John O. Emmerich, 65, president of Emmerich Enterprises Inc., which published 13 daily and weekly newspapers in Mississippi and Louisiana, died yesterday after collapsing outside his house in Greenwood, Miss., upon returning from a morning jog.
He was a director of The Associated Press from 1981 to 1990, including one year as vice chairman. During his career, he also worked at The Evening Sun, the Minneapolis Tribune, and the Houston Chronicle, and was president of the Mississippi Press Association.
He was born in McComb, Miss., where his father worked for 55 years as editor and publisher of the Enterprise Journal.
O Jin U, 78, North Korea's defense minister, died of cancer yesterday. He was the No. 2 man in the secretive Communist state's hierarchy after Kim Jong Il. He held several posts in the North Korean government, including a seat on the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea. He was also first vice chairman of the National Defense Commission and marshal of the Korean People's Army.
Michael Vincente Gazzo, 71, a writer who shocked the world in the 1950s with his examination of a family torn by drug addiction in "Hatful of Rain," and an actor who earned accolades, died Feb. 14 in Los Angeles of complications from a stroke. Nominated for a supporting-actor Academy Award for his chilling portrayal of Mafia lieutenant Frank Pentangeli in "The Godfather, Part II," he was a veteran of films who was normally cast as a bad guy.