East Germany (officially, the German Democratic Republic) revised its Constitution to omit mention of the concept of German reunification. The changes, which also described the Communist German state as “a socialist state of workers and farmers… under the leadership of the working class and their Marxist-Leninist party,” were made to further the new policy of Abgrenzung to designate East Germany as a separate nation.
The Polish Communist regime demanded loyalty to the state from Roman Catholic churchmen today as a basic condition for the kind of church‐state accord announced this month in Hungary. Trybuna Ludu, Communist party newspaper, which speaks tor the Government, published a half‐page statement accusing the churcn hierarchy of disobeying laws and regulations and of using medieval methods against nonbelievers. It was titled “The Matter of Church‐State Relations — the Basic Condition.” The unusual and important declaration coincided with the reading of a pastoral letter in Catholic churches that suggested new church‐state talks to settle questions of religious education, at the heart of a persistent Catholic‐Communist dispute. “We believe that these problems may be solved by talks — talks that will guarantee freedom and justice for church and state,” said the letter, read from pulpits in the name of Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski and the bishops of Poland. The Cardinal, who is Primate of Poland, and many bishops are at Ecumenical Council Vatican II.
President Giovanni Leone of Italy addressed the United Nations General Assembly today, but made no mention of the economic problems that have aroused widespread fears about the stability of his country. Mr. Leone said Italy considered the strengthening of the United Nations “one of the cardinal points of its international political action.” A delegate from a country in the European Common Market, of which Italy is a charter, member, said after Mr. Leone’s address: “It would have been nice if he had reassured us that the Italian leadership is aware of their country’s problems, and is doing something about them.” The delegate said he could be quoted “as long as my name and country aren’t used.”
Pope Paul VI opened the fourth Synod of Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in Rome. The synod, whose theme is “evangelization in the modern world,” is an advisory body established after Ecumenical Council Vatican II, the meeting of the church of 1962-65.
Though a relative lull has settled over the battlefields of South Vietnam, Communist forces appear to have achieved a critical degree of momentum in the northern and southernmost provinces that is profoundly worrying to Saigon commanders. “The Communists have undoubtedly got the initiative,” noted one highly informed Western military observer. “And once the rot sets in, it gets hard to stop. It has a snowballing effect.” The deterioration of Saigon’s control is particularly noticeable in the northern provinces of Quảng Ngãi, Quảng Nam, and, recently, Thừa Thiên. In the populous lower Mekong Delta incessant Communist attacks on militia outposts have seriously eroded government control.
One senior Western analyst argued that “on paper” the Communist gains are not all that great. But he acknowledged that the heavy summer fighting, compounded by Congressional cuts in United States military assistance, has sharply cut into the morale of South Vietnamese commanders. The situation in Quảng Ngãi, a poor province with a long history of sympathy for the Communists, is particularly disquieting to Saigon. The South Vietnamese Second Division, not one of the army’s best, has lost a series of outposts to the North Vietnamese and Việt Cộng throughout the summer. “They’ve been mauled,” said one military analyst.
Saigon’s forces are now defending essentially a narrow belt of highway running north and south through the province. In the coastal town of Thạch By, which was briefly seized by the Communists at the time of the January 28, 1973, cease-fire, soldiers can watch North Vietnamese truck convoys moving on a road parallel to Route 1. A similar situation prevails in Quảng Nam Province, which has also been the scene of heavy fighting. The 2,400-man First Airborne Regiment — perhaps the best in the South Vietnamese Army — is warily picking its way toward the district town of Thượng Ðức, 24 miles southwest of Đà Nẵng, which fell to the Communists on August 7.
A hand grenade was thrown into a packed theater 75 miles east of Saigon, killing four government soldiers and wounding 21 others, including 16 civilians, the Saigon command said today. The command spokesman said the grenade attack took place after sunset last night six miles northeast of the provincial capital of Hàm Tân. The attackers escaped, he said.
American reconnaissance aircraft flew over North Vietnam twice today, including the regions near Hanoi and the port of Hải Phòng, the Foreign Ministry announced. A statement said the flights “constitute a violation of the sovereignty of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and a violation of the Paris agreements on Vietnam.” It demanded the immediate end of the flights and strict application of the Paris agreements.
A senior State Department official said today that President Ford had decided to visit South Korea in late November on the assumption that President Park Chung Hee would soon take further steps to ease his yearlong crackdown on political opponents.
Alí Lameda, a Venezuelan translator who had served as an interpreter for the North Korean Foreign Ministry, was allowed to leave the country after seven years in a North Korean concentration camp. In 1967, Lameda had made the mistake of telling jokes about North Korean leader Kim Il Sung at a banquet for Foreign Ministry employees.
Rites of Passage, a music theatre work written by Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe, was given its first performance, making its debut at the Sydney Opera House.
Australian National Gallery buys W de Kooning’s “Woman V” for $850,000
Senators Jacob Javits and Claiborne Pell flew to Havana on a fact-finding trip, more than 13 years after the United States broke diplomatic relations with Cuba. Both are members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. They said they would confer with Premier Fidel Castro on the possibility of resuming relations. The trip was the Senators’ idea and was made without the expressed approval of the State Department, which had reportedly twice asked them to postpone it “in the national interest.”
Barbara Hutchison, director of the United States Information Service in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, was kidnapped by armed men who then took over the Venezuelan consulate, where they seized seven more hostages. The kidnappers, identified as Dominican leftists, planted bombs throughout the consulate and threatened to blow it up unless the United States paid them $1 million.
Silvio Frondizi, a brother of former President Arturo Frondizi of Argentina, was kidnapped and murdered in Buenos Aires by right-wing terrorists. He was a well-known leftist who defended political prisoners and guerrilla suspects. His son-in-law was also killed when he tried to prevent the kidnapping. The Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance took responsibility for the murder.
President Antonio de Spinola said today that a provisional government representing all political opinions would be set up in the African territory of Angola as soon as there was a cease‐fire there. General Spinola’s speech came as tension increased in Lisbon over the program for granting independence to the African territories. Hundreds of right‐wing demonstrators clashed today with leftists outside an arena where the President, Premier Vasco de Santos Goncalves and other government members watched a bullfight.
The South African delegations credentials were rejected tonight by the U.N. General Assembly’s Committee on Credentials by a vote of 5 to 3, with one abstention.
President Ford appealed again for bipartisan cooperation on economic policy as he opened the national conference on inflation in Washington, but almost from the moment he finished his brief speech, political and ideological differences with Democrats became apparent. The Speaker of the House, Carl Albert, Oklahoma Democrat, immediately followed Mr. Ford with a tough speech that emphasized wide divergence of economic views between Democrats and Republicans and made it clear that the President could not automatically count on Democratic support in Congress.
Deep and seemingly unbridgeable differences on how to curb inflation and meet other economic problems emerged at the inflation conference. President Ford got anything but unanimous support for his view, and that of all his principal economic advisers, that the root of the inflation problem is excessive government spending and borrowing.
Energy conservation was a major issue at the inflation conference. Americans were called on to save oil and gasoline, even if it meant some personal discomfort, as a means of lessening the country’s dependence on imported oil and, consequently, weakening the prices set by the oil-exporting countries. George Meany, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said, “I think we should get back to where we were last winter, to where we have some restrictions on pleasure driving.” Senator Gaylord Nelson, Wisconsin Democrat, called for a federal requirement that all automobiles should get 25 miles to the gallon “within an appropriate time, which wouldn’t have to be very far away.”
The Defense Department has refused to make public its estimates of the potential cost to the United States of a continued strategic arms race with the Soviet Union. The Defense Department’s Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation has drawn up projections on additions to the defense budget if no agreement is reached with the Soviet Union to halt the development and deployment of strategic weapons. Included in the projections are two programs begun this year as a hedge against a collapse of the talks on the limitation of strategic arms — a larger intercontinental ballistic missile to supplement the present Minuteman and a missile with a 1,000‐mile range that could be launched from either a submarine or a ship.
On the basis of experience each would undoubtedly cost in excess of $10‐billion to develop, produce and deploy. At a rough estimate, therefore, it can be assumed that if no arms agreement is reached and the Pentagon proceeds with the weapons, at least $2‐billion to $3‐billion would be added to the defense budget annually. In response to a request for information, William Beecher, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, refused to make the projections public. “We do not have good projections because the weapons are still in an early stage of development,” he said. In an earlier discussion Mr. Beecher had touched on the psychological impact such disclosures might have upon the arms‐control talks, which resumed last week in Geneva. In contrast to the secrecy about potential American costs, Defense Department officials have publicized the cost to the Soviet Union of deploying strategic missiles it has under development. The publicity is designed to underscore the enormous cost of an unchecked strategic‐arms race.
Two Senators expressed “grave reservations” today over proposals under consideration by the Atomic Energy Commission. to use plutonium as a fuel in the nation’s nuclear electric power reactors. Senators Walter F. Mondale of Minnesota and Philip A. Hart of Michigan, both Democrats, urged caution in making any long‐range commitment to plutonium as a nuclear fuel source in a letter to Dixy Lee Ray, chairman of the A.E.C.:
“As you know well, plutonium is one of the most virlulent carcinogens [cancer‐producing agents] known,” the two Senators wrote. “Many scientists believe it to be as toxic as the most lethal biological warfare agents. Even more significant, plutonium is a material from which atomic bombs are made. Several pounds are enough for a nuclear weapon capable of tremendous destruction. It is now widely recognized” that the design and manufacture of a crude atomic bomb is I not difficult technically and that the only effective obstacle in making such a weapon is the availability of plutonium itself.”
Local machinery for receiving Vietnam deserters and draft evaders and providing alternative service jobs for them, was in place in most states today, but so far only a handful of returnees had reported to state Selective Service officers to accept these jobs. Selective Service directors in seven Midwestern states said they had an adequate number of job offers from employers to provide acceptable work for the draft evaders and deserters. But by today, only five deserters had checked in at Midwestern Selective Service offices in Chicago to begin the work. One draft evader met with Iowa Selective Service officials in Des Moines. He received their approval to begin. a 24-month job in California.
American, Eastern and Trans World Airlines asked the Civil Aeronautics Board yesterday for approval to raise their domestic fares by 4 percent on November 1. They also asked the regulatory agency to make permanent a 6 percent jet fuel surcharge. The surcharge, which became effective on an emergency basis last April, is scheduled to expire on October 31. C.A.B. officials said they expected other airlines to file applications for comparable fare increases this weekend. One carrier, Continental Airlines, has requested only a 1 percent increase, plus continuation of the fuel surcharge. It also filed its request yesterday.If the fuel surcharge is continued, and the C.A.B. approves the proposed 4 percent crease on an industry‐wide basis, the total rise in the average price of a domestic airline ticket over the past year would be more than 20 percent.
Stanley Van Ness, the New Jersey public defender, called for a new trial for Rubin (Hurricane) Carter, a former boxer, and John Artis, who are serving life sentences for a triple homicide, because of newly discovered evidence of perjury by two key witnesses. The Passaic County prosecutor Joseph Courley, said he would “resist strenuously” any court move to upset the 1967 convictions.
Charles Manson, the convicted mass murderer, has been placed under tight security restrictions again after he tried to smuggle a letter to an unidentified “girlfriend” out of prison, state officials say. A prison spokesman said that Mr. Manson, who had been allowed greater freedom of movement and contact with other inmates earlier last week, would be moved back to his former cell.
Federal District Judge W. Arthur Garrity named Mayor Kevin H. White today as a co‐defendant in the Boston school desegregation case. The Mayor was thus joined with his political opponents, the Boston School Committee, who were found last June by the judge to be operating a segregated school system. The judge said that he was ordering the mayor to be a party to the case because of the city’s responsibility for safety and security, its financial stake in the school budgets and to encourage a city role in furthering integration planning.
Minor concussions of the head that can cause a brief loss of consciousness or the effect of “seeing stars” but produce no apparent physical damage have been found by two New Zealand researchers to impair intellectual function for as much as five to seven weeks afterward.
The Cleveland Indians fired manager Ken Aspromonte. The Indians are expected to make Frank Robinson the first Black major league baseball manager in his place.
The Baltimore Orioles break a scoreless tie with the Milwaukee Brewers in the 17th inning to pull out a 1–0 win. Bob Oliver tops a ball that dribbles 50 feet down the third base line, scoring Bobby Grich with the winning run. Grant Jackson wins the decision over Tom Murphy. Jim Colborn and Jim Palmer combine to pitch 25 shutout innings in the contest, but neither pitcher factors in the decision.
Sal Bando, Oakland third baseman, threw out the Chicago White Sox’ Ken Henderson on a routine play in the third inning tonight and A’s fans rose for a standing ovation. A message on the scoreboard far behind Bando read: “A’s magic number 0.” The A’s, trailing Chicago, 3–0, at the time, became American League West champions a fourth straight season when second‐place Texas was eliminated by losing a 12-inning, 5–4 decision to Kansas City tonight. The White Sox went on to beat the A’s, 3–2.
The Kansas City Royals edged the Texas Rangers, 5–4, in 12 innings to eliminate the Rangers from playoff contention. George Brett’s fourth hit of the game, a single, drove in Amos Otis with the winnng run. Al Fitzmorris (13–6) went the 12-inning distance to get the win.
Boston battered Woodie Fryman for four runs in the first inning following a two-hour rain delay and the Red Sox coasted to a 9–3 victory over the Detroit Tigers tonight.
Doug Howard drove in two runs with a seventh-inning single as California Angels downed the Minnesota Twins, 3–2. Frank Tanana (13–19) got the win. Vic Albury (8–9) took the loss.
Jerry Reuss pitched six near‐perfect innings, then pitched out of three successive jams as the Pittsburgh Pirates edged the New York Mets, 2–1. In scattering seven hits, Reuss outpitched Jon Matlack, who the Pirates touched for their runs in the sixth inning on Willie Stargell’s double and Bob Robertson’s sacrifice fly. Matlack, who shut out the Pirates last Sunday, wasn’t as sharp this time, but helped himself considerably by inducing them to hit into five double plays. The Mets even turned Robertson’s sacrifice fly into a double play, but it came too late to stop the Pirates from taking a 2–0 lead.
Bob Gibson was the chief engineer today of a 10–4 victory the St. Louis Cardinals scored over the Chicago Cubs that produced some disquieting developments as well, even though the result assured St. Louis of a share of first place for at least another 24 hours. Four injuries of as-yet unknown severity forced Cardinals out of the game. Centerfielder Bake McBride left after being hit by a pitch above the elbow, Reggie Smith has a back injury, and two relief pitchers went out as well. The Cardinals and Pirates remain tied with each having five games to play.
Six days after tossing a complete–game victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers, Dan Spillner does it again as the San Diego Padres win, 3–2. They are the only two wins for San Diego over Los Angeles this year as the Dodgers win 16 out of 18. They had won 16 straight over the Pads until Spillner beat them on September 21. Bill Russell booted Dave Hilton’s two‐out ground ball, allowing a pinch‐runner, John Scott, to race home from third base with the winning run.
Dave Concepcion led off the ninth inning with a single and scored from first base when the Giant’s pitcher, Gary Lavelle, made a wild throw on Ken Griffey’s sacrifice bunt tonight to give Cincinnati a 4–3 victory over the San Francisco Giants. It kept the Reds’ flickering playoff hopes alive. Concepcion’s single was his third hit. His second was a leadoff homer in the seventh that tied the score at 3–3. Tom Hall blanked the Giants on one hit over the last four innings.
The Montreal Expos shut out the Philadelphia Phillies behind a four-hitter by Mike Torrez. Jim Lonborg took the loss for Philadelphia. The loss officially eliminated the Phillies from playoff contention.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 621.95 (-16.03, -2.51%).
Born:
Oliver Ross, NFL tackle and guard (Dallas Cowboys, Pittsburgh Steelers, Arizona Cardinals), in Los Angeles, California.
Chris Carter, NFL safety (New England Patriots, Cincinnati Bengals, Houston Texans), in Tyler, Texas.
Radhames Dykhoff, Aruban MLB pitcher (Baltimore Orioles), in Paradera, Aruba.
Lodewijk Asscher, Chairman of the Partij van de Arbeid in the Netherlands, 2016 to 2021, and Deputy Prime Minister from 2012 to 2017; in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Trick Daddy (stage name for Maurice Young), American rapper; in Miami, Florida.
Died:
Louis Even, 89, French-born Canadian lay Roman Catholic leader and publisher, founder of the social credit movement in Quebec.
James R. Webb, 64, American screenwriter, Academy Award winner for How the West Was Won.
Silvio Frondizi, 67, Argentine lawyer, brother of former President Arturo Frondizi, was kidnapped from his home and murdered by terrorists from the right-wing Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (Triple A). On September 29, Argentine police used tear gas to disperse 3,000 people at Frondizi’s funeral procession.
History Diaries 