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Hostages’ escape ends standoff DUNDALK, Md. (AP) - Slaying suspect Joseph Palczynski announced that he planned to kill one of his three hostages, so the captives ended their long ordeal by drugging him with pre scription medication, one of them said Wednesday. With Palczynski sleeping on the living-room sofa in their apartment, Lynn Whitehead and Andy McCord climbed out a first-floor bedroom win dow late Tuesday, leaving their 12 year-old son asleep on the kitchen floor. Palczynski, accused of kidnapping Whitehead’s daughter and killing four people before the standoff began, died minutes later when police stormed the apartment and shot him. The little boy was rescued. Earlier that day, the suspected mul tiple killer had told Whitehead that “today is the day she’s going to die,” McCord recalled Wednesday. She took prescription pills, Xanax, crushed them and put them in Palczynski’s iced tea, McCord told The Associated Press. Xanax can be used as a tranquilizer or as a sleeping pill. McCord and Whitehead then made their escape when Palczynski finally fell asleep after a standoff of almost 100 hours. “I’m just so glad it ended up how it did. My family’s safe,” Mary McCord, who is both Whitehead’s sister and McCord’s sister-in-law, told WJZ-TV “And now we can all sleep, go on with our life.” Her husband David McCord said his brother Andy had called during the weekend and said: ‘“Dave, I love everybody,’ he said, ‘and tell Mom - tell her I love her, too, because I don’t know if I’m going to make it or not.’ And he was crying his eyes out.” Palczynski, a 31-year-old unem ployed electrician, stormed into the apartment on Friday. Police negotia tions had continued even after shots were fired out of the apartment over the weekend. “We were willing to stay as long as it took,” police spokesman Bill Toohey said afterward. Whitehead fled first and McCord followed several minutes ” We were willing to stay as long as it too.” later. Once they left, police said they had no choice but to enter. “They knew there was one 12-year old boy in there and a man who had murdered four people,” Toohey said. Palczynski’s mother, Patricia Long, told WJZ-TV early Wednesday that another son, Jimmy, called her and told her the hostages had escaped unharmed and there were two shots fired. “I says, ‘Oh, my God.’ And then... Jimmy said the paramedics were there, they left. Right then and there, I knew he was dead,” Long said. Palczynski had had a long history of mental problems and run-ins with the law. His mother said she blamed “the system for letting that boy out and not giving him the proper treatment, Bill Toohey police spokesman not giving him the medicine he needed, because they knew of his condition.” Palczynski was asleep on a sofa with a gun on his lap under a blanket when police burst in through a living room window, Toohey said. Palczynski “began to sit up, and tactical officers shot and killed him,” police spokeswoman Vickie Warehime said. She said two officers fired shots, but the number of shots was not known immediately. Attorney David Henninger, a long time friend of Palczynski who was involved in the negotiations, said he knew the end was coming. “I knew it would end today one way or another,” Henninger said. “I was hoping it would end in a better way, but the hostages were safe.” Pope’s visit spurs Palestinian hopes ■ Pope John Paul II vis its site of Jesus’s birth as Palestinians battle police. BETHLEHEM, West Bank (AP) - Journeying to the cradle of Christianity, Pope John Paul II knelt and prayed Wednesday at the tradi tional spot of Jesus’ birth. He also kissed a golden bowl of Palestinian soil - one of several ges tures the Palestinians saw as recogni tion of their dreams for statehood. As a beaming Yasser Arafat looked on, the 79-year-old pontiff proclaimed Palestinians’ “natural right to a homeland” and visited a crowded, dusty camp for refugees exiled from their homes since the 1948 Mideast War. But soon after he left, Palestinian frustrations turned violent: Hundreds of camp residents hurled stones at baton-wielding Palestinian police in a battle that lasted for nearly half an hour. Police at the Dheisheh camp pushed the protesters back, then had to retreat under a hail of rocks. Some minor injuries were reported in the melee, a show of dissatisfaction with Palestinian leadership and the slow pace of peace. Earlier in the day, the pope called for international action to end Palestinian suffering. “Your torment is before the eyes of the world,” he declared. “And it has gone on for too long.” However, the day in Bethlehem - the city John Paul II said was at the heart of his pilgrimage - also had a strong spiritual note. In Manger Square, near Jesus’ traditional birth grotto in the Church of the Nativity, a golden-clad pontiff leaning on a sil ver staff celebrated Mass before thou sands of faithful. Later, he descended into the grot to and knelt before the star marking the spot where Mary is believed to have given birth. In the soft glow of candles, the pope sat in silence as his aides respectfully slipped out of the grotto. Despite the Vatican’s portrayal of the papal trip as purely spiritual, the pope touched on contentious issues of clear consequence to the region. The Palestinians, in turn, lost no time driving home the message of their aspirations of independence. “Welcome to our land,” Arafat told the pope at a formal reception that kicked off the only day the pope was spending in Palestinian territory. He called the pope an “esteemed guest of Palestine, and its eternal cap ital, Jerusalem.” Israel claims all Jerusalem as its capital, while Palestinians want the city’s eastern section as the capital of a fiiture Palestinian state. In his arrival speech, the pope referred to “legitimate Palestinian aspirations” and the need for peaceful negotiations to realize them. ” Your torment is before the eyes of the world. And it has gone on for too long.” Pope John Paul n “The Holy See has always recog nized that the Palestinian people have a natural right to a homeland,” the pope said, speaking in a slurred voice - a symptom of Parkinson’s disease, a progressive neurological disorder. Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls parried suggestions the pope was endorsing a Palestinian state, saying such a state has not been proclaimed yet and that the Vatican would consider the issue when that happened. ia»ET irri r %£*- !“ #4 * Ml1“ tf-: «■ Hi A W iX a* « ftoCvw .^C w Thunderstorms Rain high 51, low 48 high 61, low 46 Nebraskan Editor: Josh Funk Managing Editor: Lindsay Young . . . Qu*s**ons. Comments. Associate News Editor: Dane Stickney w ^ aPRrPPflP^,ff?*0n e^l*or a* Associate News Editor: Diane Broderick '40Z.j . Opinion Editor: J.J. Harder dn@unl.edu. Sports Editor: Sam McKewon A&E Editor: Sarah Baker General Manager: Daniel Shattil Copy Desk Co-Chief: Jen Walker Publications Board Jessica Hofmann, Copy Desk Co-Chief: Josh Krauter Chairwoman: (402) 477-0527 Photo Chief: Mike Warren Professional Adviser: Don Walton, Design Co-Chief: Diane Broderick (402) 473-7248 Design Co-Chief: Tim Karstens Advertising Manager: Nick Partsch, Art Director: Melanie Falk (402) 472-2589 Web Editor: Gregg Steams Asst Ad Manager: Jamie Yeager Asst Web Editor: Jewel Minarik Qaarifidd Ad Manager: Nichole Lake Fax number: (402) 472-1761 World Wide Web: www.dailyneb.com The Daily Nebraskan (USPS144-080) is published by tne UNL Publications Board, Nebraska Union 20,1400 R St., Lincoln, NE 68588-0448, Monday through Friday during the academic year; weekly during the summer sessions.The public has access to the Publications Board. Readers are encouraged to submit story ideas and comments to the Daily Nebraskan by calling (402) 472-2588. Subscriptions are $60 for one year. Postmaster; Send address changes to the Daily Nebraskan, Nebraska Union 20,1400 R St., Lincoln NE 68588-0448. Periodical postage paid at Lincoln, NE. ALL MATERIAL COPYRIGHT 11999 THE DAILY NEBRASKAN U.S. government to pay $508 million to settle ■ Federal overseas news and information agency denied jobs to women. WASHINGTON (AP) - Some 1,100 women who were denied jobs with the federal agency that dissemi nates U.S. government news and infor mation overseas won $508 million from the government Wednesday in the largest-ever settlement of a federal sex discrimination case. The agreement, which requires approval from a federal judge, comes 23 years after the first woman, then-29 year-old Carolee Brady Hartman, accused the U.S. Information Agency and its broadcast branch, the Voice of America, of turning her down for a job because of her gender. “I went for a job interview, and the man who was interviewing me told me that he was not going to hire me because I was a woman,” said Brady, today a 52 year-old divorced social worker. “At the time, I just didn’t know how to respond. Now, I have a way of responding, and this is the victory that we all celebrate today. It is a delicious victory.” In addition to the $508 million that must be paid to the women - approxi mately $450,000 apiece before taxes - the federal government must also give them nearly $23 million in back pay and interest and pay their attorneys’ fees. Those fees will be at least $12 million, because the lawyers intend to bill the government for approximately 90,000 hours of work over the 23 years. The Justice Department said although larger settlements involving other forms of discrimination have been awarded, this was the largest federal sex discrimination case since the Civil Rights Act was signed into law in 1964. In the end, after years of insisting on trying each case in the courts, though the suit had been certified as a class action case, government lawyers decid ed to settle; they had lost 46 of the 48 cases that had gone to trial, with each woman winning about $500,000. They will share in Wednesday’s settlement. “We took into account the prior court decisions of the trial and appellate courts ..., the results of the individual class members’ hearings that had been conducted to date, as well as our inde pendent projections of the likely results of the remaining hearings in the absence of a settlement,” said Wilma A. Lewis, U.S. attorney of the District of Columbia. Thursday, March 23,2000 Page 2 Editor: Lindsay Young (402)472-1763 ■ Mozambique Mozambique river likely to flood again after rains MAPUTO, Mozambique (AP) - Almost a month after it flooded and submerged villages, the Limpopo River threatened to burst its banks again Wednesday, endangering thou sands of people who were trying to put their lives back together. A surge of water was flowing downstream into Mozambique after heavy rains in neighboring Zimbabwe and South Africa, said Foreign Minister Leonardo Simao. Government officials were urg ing people to leave low-lying south ern Mozambican towns they expect will be engulfed again by the Limpopo River. ■ Iraq Iraq blames United States, Iran for apartment attack BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Iraqis wept and demanded revenge Wednesday for a deadly mortar strike on a Baghdad apartment building, an attack officials blamed on Iran and the United States. As crowds mourning the four dead urged President Saddam Hussein to take revenge, a senior Iraqi leader said warming relations between Iran and the United States encouraged “Persian agents” to attack a residential quarter in the heart of the capital, Baghdad, late Tuesday. Thirty-eight people were injured. “Revenge! Revenge! Revenge!” shouted weeping women as an angry crowd carried coffins through the streets of the northeastern Baladyat district With the shelling, “the Iranian regime is striving to satisfy the United States,” declared Abdel Ghani Abdel Ghafour, a senior member of Iraq’s ruling Baath party. ■Washington Court’s tobacco decision prompts Congress’ action WASHINGTON (AP) - Anti smoking members of Congress promised to move quickly and aggressively to revive legislation after the Supreme Court ruled that current law does not allow the gov ernment to regulate tobacco. But Sen. John McCain, (R Ariz.) who led the unsuccessful charge for tobacco legislation two years ago, also cautioned that, as in the past, overcoming resistance from the tobacco industry will not be easy. Nonetheless, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), a leading pro ponent of anti-smoking legislation, said he was reintroducing a measure that would give the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate tobacco as a drug. ■ Washington Federal officials say heroin, cocaine prices down WASHINGTON (AP) - The prices 0/ cocaine and heroin have fallen to record lows and the drugs remain widely available, federal officials say, while insisting that progress is being made against drug use in the United States. In remarks prepared for presen tation today before a House Appropriations subcommittee, White House drug control policy director Barry McCaffrey cites declines in youth drug use and drug related crime during the past year. But he also notes that heroin has become more popular among young people and says methamphetamines have a “serious potential nationally to become the next ‘crack’ cocaine epidemic.”