing I can do for my children and other vic tims.” Chung’s lonely quest began in 1960 when he sent a claim to a U.S. military petitions office but missed an application deadline. Then he painstakingly researched the case, but largely kept quiet until the 1990s because he feared reprisals from successive military-led govern ments with close ties to the United States. - During that time, Chung was respected by authorities because of his police career and membership in a semiofficial, anti-communist group. Still, his frustration was overwhelm ing. “No Gun Ri never escaped my mind one single day,” said Chung, a slender 77-year-old with deep wrin kles who once ran a small bottle-man ufacturing factory and is now retired. In the 1970s, local police warned some villagers to stop talking about No Gun Ri. Survivor Yang Hae-chan said he was summoned to a police station and quoted an officer as saying: “If you continue to talk about No Gun Ri, you and your children will be branded as communists.” Chung, meanwhile, went to libraries and sympathetic historians. He found nothing about No Gun Ri, but he reconstructed and drew maps of U.S. military maneuvers dur ing the war. He neatly filed his research and, in later years, showed it to anyone who would listen. “He was looking for anything, just anything. He was collecting data like a magpie,” said Yang Young-jo, a researcher at Seoul’s Korea Institute for Military History. Chung went to a Presbyterian church for spiritual sustenance and then wrote a book about No Gun Ri. He took the manuscript to a dozen publishers but was turned down. Some told him the content was too contro versial. At that time, there were curbs on free expression in authoritarian South Korea. Entitled “Do You Know Our Heartbreaks?” the book was finally printed by an obscure publisher in 1994 after democratic reforms had taken hold. Several No Gun Ri survivors came to Chung with their own stories and support. Chung formed a group of 30 sur vivors’ and victims’ relatives and sent petitions to the U.S. and South Korean governments. At first, Washington did not answer. Finally, in 1997, it said there was no evidence to support Chung’s claim. After the release of the AP report last week, the U.S. and South Korean governments promised full investiga tions. Chung had also filed a claim with a South Korean state compensations panel, which can forward cases to the U.S. military. It was rejected last year under a five-year statute of limita tions. During the long ordeal, Chung risked estranging his three sons, who urged their father to forget the past. “We were worried about his health. We did not like Father sticking to what seemed to us a futile attempt,” said 44-year-old Koo-do, Chung’s eldest son. “But I could understand Dad when at night, I heard Mother having night mares, shouting the names of my dead brother and sister.” Chung often thought about giving up his quest. But when an AP reporter called him in April last year, he said: “I always believed there was someone who would listen to my story. Where do you want to begin?” House leader says further Waco inquiry not needed WASHINGTON (AP) - House Majority Leader Dick Armey said Thursday he no longer sees a need for fresh hearings on the 1993 Waco siege, a,new indication the GOP’s zeal for reinvestigating the fiery end to the standoff is fizzling. Expressing confidence in inde pendent investigator John Danforth, Armey told reporters: “I don’t know that we will see any compelling need” for House hearings. Armey’s comments and recent remarks by other congressional Republicans are a sharp change from last month. Then, party leaders thundered that neW revelations about the gov ernment’s use of force against the Branch Davidians required in-depth congressional hearings and Attorney General Janet Reno’s resignation. In the House, where Democrats need to pick up six seats to win con trol in next year’s election, some Republicans thought another investi gation of the Clinton administration might backfire with voters. There’s more enthusiasm in the Senate for new investigations of Reno’s agency. “There’s Waco fatigue,” said Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., a member of the House panel investigating Waco. He prefers postponing hearings until spring. Fen-phen drug maker agrees to settlement NEWARK, N.J. (AP) - American Home Products Corp. resolved one of the largest product liability cases ever Thursday by agreeing to pay $3.75 billion to set tle claims that the fen-phen diet drug combination caused dangerous heart valve problems. The settlement covers thousands of lawsuits filed nationwide and any of the roughly 6 million people who took the now-recalled drugs, even if they didn’t sue. If a judge approves the deal, people with serious health problems blamed on fen-phen will get as much as $ 1.5 million each. Healthy former users wilLbe able to get such benefits as $30 prescription refunds and free checkups. With interest earned over that time, the total amount paid could rise to $4.83 billion, easily surpass ing such other large product-liabili ty settlements as Dow Coming’s $3.2 billion payment to women with silicone breast implants. Juanita Spear, who took the diet pills for five months in 1997 and suffered heart valve damage, said the settlement will be easier than going to court herself. American Home, based in Madison, N.J., made fenfluramine, the “fen” in the fen-phen combina tion, and gave the drug a brand name of Pondimin. It also made Redux, a chemical cousin which is covered in the set tlement. Doctors began prescribing fen fluramine in the mid-1990s for weight loss along with phentermine, which was never associated with health problems and is still sold. In September 1997, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration suc cessfully pushed American Home to withdraw Redux and Pondimin from the market after a Mayo Clinic study linked fen-phen to potentially fatal heart valve damage. Having good skin an-namral, oral meditation for acne and skin problems. 1-800-316-9636 Available at tee pharmacies, health food & drug stores everywhere! I Part-Time Manufacturing Technicians -* Working Together Manpower and Pfizer Offering part-time and full-time MK^sl’VothSuite positions: Morning. Evening. 484.5511 and Might Shifts!! Ask for Pete «-- -EOE I