News stories from Saturday December 4, 1976

Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:

A new Protestant denomination -- the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches -- was formally constituted in Chicago where more than 140 delegates from the new church's five regional synods attended a "founding convention." The denomination's members are about 75,000 theological moderates in 150 congregations across the nation who left the 2.8 million-member Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod because of a conflict with its president. [New York Times] While she was breathing with the aid of a hospital's respirator, a 17-year-old Long Island schoolgirl whose brain was severely damaged in an apparent mugging was pronounced "medically dead." Her parents, her family doctor and the head of the Suffolk County Medical Society consented to the decision. The circumstances in which Karen Pomroy was pronounced dead are expected to be a central issue in the prosecution of a 27-year-old man charged with her murder. [New York Times] Former New Jersey congressman Cornelius Gallagher's testimony and records have been subpoenaed by the Department of Justice in its widening investigation of alleged South Korean influence peddling and bribery in Washington, government and legal sources said. Tongsun Park, a South Korean businessman, is also expected to be subpoenaed. [New York Times] President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, who was said to be displeased, upset a tentative agreement between his Foreign Minister and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that would have given the Marcos government $1 billion in additional American aid over a five-year period. The President's dissatisfaction with what was described as the loose terms of the accord was made known to State Department officials, who had announced that an agreement had been reached. [New York Times] Japan's governing Liberal-Democratic Party faces the possibility of losing the comfortable legislative majority it has held for more than two decades in an election tomorrow. Voters will choose 511 members of the lower house of Parliament. [New York Times] Critics of President Park Chung Hee of South Korea say they are trying to persuade Gen. Kim Yung Hwan, the Washington operations chief of the South Korean Intelligence Agency, to defect to the United States and cooperate with the federal inquiry into alleged bribery by Korean interests of American Congressmen. Supporters of President Park say they are trying equally hard to keep General Kim in line and have him return home as he was ordered. [New York Times]