Daily Press from Newport News, Virginia • Page 1

if Liability lav Rates climb despite changes B1 Country cEiarni Family -likes living in the past C1 Cycling champ fights pain D1 mu Final Edition Tuesday June 30, 1987 fm Korean-leaders discuss direct election demand i and as Chun's handpicked successor to move into the presidency next February. Reports indicated Roh did not consult the president before announcing his decision. The proposals by Roh, a longtime ally of Chun, followed 18 days of demonstrations and violent street protest. Immediately after Roh made his demands, South Korea's opposition called for a direct presidential election by November. The radio report said Chun would meet today with Prime Minister Lee Han-key, other government leaders and presidential advisers.

A special Cabinet meeting is scheduled for this afternoon with Chun presiding. SEOUL, South Korea (AP) President Chun Doo-hwan met Tuesday with ruling party chairman Roh Tae-woo, Chun's chosen successor, to discuss Roh's surprise demand that the president adopt major democratic reforms. State-run Korea Broadcasting System, which reported the meeting, said it was expected Chun would agree to proposals made by Roh on Monday. The two met at the presidential Blue House mansion, the radio said. Roh told leaders of the governing Democratic Justice Party on Monday that unless Chun agreed to direct elections for the country's next president, he would resign as party chairman Korea Broadcasting System also said Chun was expected to respond to Roh's demands on Wednesday.

Direct election of the president has been a major opposition demand, but Chun announced in April that discussion of political reform would be postponed until after the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul. He said his successor would be chosen by the present electoral college system, which favors the government. Roh, a former army general like Chun, called for a direct presidential election and declared support for other opposition demands such as press free- See Korea, Page A4 TV station negotiating with group Buyers look at WYAH facility By MATTHEW SIIEERIN Staff Writer A group of local businessmen is negotiating to buy WYAH-TV of Portsmouth from the Christian Broadcasting Network, officials familiar with the talks said Monday. It is not clear what changes if any the potential buyers plan for Channel 27, which has positioned itself as a competitive independent showing movies, net-. work reruns and Christian pro-; gramming since it was founded by CBN more than 20 years ago.

One local source identified of the potential buyers as Raymond B. Bottom a for-- mer owner of Daily Press and Ernest Harris, a former vice president of WVEC-TV in Hampton. Harris, an account executive with Tidewater Cable Interconnect in Newport News, acknowledged he is involved in the group but stressed that the deal is still being negotiated. "We've been negotiating with them for six months, but we haven't concluded anything with them," he said. He declined to name the other investors.

Bottom, currently a vice chairman of Daily Press has not been involved in the day-to-day operation of the publishing company since it was sold to Tribune Co. of Chicago in September. Bottom declined to comment on the negotiations for See Group, Page A4 Jr JUT xmjk. i 4iMJipy (B- II Mill Jury indicts shop owners in kickback-fraud scheme AP photo backs for subcontracts. The indictment alleges that Amtech officials paid buyers Gene M.

Harris and Thomas E. Staples III about $25,000 between mid-1979 and December 1983 for subcontracts they directed to the Grafton company, which had been named one of the shipyard's top 10 suppliers for 1985. The indictment documents evidence of a kickback conspiracy within the yard's purchasing department. Harris and Staples have been convicted of kickback-related crimes and sen By MARK BOCCHETTI Staff Writer NORFOLK The owners of a York County machine shop were indicted Monday for an alleged conspiracy to defraud the Navy by paying kickbacks of $25,000 to two buyers for Newport News Shipbuilding. A federal grand jury indicted Richard Earl Nobles, 46, identified as president of Automated Machine and Technology and Oliver Lewis Strickland, 49, named as vice president, on the conspiracy charges and several separate counts of paying kick tenced to prison, but their prosecutions had not linked them in an organized criminal activity.

The new indictment names the two men as unindicted coconspirators and documents a common approach to the kickback scheme: Harris and Staples allegedly had tried to set a common rate for the payments, at 5 percent of the value of the contract they placed. Staples had tried to set that rate with at least one subcontractor, according to court documents from his prosecution, and See Kickback, Page A4 Whales released Two of the three pilot whales saved from a suicidal beaching on Cape Cod, in December are lowered from a reasearch vessel Monday off Nantucket lsland.vScientists hope it is the final step in an unpre-cendented rescue. See the story on Page A3. Students had samples of air-traffic lab test Professor seeks trial of killers 5 1. Wi "Be-', v.

Senior officials at the Federal Aviation Administration Academy outside Oklahoma City, nevertheless, maintained in interviews that while students over the years may have developed and circulated problems closely mirroring actual test situations, the school's testing program remains sound. The laboratory tests, which have been the focus of the cheating probe, consist of a series of traffic management problems in which students must safely guide aircraft during a 30-minute period. A student is graded on five problems selected by instructors from a pool of problems. The performance test accounts for 60 percent of a student's grade. "I am convinced that this (testing) program is not compromised.

It's a performance type of situation that you cannot cheat on," Morris Friloux, the school's superintendent, said, in an interview last week. Friloux called the quality assurance office's analysis, which he had requested last March, "purely opinion" and declared: "How can someone say a program is compromised when 50 percent (of the students) are not making it." WASHINGTON (AP) An investigation into cheating at the government's air traffic controller school in Oklahoma has determined that some test information was compromised, although the effect of the cheating is unclear, according to sources and documents. The Transportation Department's probe, which has not been completed, has concluded that test material similar to actual test problems was in the possession of students and probably provided unfair advantages, it was learned Monday. An analysis by the school's quality assurance office of a packet of problems surrendered by a student in March concluded "the student had correct information pertaining to nine of the graded laboratory problems" on which he was about to be tested, according to an internal memorandum. "This means that nine of the 14 graded problems were compromised," supervisor Oliver Spires wrote in a memorandum dated May 8.

He said that while some details of the test problem, such as flight numbers, were missing, the traffic "situations" facing the student were identical to those on some test LEXINGTON (AP) A Washing-ton Lee assistant law professor is fighting for a genocide trial of the Khmer Rouge, believed to have killed a million Cambodians and let another million die of starvation, exhaustion and neglect. Gregory Stanton saw thousands of smashed skulls when he visited the mass graves of the Cambodian labor camps in 1980, and now, from his law school office and Lexington home, he runs the Cambodian Genocide Project Inc. Stanton's goal is to obtain an International Court of Justice condemnation of the Khmer Rouge. He says the Vietnamese-backed Cambodian government's conviction in absentia of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot was nothing more than a show trial. "We can try to ignore the duties that are thrust upon us, but the duties will still be there," Stanton said.

"The significance of our lives depends on responding to the call." "It's vital for the future of international law that this case be tried," he See Professor, Page A4 ejt ft 1 StiK drawing by GLORIA COKER Murder hearing Ronald Blanchard (left) is shown with his attorney, Alan Moss, during a preliminary hearing Monday during which a murder charge against Blan- chard was certified to a grand jury for consideration. Blanchard is charged in the murder of Debbie J. Dicus. See the story on Page B1. Old barns in' for wealthy weekenders i imm i Ann Landers C5 1 C1 I 1 C6 B1 Business B5 National A3 Classified Obituaries V' Comics C5 Sports D1 I Editorials State B4 Entertainment Television C3 KLf 1 Today's weather Rebuild embas- sy, says James Mostly sunny.

High in the 90s. Low schiesinger. near 70. See details on Page A2. see Page A3.

them in Litchfield and Fairfield counties and nearby Westchester County, N.Y. "Old is in," Cady, owner of East Coast Barn Builders, said recently as he escorted a visitor on a tour of a half-dozen imported barns, most resurrected on estates accessible only by dirt road. Most western Connecticut barns suitable for conversion ROXBURY, Conn. (AP) Preservationists sneer at them as parodies of the past, but 200-year-old barns imported beam by beam from rural New York are the rage these days among Connecticut's affluent weekenders. Edwin Cady, who describes himself as king of barn builders in the Northeast, says he takes down 40 to 50 barns a year in New York and resassembles said Andrew Duus, a real estate broker in Washington, Conn.

But in New York, they are plentiful and tend to be larger, making them more impressive as houses, said Cady. He said 90 percent of his customers are wealthy people using the barns as second homes. His clients include John Jay, a senior vice president at Bloom-ingdales department store whose barn once stood in the corn fields of Argusville, N.Y. "In Manhattan, you are always short of space," said Jay, who bought Cady's first converted barn in 1983. "We wanted to create this enormous space." In addition, said Diana Slodo-witz, a co-owner of Old Mt.

Tom Construction she and other barn restorers are preserving history. See City, A4 have already been snatched up, I.