AP News in Brief
US veteran returning to NKorea to keep promise to fallen friend, Navy's first black aviator
• SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- Two years after he made history by becoming the Navy's first black pilot, Ensign Jesse Brown lay trapped in his downed fighter plane in subfreezing North Korea, his leg broken and bleeding. His wingman crash-landed to try to save him, and even burned his hands trying to put out the flames.
• A chopper hovered nearby. Lt. j.g. Thomas Hudner could save himself, but not his friend. With the light fading, the threat of enemy fire all around him and Brown losing consciousness, the white son of a New England grocery-store magnate made a promise to the black son of a sharecropper.
• "We'll come back for you."
• More than 60 years have passed. Hudner is now 88. But he did not forget. He is coming back.
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After tumbling from top of auto industry into financial ruin, Detroit files for bankruptcy
• DETROIT (AP) -- At the height of its industrial power, Detroit was an irrepressible engine of the American economy, offering well-paying jobs, a gateway to the middle class for generations of autoworkers and affordable vehicles that put the world on wheels.
• But by Thursday, the once-mighty symbol of the nation's manufacturing might had fallen from that pinnacle into financial ruin, becoming the biggest U.S. city ever to file for bankruptcy -- the result of a long, slow decline in population and auto manufacturing.
• Although the filing had been feared for months, the path that lay ahead was still uncertain. Bankruptcy could mean laying off employees, selling off assets, raising fees and scaling back basic services such as trash collection and snow plowing, which have already been slashed.
• Kevin Frederick, an admissions representative for a local career training school, called the step "an embarrassment."
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