‘Killing Fields’ Hero Achieves Dream: U.S. Citizenship

--Dith Pran, whose ordeal in the Khmer Rouge work camps of Cambodia inspired the Academy Award-winning film “The Killing Fields,” was sworn in as a U.S. citizen, a move he says will help his mission of bringing peace to his native land. “I’m glad I made it. My dream came true,” he said to the judges, immigration officials, news media and 336 other new citizens gathered in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn. “I’m very grateful to the people of United States of America,” Dith said. Applause resounded through the courtroom. After Cambodia fell to the communist Khmer Rouge in 1975, Dith spent years in labor camps, slaving 14 hours a day for a spoonful of rice. Any knowledge of politics would have guaranteed death, so Dith pretended he had been a taxi driver before the war, instead of translator and factotum for then-New York Times correspondent Sydney Schanberg. Today, photographer Dith, 42, lives a quiet, American-style life in Brooklyn. Two of his four children are in college, his wife works at a bank. Dith said he will go to Europe this summer to raise money for refugees. And he will go back to help his people.

--Stunt man Dan Koko, who did Christopher Reeve’s flying in “Superman,” won’t be jumping off the 630-foot-high Gateway Arch in St. Louis. Koko had proposed making the leap onto an air bag during the city’s Fourth of July celebration. But the city told him to forget it. “Our position is that we wouldn’t permit anything of that nature,” said Gary Easton, the assistant superintendent of the arch grounds.

--For sky-gazers who want a front row seat to see Halley’s comet, Air France is offering an April 13 flight aboard a chartered supersonic Concorde, so comet watchers can get a bird’s-eye view of the spectacle during peak visibility, the airline announced. The jet, with seats for 98 passengers, will depart from Kennedy International Airport and cruise at a height of 50,000 feet while passengers relax, sipping Champagne and munching hors d’oeuvres, Air France said. Comet watchers who pay $1,499 each for the two-hour flight, dubbed Halley’s Comet Chase and a “once-in-a-lifetime adventure,” will ride with “celestial guides” Donn F. Eisele, an Apollo 2 astronaut, and Jack Horkheimer, a television astronomer, the airline said.