10A - The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, September 3, 1997 Postal shooting leaves 2 dead MIAMI BEACH, Fla. (AP) - A postal worker opened fire yesterday in a crowded post office, critically wounding his ex-wife and a friend before shooting himself to death as terrified customers fled, authorities and witnesses said. The man left his station at the counter when he saw the two women enter the post office about 1 p.m., said Bobby Hernandez, a police spokesperson. "As soon as they walked in, they saw him leave through the back. Then he came back in through the front doors and shot them, Hernandez said. Each victim was shot once and then the gunman walked away casually, police and witnesses said. "He exited the post office, went to a tree, looked up in the air and shot him- self in the face," Hernandez said. Police identified the gunman as 65- year-old Jesus Antonio Tamayo. A co- worker, John Parfumorse, said Tamayo was a counter clerk with 41 years expe- rience. Hernandez said the victims were Tamayo's ex-wife, who he divorced' Panel to look at Gore's fund raising Police investigators cover the body of a postal worker after he opened fire yesterday, in a crowded post office, critically wounding his ex-wife and a friend before shooting himself to death. four-years ago, and a family friend. A regular customer at the post office said she recognized the shooter as a longtime counter clerk. "I have known him for a long time and he has been nice," said Judy Rivas, a store worker from across the street who said she was at the post office to check her mail. "I even smiled at him as he walked behind me." Amy Reed, another witness, said she saw people fleeing the post office. "I heard a lot of commotion," she said. "Dogs were barking, people were screaming and running towards me." Lorraine Nelson, spokesperson at Jackson Memorial Hospital, said the two women who were shot "are in the operating room in critical condition. They are from the Post Office shooting, that's all we know." An hour or so after the shootings, the gunman's body remained in the parking lot, covered with a tarp. The scene is only a few blocks from the oceanside mansion where designer Gianni Versace was shot to death. Los Angeles Times WASHINGTON - It is a political confrontation of a unique and unusual- ly intimate sort. This week, hearings on campaign fund raising, chaired by Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) are scheduled to turn the spotlight on the man whose former Senate seat Thompson now holds: Vice President Al Gore. When the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee reconvenes, it will focus on a fund-raiser Gore attended last April at a Buddhist temple outside Los Angeles - a site Democrats later :: acknowledged was painfully inappro- priate. It is unlikely Gore will be called' to testify himself, but photographs of' the vice president at the temple and questions about his role will be promi- Gore nent. With Gore considered the front-run- ner for the Democratic presidential nomination three years from now, and Thompson a potential contender for the GOP nod, the week's proceedings may someday be seen as a crucial early skir- mish in the 2000 race for the White House. They also mark the first colli- sion of two ambitious and skilled Tennessee politicians who have man- aged to stay almost entirely out of each other's way throughout their careers. "They never were adversaries" said one Gore intimate, "because they never had to be." That all will change this week, as Thompson summons a series of wit- nesses from the Hsi Lai Temple for what could prove the most colorful, and widely televised, testimony of the hear- ings so far. And though the temple affair is likely the most dramatic, it is only one of the committee's lines of inquiry that could lead to Gore. Others range from questions about the vice president's role in the overall Democratic campaign fund-raising efforts, particularly solicitation calls he made from his office, and the role of his former Senate chief of staff in lobbying for major Democratic donors who did business with the administration. "There is substantial exposure left" for the vice president in the hearings, said Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) a member of the investigating committee. Gore's role in the controversy, he ad will face "substantial questioning." With Republicans pointed down that track, the investigation poses a direct political risk for Gore. But the proceed- ings are proving to contain a surprising degree of political risk as well for Thompson, who appeared with other potential GOP presidential aspirants last month at a party gathering in Indianapolis. Widely heralded as a rising GOP after his election in 1994, Thompi has faced second-guessing from Republicans unhappy with his willing- ness to look into alleged GOP fund- raising abuses. Democrats question his allegations that there is an ongoing Chinese plot to "subvert" American elections. While the hearings in July advanced the story of the 1996 fund- raising abuses on many fronts; they have not yet produced a blockb revelation to rivet the public's attent "Presumably the hearings offered Thompson an opportunity to catapult onto the national stage," said Guy Molyneux, a Democratic pollster. "But that opportunity is slipping away from him." Thompson has done his best to dis- courage such analysis. On NBC-TV's "Meet the Press" earlier this summer, he forcefully pointed out that he has not "actively considered or ... done thing" to prepare for a possible presi- dential bid. And he disputes the notion that the inquiry has taken particular aim at Gore, as many Democrats allege. "I've not talked about any individual, whether it be the president or the vice president or anybody else in terms of where they stand in the order of things" Thompson said. "I'm not going to do that, and I don't think it would be fair." Yet Thompson appears keenly a of the drama inherent in the implicit showdown between Tennessee's two best-known politicians: "Never occurred to me ...," Thompson said - before breaking into a broad grin. Young doctors rely too much on technology CHICAGO (AP) - Doctors who were almost fin- ished with their training for primary care succeeded only 20 percent of the time at identifying major abnormal heart sounds using a stethoscope, a study found. The findings suggest that generalist doctors - the ones who control many patients' fate under managed care plans - are losing a valuable skill as they increasingly rely on technology, authors said in Wednesday's issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association. Dr. Salvatore Mangione and Linda Nieman of Allegheny University of the Health Sciences in Philadelphia, who headed the study, said effective use of the old skills can help save money. A doctor who doesn't know by listening that a heart murmur is harmless is forced to order tests. "And so in a sense, the loss of these skills ... may lead to increasing reliance on expensive technology," Mangione said. That conflicts with the goal of managed care, which relies on the bedside skills of primary care physicians to determine when expensive specializa- tion is needed. In the study, residents - medical school graduates in training on hospital staffs - were incorrect four out of five times in identifying abnormal sounds and did not improve with years of training, Mangione said. "Third-year residents were not any better than the first-year residents, and ... were not significantly bet- ter than a group of medical students," he said. The study involved 453 residents and 88 medical students from a total of 31 programs in family practice and internal medicine in the mid-Atlantic states. Subjects listened to 12 types of heart sounds that had been directly recorded from patients and identi- fied them by multiple choice questionnaire.. Two experts not associated with the study said its findings are cause for some concern, but should not alarm patients. Dr. Marc A. Weinberg, director of cardiac rehabili- tation at Huntington (N.Y.) Hospital, said doctors cur- rently get training in using echocardiograms, an ultra- sound test that is much more definitive than any stethoscope exam. He said the risk-free, pain-free test, which costs $250 to $600, is as superior to a stethoscope exam as the automobile is to a horse and buggy. And Dr. David E. Steward, chairman of internal medicine at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, said heart sounds through a stethoscope are "a little piece to a real big puzzle." "I'm a primary care physician myself. I've never had an audio tape walk into my office. It's always a person, with symptoms ... with other things that help you make decisions about them," Steward said. p - Democrats accused of vote-buying tactics PREPPOPON-Mm- - " Pool tables " Dartboards " Multiple TV ________Main Swet AM" PAIN6 S GO Visit our web site at: www.arborlink/blindpig.com Charges of Democratic vote buying sparks grand jury investigation into campaign CHARLESTON, Mo. (AP) - As many as 200 voters last fall were rewarded with yellow coupons good for a $1 purchase at the Gas-A-Mat - enough for a cold can of Old Style beer at the convenience store. And enough to trigger a federal grand jury investigation into allegations of Democratic vote- buying. "Thank you for your support!!!" read the mass- printed coupons that Republicans say were hand- ed out to departing voters in mostly black, mostly poor areas to re-elect the Missouri Legislature's senior member, a good ol' boy who took office on the 1960 Democratic ticket headed by John F. Kennedy. "In no way did we cheat," said Harry "Joker" Warren, owner of the Gas-A-Mat and a Democratic loyalist for more than half a century. "The Republicans just got mad because they got beat." Several figures in what has been dubbed south- eastern Missouri's Beer for Votes case have testi- fied before the grand jury. No one has been charged. "If people are to go out and pay people a dollar or two to steal their votes, I think that's the most degrading behavior," said David Barklage, direc- tor of the Missouri House Republican Campaign Committee. The GOP's evidence: videotapes sh'ot at Barklage's behest through a van's darkened win- dows outside Charleston's heavily black polling places. They show a Democratic effort to haul voters to the polls. A half-dozen voters at a time are seen climbing out of cars and vans to vote. Barklage acknowledges the videotapes did not capture any actual vote-buying. And he concedes that the 200 or so votes involved would not have changed the outcome of the election, which Rep. Gene Copeland won by an 1,166-vote margin, or 55.3 percent. But he said yesterday: "Votes were bought. The focus ought to Vot be that someone attempted to buy the election." bught The conservative southeastern Missouri region has long been ought t dominated by Democrats. But in recent years they have faced 801101 spirited challenges from the GOP. attemp Lester Gillespie, a Democratic activist in the 0104 Mississippi County's black com- munity, acknowledges paying the owner of the Gas-A-Mat $200 to accept 200 coupons good for $1 worth of merchandise apiece. He also acknowledges distributing the coupons to black voters whose names were checked off a list outside the polls to verify they cast ballots. But Gillespie, who testified before the grand jury, insists the coupons were merely "a token of, my appreciation" for participating in the political process - not a reward for voting a certain way. Barklage said he spoke to several of the voters - conversations not picked up by his camera - and he said that one black woman acknowledA receiving a bottle of whiskey for voting, and t other blacks confirmed they received coupons after casting ballots. But when an Associated Press reporter went back and made a door-to-door check on some of the people shown on the tape, they refused to talk. "I ain't got nothing to say," one man said before slamming his door. s were The focus. W be that rted to buy action"f - David Barklage MHRCC Director "I don't know noth- ing," said a woman at another home. It's a federal offense punishable by up to two years in prison to "knowingly and willing- ly pay, offer to pay or accept payment for reg- istering or for voting." Barklage said the GOP is not asserting that the Democrats made any organized effort to spread the word about coupons prior to Election Day. 74 e teTt a *st a41 4amg coge ~ Dispensing rewards for voting is not a new practice, he said. "The coupon system has been known there for election after election," Barklage said. "I think it's already assumed and I don't think there's a neces- sity for publicity." Assistant U.S. Attorney Larry Ferrell, a former Republican county prosecutor who is oversee the grand jury, said he, too, grew up hear accounts of old-time vote buying. I. THE BLUE NILE RESTAURANT Detroit and Ann Arbor, Michigan m 1 '., ...ov