2A
The Inside Front
Tuesday October 14, 1997
News
from campus, the state, the nation and the world
CAMPUS/AREA
NATIONAL
A masturbating man was discovered in the women's restroom in Dyche Hall.
PACIFIC GROVE, Calif.: Folk singer and songwriter John Denver died in a setting straight out of his music, soaring over the mountains, sea and sky before his experimental plane crashed Sunday in picturesque Monterey Bay. He was 53.
CAPE CANVERAL, FLA.: Winds strong enough to carry rocket debris down the coast forced NASA yesterday to postpone the launch of Cassini, the Saturn-bound spacecraft powered by 72 pounds of plutonium. Last-minute computer problems with the spacecraft and ground equipment contributed to the delay.
PRINCETON, Mass.: A man whose 14-year-old daughter's death spurred him to run long distance to raise money to fight cancer dropped dead of a heart attack just 10 feet from the finish line of his first half-marathon.
INTERNATIONAL
ST-JOSEPH-DE-LA-RIVE, Quebec: A bus carrying nearly 50 passengers plunged into a ravine in central Quebec yesterday, killing more than 40 people, police said.
BELFAST, Northern Ireland: Enraged Protesters jeered and jostled Prime Minister Tony Blair after he shook hands yesterday with Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams. It was the first meeting in 76 years between a British leader and the IRA's allies.
JERUSALEM: Searching for a new reservoir of immigrants, Israel is looking west and trying to make it easier than ever for American and other Western Jews to move.
CAMPUS/AREA
Masturbator discovered in KU women's restroom
A KU senior opened the door on a masturbating man Friday afternoon as she attempted to use a women's restroom in Dvche Hall.
The student was trying to use the one-stall restroom near the auditorium in Dyche Hall, KU police said. When she opened the door to the facility, she saw a man masturbating. The student then closed the door and left to call the police. When police arrived the man had already left.
—Kansan staff report
The student described the man as a white male between 25 and 30 with short blond hair wearing a white T-shirt with a logo on the upper left chest and blue jeans. Police are still investigating the incident.
NATIONAL Denver dies in California when plane engine quits
PACIFIC GROVE, Calif. — With such 1970s hits as "Rocky Mountain High," "Sunshine on My Shoulders" and "Take Me Home, Country Roads," John Denver was a wholesome hippie who turned out sunny music for cynical times.
In the end, he died in a setting straight out of his music, soaring over the mountains, sea and sky before his experimental plane crashed Sunday in picturesque Monterey Bay. He was 53.
"Who I am is in my songs," Denver said in a 1986 interview. "I love it when people get that."
Peter, Paul and Mary made a hit of Denver's "Leaving on Jet Plane" in 1969, and yesterday, member Mary Travers mourned him as man who offered an alternative to angry rock and helped bind the wounds of tumultuous times.
"I think he brought a sense of optimism, a sort of naivete we were thrilled to have after Vietnam, after Watergate, after the rising tide of cynicism of the 1970s," she said. "He was talking about how beautiful it was in the mountains, saying, 'There is another side to it all.'"
Denver's single-engine Y-shaped plane crashed during the afternoon in the choppy waters just offshore. His identity was confirmed yesterday with fingerprints sent from Colorado.
National Transportation Safety Board spokesman George Peterson said Denver had just bought the plane and had performed three practice touch-and-go landings at the Monterey Peninsula Airport. He then told the tower he would be flying for about an hour.
"The aircraft was about 500 feet in the air and about 100 yards off the coast itself when the engine quit, and it went straight down into the water," Sheriff Norman Hicks said. "It just sort of dove head first, straight down into the water."
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Winds strong enough to carry rocket debris down the coast forced NASA yesterday to postpone the launch of Cassini, the Saturn-bound spacecraft powered by 72 pounds of plutonium.
High winds delay launch of Saturn-bound mission
Last-minute computer problems with the spacecraft and ground equipment contributed to the delay.
NASA said it would try again tomorrow. If NASA had launched the 18-story, two million-pound Titan 4-B rocket, and it had exploded at just the right moment, the 100 mph wind more than seven miles up would have blown rocket debris down the Florida coast, said Air Force Capt. Scott Jacobs, a meteorologist.
Because it is NASA's biggest interplanetary probe ever, Cassini carries the most plutonium ever. It is needed to power the many complex instruments during the 11-year, $3.4 billion mission to explore Saturn, its rings and moons.
Runner has heart attack dies thinking of daughter
PRINCETON, Mass. — A man, whose 14-year-old daughter's death spurred him to run long distance to raise money to fight cancer, dropped dead of a heart attack just 10 feet from the finish line of his first half-marathon.
John Pierce, 51, crumpled to the pavement Saturday during the 13-mile Applestest Half-Marathon in Hollis, N.H. He was wearing a baseball cap that read: "In Memory of Ali Pierce."
His daughter died less than a year ago after being diagnosed with liver cancer in 1994. Pierce was a casual runner but had to give it up to spend time at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center's cancer ward.
Soon after Ali died last November, Pierce and his wife went to dinner as guests of friends who were running in the Boston Marathon to raise money for the Dana Farber Cancer Institute.
"They called our names and we stood with a group of other parents who had lost children to cancer." Mrs. Pierce recalled. "And when we sat down, they called out the names of children who went to the stage who were bald, who were in the middle of treatment, who were fral, and our hearts broke, and we knew that in a year some of those kids wouldn't be there, and their parents would be standing in our group."
Pierce's goal was to compete in next spring's Boston Marathon, accepting pledges for the cancer center where their daughter died. He had returned to running slowly, entering the 7.2-mile Falmouth Road Race in August and was regularly covering 30 miles a week, Mrs. Pierce said.
He had passed a recent physical with no problems, she said.
The 13-mile Applefest Half-Marathon was the longest race he had ever entered.
ST-JOSEPH-DE-LA-RIVE, Quebec — A bus carrying nearly 50 passengers plunged into a ravine in central Quebec yesterday, killing at least 40 people, police said.
"There are more than 40 victims at the moment," provincial police spokesman Real Ouellet said at the scene.
More than 40 killed when bus tumbles into ravine
INTERNATIONAL
Road conditions were dry, and weather was sunny at the time.
Albert Tremblay, a witness who arrived on the scene shortly after the accident, said there was a 60-foot drop from the highway to the spot where the Mercier bus landed.
Tremblay said his son and others at the scene immediately went to work to help the injured. Survivors were taken to a nearby hospital.
Protestants protest when men exchange handshake
BELFAST, Northern Ireland — Enraged Protestants jeered and jostled Prime Minister Tony Blair after he shook hands yesterday with Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams. The meeting was the first in 76 years between a British leader and the IRA's allies.
The protest erupted after Blair met with Adams and leaders of seven other parties involved in Northern Ireland peace talks at Stormont, Britain's administrative headquarters in Belfast.
Blair looked flustered when 100 Protestants mobbed him in a Belfast neighborhood, yelling, "Traitor!" and "Your hands are covered in blood!"
"I treated Gerry Adams and the members of Sinn Fein in the same way that I treat any human being," Blair said when reporters asked him if he had shaken hands — a politically charged gesture that many of Northern Ireland's Protestants and Britain's Conservatives had urged the Labor Party leader not to make
"We can either carry on with the hatred and despair and the killings, treating people as if they were not parts of humanity, or we can try and settle our differences by negotiation, discussion and debate." Blair said.
Blair's aides later confirmed that the prime minister had extended his hand to Adams and the rest of the Sinn Fein delegation before their 15-minute session, from which cameras were banned.
Israel hoping to increase its immigration numbers
JERUSALEM — Searching for a new reservoir of immigrants, Israel is looking west and trying to make it easier than ever for American and other Western Jews to move.
Perhaps nowhere else is immigration as important as it is in this 49-year-old country where only half of the 5.8 million people are native-born.
erning body which helps bring immigrants to Israel, began an unprecedented drive to help attract Jews, specifically Westerners, agency chairman Avraham Burg told the Associated Press.
This year the Jewish Agency, the gov-
It appointed a New Jersey native, Mike Rosenberg, to lead its immigration department, hoping to draw from his experience as an American emigrant. Rosenberg left Bayone, N.J., in 1971.
The Associated Press
"I think it is very important that Israel grow and extremely important that the majority of the Jewish people live here in Israel," Rosenberg said. "It is the only Jewish state. It is the only place where you can't miss the Jewish holidays."
ON THE RECORD
A KU student's 1986 white Plymouth Reliant was damaged between 11:59 p.m. Friday and 9:30 a.m. Saturday in the 130 block of Winona Avenue. Lawrence police said
A KU student's passenger side window and dashboard were damaged and stereo and other items stolen between 4 and 8 a.m. Oct. 1, from the 2000 block of Stewart Avenue, Lawrence police said. The damage and items were valued at $975.
A KU student's Kansas license plate was stolen between 6 p.m. Friday and 9:30 a.m. Saturday from the 1500 block of Lynch Court, Lawrence police said. The plate was valued at $29.83.
A KU student's windshelf of a 1992 Geo Prism was damaged between 2 a.m. and 12:05 p.m. Sunday in the 1400 block of Tennessee Street, Lawrence police said. The damage was estimated at $500.
A KU student's Motorola cellular phone, billfold and other items were stolen between 10:30 a.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday from the 1600 block of High Drive, Lawrence police said. The items were valued at $155
A KU employee's parking permit was stolen between 7 and 9:30 a.m. Friday from the city at large, Lawrence police said. The permit was valued at $110.
A KU student's parking permit was stolen between 7:55 a.m. and 3:37 p.m. Thursday from the lot southeast of Memorial Stadium, KU police said. The permit was valued at $75
A KU student's 1989 Toyota was damaged and passenger side mirror stolen between 1 a.m. and 6 p.m. Friday from the lot east of Pearson Scholarship Hall, KU police said. The damage and item were valued at $100
■ A KU student's dashboard of a 1993 Jeep Wrangler was damaged and items stolen between 1:30 a.m. and 2:15 p.m. from the lot west of Lewis Hall, KU police said. The damage and items were valued at $390.
damage and items were valued at $940.
A KU student's convertible top was damaged and radar detector and other items stolen between 12:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. Friday from the lot west of Jayhawker Towers, KU police said. The damage and items were valued at $730.
A KU student's paycheck, wallet, KUID and other items were stolen between 11 a.m. and noon Friday from the 6th floor hallway in the Kansas Union, KU police said. The items were valued at $148.
A KU student's driver side mirror and door were damaged between 1 p.m. Wednesday and 11 p.m. Thursday in the lot east of Pearson Scholarship Hall, KU police said.
ET CETERA
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