Nation briefs 07/09/03

Elementary vice principal sought in five deaths

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. -- Police called in the FBI to aid in their search Tuesday for the vice principal of an elementary school as a possible suspect in the shooting deaths of five people, including three children.

The five -- including a grandmother and a mother -- were found dead in their Bakersfield home Tuesday morning. Police said they apparently had been shot multiple times.

Detective Mary DeGeare said officers were looking for Vincent Brothers, 41, the vice principal at Fremont Elementary School. DeGeare said he is the estranged husband of the younger woman and father of at least two of the dead children.

"He is a person of interest, a possible suspect," DeGeare said. "We'd like to find him to determine whether he was responsible or eliminate him as a suspect."

Police were called to the home early Tuesday by a family friend who had gone to check on the family. The bodies of the mother and her three children were found in a bedroom; the grandmother was in another room.

Group targets high stroke death rate in the South

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- A national group is trying to get family doctors to talk about stroke risk factors and prevention more with patients in the South, which has the some of the highest stroke death rates in the country.

The National Stroke Association launched its campaign in Kentucky on Tuesday and has sent letters to all family-care doctors in the state. The group will focus initially on the so-called "Stroke Belt," 12 states, mostly in the South, in which death rates are consistently more than 10 percent higher than the rest of the country.

Doctors suspect the South has a higher stroke death rate because it has more poor communities with less access to health care and greater risk factors such as obesity, smoking and lack of physical activity.

Kay Wan, a spokeswoman for the National Stroke Association, said about 50 percent of Americans cannot recognize one stroke symptom, and that family doctors are on the front line of seeing people at risk.

Camp counselors accused of organizing fights

ROANOKE, Va. -- Sheriff's officers are investigating allegations that counselors at a 4-H summer camp arranged fistfights between children ages 9 to 13, charged admission to the brawls and allowed betting.

Franklin County Sheriff Quint Overton said Tuesday that the youngsters were told to lie to parents about the fights after several suffered black eyes and one broke his hand.

No charges have been filed, but Overton said he had six officers investigating the five-day camp that began June 30 at the Smith Mountain Lake 4-H Educational Conference Center.

"It's hard to believe anyone would do this," Overton said. He said he heard that campers were charged $1 for admission, and that the counselors and children could bet up to $4 per fight.

Talks resume on recovery of remains in N. Korea

WASHINGTON -- After a months-long stalemate, North Korea and the United States have agreed to resume talks on recovering remains of U.S. servicemen killed in the Korean War, officials said Tuesday.

The talks are to open Thursday in Bangkok, Thailand, according to Larry Greer, a spokesman for the Defense Department office responsible for accounting for missing American service personnel.

The United States wanted to open talks late last year on logistical and other arrangements for U.S. forensics experts to excavate battlefield sites this summer, but the dialogue ended after North Korea revealed to a State Department envoy last October that it has a nuclear weapons program.

Several days after that revelation became public, North Korea accused the United States of pursuing a hostile policy that "seriously impedes the exhumation of remains of the war dead, including the investigation and confirmation of the burial places."

More than 8,000 U.S. servicemen are listed as unaccounted for from the Korean War, which ended 50 years ago this month.

-- From wire reports