France has now moved where the United States has not by raising fuel prices sharply to discourage energy use and save on petroleum imports. Under an economic program announced Wednesday by Prime Minister Raymond Barre, France is getting the highest gasoline prices in Europe, and probably in the world. The new price here of more than $2 a gallon is three and one half times the average American level of 60 cents and compares, according to a tabulation made last month, with $1.80 in Italy, $1.50 in Japan and Britain, $1.40 in Switzerland and $1.30 in West Germany.
A retired Royal Navy officer, 54-year-old Lieutenant Commander Neil Rutherford, committed one of the deadliest mass killings in the history of Wales when he shot four people at the Red Gables Hotel in Penmaenmawr, set fire to the two story building, then shot himself. Killed by gunshot wounds were the hotel owner, Linda Simcox (59); Simcox’s daughter, Lorna (24) and her husband, Alistair McIntyre (33); and a former merchant seaman who had become an antique dealer and resident of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Johnny Gore Green (55). The hotel was ablaze when the police arrived. An inquest a month later found that Rutherford had been the gardener and handyman at the hotel and concluded that the murders were made in a jealous rage after Rutherford made overtures toward Linda Simcox who “did not reciprocate these feelings”.
West Germany signed an agreement of cooperation with the Justice Department today in investigations of alleged illegal sales efforts abroad by the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. The agreement, the 11th the United States has signed since last March, contains an unusual memorandum providing for possible further negotiations to allow the shared evidence to be presented to the West German Parliament. The document will enable West Germany to obtain United States documents to replace gaps caused by the disappearance of West German files dating from the 1960’s, when Franz Josef Strauss, now an opposition party leader, was Defense Minister.
In Beirut, President Elias Sarkis, who was sworn in yesterday, today began a task that few heads of state have had to face on their first days in office. He was trying to arrange things so Cabinet officers, political leaders and even plain citizens could call on him without crossing a military front line and without being shelled and shot at by snipers. Mr. Sarkis moved into the Presidential country’s religious groups. Palace at Baabda, a Christian village in the foothills just east of Beirut. His predecessor, Suleiman Franjieh, was driven from the palace late in March by direct hits from Lebanese Muslim artillery. The palace has been hit many times since. Baabda is easily accessible from Christian-held east Beirut and the Christian territory to the north. From Muslim-held west Beirut, where all the Muslim political figures and some of the Christian politicians live, it can he reached only by crossing the front line, where there is continuous shelling and sniping. Prime Minister Rashid Karami, a Muslim, thus was not able to call on the President today to submit his resignation and Mr. Sarkis has not yet been able to hold direct consultations with any of the men he may want to consider for the post of Prime Minister. They have to be Muslims, under Lebanon’s political system of apportioning posts among the country’s religious groups.
The administration’s policy in the Middle East received an unexpected setback as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved a resolution blocking the sale of Maverick missiles to Saudi Arabia. Administration officials said they hoped Congress would adjourn before the resolution was approved by the Senate and the House. Senator George McGovern, reflecting the administration view, said the 8-6 vote was a “political mistake” that is “going to complicate our relations in trying to act as an honest broker in the Middle East.” The Administration thought it had worked out a compromise to avoid a fight in Congress over the proposed sale of the Maverick missiles to Saudi Arabia. In negotiations with Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, Democrat of Minnesota, and Senator Jacob K. Javits, the New York Republican, the Administration lowered the number of missiles to be sold to Saudi Arabia from 1,500 to 650. But Senator Clifford P. Case of New Jersey, the ranking Republican on the committee, noted that he had not been a party in the negotiations or in “compromise.” With support from the pro‐Israel lobby, whose representative was patrolling the corridor outside the committee room, Senator Case pressed for an immediate vote on his resolution disapproving the Maverick sale.
China’s workers from Peking to Canton are setting new production records to honor the late Chairman Mao Zedong, a series of articles in the Chinese press says. The articles appear to be another indication that China’s new leaders, whoever they are, are trying to provide a sense of continuity and stability in the face of the uncertainty following Mao’s death September 9.
Prime Minister Takeo Miki told Parliament today that his Government’s investigation of the Lockheed bribery scandal would take longer than expected. But Mr. Miki vowed to allow prosecutors to pursue their work unhindered by political interference or considerations, and he promised a full report on the scandal to Parliament at some future date. Mr. Mild, in his formal policy statement to the extraordinary session of Parliament, attributed the delays to difficulties encountered in investigating the so‐called “Kodama route.”
Sir Ellis Clarke, who had taken office as the first President of Trinidad and Tobago when it became an independent republic on August 1, was certified by the nation’s electoral college to a seven-year term of office.
President Jorge Rafael Videla of Argentina said tonight that victory by the armed forces over guerrilla insurgents was close at hand after six months of repressive operations. General Videla spoke over national radio and television six months after the armed forces overthrew former President, Isabel Martinez de Perlin, blaming her disorganized administration for runaway inflation, corruption and lack of leadership. General Videla said that the guerrilla leadership had been eliminated and their organization broken. He spoke in Tucumen, where the army has been fighting a rural guerrilla group since last year.
After Rhodesia had its military support from South Africa withdrawn in the wake of the failure of Operation Eland, and announced that it would support a transition of Rhodesia to black majority rule, Prime Minister Ian Smith announced on television, that he agreed to the principle of majority rule, without specifying the extent of transition. Smith had reached the decision after meeting in Pretoria, South Africa with U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and South African Prime Minister John Vorster, and told viewers that an interim government would be set up with a “council of state” that “will have equal numbers of white and black members with a white chairman” and a requirement of a two-thirds majority for approval of any decisions, with the task of producing a constitution within two years to provide for a black majority government. Rhodesia would revert to colonial rule in 1979 and then become the black-ruled nation of Zimbabwe.
The acceptance of the British-American plan for majority rule in Rhodesia was welcomed by Secretary of State Kissinger as he arrived back in Washington. He warned, however, that Prime Minister Smith’s agreement to the proposal was only a start and that problems could still arise if whites and blacks in Rhodesia failed to carry out the plan.
Britain’s hopes for black rule in Rhodesia, its renegade former colony, have risen and then collapsed enough in the last decade to make any Briton skeptical of new initiatives. Even so, there was a sense here today that Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger may finally have pulled it off. “Acceptance of the inevitability of majority rule,” a Government statement said, “is a victory for realism and common sense. Without such a response, Rhodesia would have been faced with insuperable problems.” Because of its lingering colonial responsibilities for Rhodesia, Britain now becomes the broker in what are certain to be difficult steps toward a new and independent government there.
Eleven years ago Rhodesia declared itself independent of Britain. Today it is almost wholly dependent upon South Africa. Eleven years ago it positioned itself against the tide of black nationalism coursing through the continent and gave a whites only mandate to a new Prime Minister, Ian D. Smith. Today Rhodesia’s leaders say they are ready to accept eventual black rule. They have been squeezed into that position by South Africa. In 1965, Prime Minister Smith scorned world opinion, detained virtually all black nationalist leaders and on November 11 of that year read his Unilateral Declaration of Independence from England, defying a British policy that would have begun handing Rhodesia over to the colony’s 6 million blacks.
Riot squads patrolled Johannesburg’s white shopping district today and police searched and arrested scores of blacks to prevent further outbreaks of racial Violence in the city’s downtown areas. Anti‐Government rioting spread to the white business sections yesterday for the first time. Riot squads patrolled main streets in cars and conducted spot searches of blacks. The arrests occurred primarily at the city’s bus and railroad stations, which serve as entry points for commuters from black suburbs. Fifteen miles southwest of Johannesburg, the black township of Soweto, home of the city’s black labor force of 250,000, was quiet and transportation services were normal, the police said. A witness said five blacks were wounded when the police shot at commuters at a Soweto railroad station yesterday in an apparent attempt to prevent them from boarding trains to join the downtown demonstrations.
The debate between the presidential candidates was seen privately by most members of the political community as being a draw or close to one. Publicly, however, Republicans and Democrats rallied around their party’s candidate as the obvious winner. Observers felt that the caution exhibited by both President Ford and Jimmy Carter had kept the debate from injecting excitement and voter involvement into the campaign.
The 27-minute silence during the debate was caused by the failure of an obscure, 25-cent piece of equipment. While the television audience of about 65 million viewers waited and dwindled as the candidates stood at their lecterns, ABC engineers searched frantically for the cause of the trouble which took them 12 hours to finally track down.
Jimmy Carter expressed regret about remarks he made about former President Johnson in a magazine interview. Arriving for a campaign trip to Houston, Mr. Carter said the remarks, in which he said Mr. Johnson had engaged in “lying, cheating and distorting the truth,” had come in a post-interview statement.
Vice President Nelson Rockefeller is clearly enjoying himself in what appears to be his last hurrah as an active politician. In Cleveland Wednesday, he told a rally at the Cuyahoga County Republican headquarters, “I’m not a candidate this time, for the first time in my life, so I’m relaxed and happy, and that’s what gets me into trouble.” The “trouble” was a striking picture of Mr. Rockefeller raising the middle finger of his right hand at hecklers in Binghamton, New York, last week. It gained widespread attention, and everywhere he went in a swing through Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati, he was asked about it. The Vice President drew consistent laughs with his lighthearted reply: “Well, let me say that it was not a planned event. This was a spontaneous response to a sustained salute from a small group. But, you know, in the heat of enthusiasm of the political system and the right of free expression, I think these things are understood.”
The Firearms Control Regulations Act, the strictest gun control legislation in the United States, went into effect in the District of Columbia. It banned residents from owning handguns, automatic firearms, or high-capacity semi-automatic firearms, as well as prohibited possession of unregistered firearms. Exceptions to the ban were allowed for police officers and guns registered before 1976. The law also required firearms kept in the home to be “unloaded, disassembled, or bound by a trigger lock or similar device”; The law would remain in effect for more than 30 years until June 26, 2008, in the historic case of District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court of the United States determined that the ban and trigger lock provisions violated the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Patty Hearst was sentenced to seven years in prison for her role in a 1974 bank robbery. The sentence, which came despite pleas from Hearst and her attorneys for leniency because she had been a kidnap victim, “was even more severe than the Government had requested” by the prosecutor. Hearst had been kidnapped at gunpoint on February 4, 1974, by a terrorist group, the Symbionese Liberation Army, but then participated two months later on April 15 in the robbery of a branch of the Hibernia Bank in San Francisco. U.S. President Jimmy Carter would commute her sentence after only 22 months.
H. Rap Brown was granted parole from Greenhaven Prison after serving almost 3½ years of a 5-to-15-year sentence in a robbery and assault conviction. Shortly after the parole was announced, Mr. Brown’s 1968 conviction in New Orleans on federal gun charges was reversed. Without that decision, the former spokesman for black militancy would have had to go immediately from New York to a federal prison.
The police said that at least 11 persons were arrested and seven others were injured today in the worst racial incidents in Boston in this third year of court‐ordered school desegregation. Nine white or black students were arrested at Hyde Park High School and were charged in connection with fist fighting and chair‐and stone‐throwing. Two other persons were arrested in Boston’s Mattapan section and were charged in connection with stoning police officers escorting school buses. White students and black students were embroiled in “pushing, shoving and fist fights” on the front steps of the school building, a school spokesman said. Seven persons, including two teachers, were slightly injured. Chair‐throwing occurred inside the school, the spokesmen said.
Citibank lowered its prime interest rate to 6 ¾ percent from 7 percent in the face of continued sluggish loan demand. In Washington, meanwhile, the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee disclosed that it kept monetary policy unchanged at its Aug. 27 meeting. It did, however, narrow the target range for the rate on the money that banks lend to each other.
United States Supreme Court decisions prohibiting most parochial school aid were termed “religious repression” by New York Senator James Buckley. The remarks were seen as a major appeal to Catholic voters, who could form a crucial swing vote in the Senate election. Mr. Buckley said the court was unconcerned with individual rights and the protection of conscience in the area of religious education.
Nearly a third of the pupils at the all-black Grant Elementary School in the midst of Chicago’s West Side ghetto are reading today at above average levels as a result of a simple though laborious program to persuade their parents to become intensely involved in the children and the affairs of their school.
The Ford Motor Company gave paychecks to 170,000 striking workers today in the 10th day of a nationwide walkout, the last they will receive until the labor dispute is settled. The checks for the two days worked before the strike began were distributed amid rumors that the No. 2 auto maker was preparing its first proposal, or at least the first modification of its contract offer since September 13. There are optimistic statements that progress was being made in the last two days from both United Automobile Workers and Ford spokesmen. The paychecks averaged $150 before taxes. Next week, the auto workers will receive strike benefits of $40 to $50 a week depending on the number of people in their families. The widening effects of the strike forced the shutdown today of two Ford of Canada plants at Oakville, Ontario; the last two Ford facilities in North America building cars. Some 10,000 of 14,000 Canadian workers, who are not on strike, were idled and the remainder could be laid off by next week, a spokesman said. Leonard Woodcock, the U.A.W. president, who said yesterday there had been progress in the talks, was silent as he entered the Ford headquarters today.
The Philadelphia city commissioners have officially placed the referendum to recall Mayor Frank L. Rizzo on the November 2 ballot. Though the three-member elections board voted unanimously yesterday to put the question on the machine and absentee ballots, it could be removed by a State Supreme Court order. Attorneys for Mr. Rizzo and the commissioners have asked the high court to stay a ruling issued last week by Judge David Savitt of Common Pleas Court, who ruled that the recall petition was valid. Michael McAllister, a board attorney said the vote had been taken as a precaution in case the high court rejected the appeals. By a 2-to-1 vote, the commissioners had rejected the petition on the ground that not enough of the 212,000 signatures submitted were valid. Under the city charter, 145,000 signatures had to be certified as those of registered Philadelphia voters for the petition to effect a recall vote. The Citizens Committee to Recall Rizzo, which had charged the Mayor with abuse of power and fiscal irresponsibility, appealed the ruling, arguing that the criteria the commissioners used to validate signatures were far too rigid. Judge Savitt agreed and ordered the referendum placed on the ballot.
Many California desert communities deluged by a tropical storm two weeks ago were hit by new rainstorms that flooded more than 100 homes and closed several highways. The thunderstorms, caused by subtropical air moving north, from Mexico, dropped 1.3 inches of rain yesterday in sections of Riverside County and up to 1.76 inches in other desert areas, The Weather Bureau issued a flash flood watch for persons in gullies and canyons and predicted more heavy thundershowers. The authorities reported water damage at 100 homes in the Palm Desert area 10 miles south of the Palm Springs resort More than a dozen others in the neighboring community of La Quinta were damaged when water broke through “an earthen flood-control dike. Lesser damage was reported in Rancho Mirage, Indian Wells, Blythe, Indio and Thermal. No serious injuries were reported.
Revival of Peter Schickele, Robert Dennis, and Stanley Walden’s musical revue “Oh! Calcutta!” opens at Edison Theater, New York City; runs for 5,959 performances, Broadway’s longest-running musical revue.
The first American college football game outside the United States was played in Tokyo between two historically black universities, as the Grambling State Tigers defeated the Morgan State Bears, 42 to 16.
Major League Baseball:
Randy Jones, who pitched seven innings before going out for a pinch-hitter, gained his 22nd victory when the San Diego Padres rallied for three runs in the eighth to defeat the Atlanta Braves, 6–4. Willie Montanez had three hits for the Braves, including a homer, and drove in three runs. The Padres bunched three hits with an error in their rally. Bill Almon accounted for the deciding run with a double.
Wayne Garland (19–7), who won 19 games with Dallas-Fort Worth (Texas) in 1971, equaled that total by pitching the Orioles to a 3–0 victory over the Red Sox. The Orioles scored all their runs in the second inning, starting with a homer by Ken Singleton. Tony Muser followed with a single, Doug DeCinces doubled and Mark Belanger batted them home with a two-bagger. The shutout was the fourth of the season for Garland, who became a regular starter in mid-June after serving almost exclusively as a reliever in 1974 and ’75.
A three-run rally in the eighth inning brought the White Sox a 4–2 victory over the Athletics, who suffered a staggering setback in the West Division race, falling six games behind the pace-setting Royals. The White Sox notched their initial tally in the fourth inning on singles by Ralph Garr, Jim Spencer and Bill Stein before the A’s took the lead with two runs in the seventh when Claudell Washington singled after Gene Tenace walked, Sal Bando singled and Don Baylor was hit by a pitch to load the bases. The White Sox began their rally in the eighth with a double by Pat Kelly. Alan Bannister was hit by a pitch and Garr singled to fill the sacks. Spencer forced Kelly at home, but Jorge Orta followed with a single, driving in two runs to put the White Sox ahead. Jack Brohamer added an insurance run with a sacrifice fly.
Back-to-back singles by Tommy Smith and Alan Ashby led to two runs and enabled Dennis Eckersley (12–12) to pitch the Indians to a 2–0 victory over the Brewers. After Smith and Ashby hit singles in the third inning, Smith scored on a wild pitch by Jim Slaton. Singles by the same pair in the fifth and a sacrifice fly by Duane Kuiper added the Indians’ other run.
The Yankees, who were shut out in the first game, 3–0, came back to whitewash the Tigers, 8–0, in the second game of a twi-night doubleheader and reduced their “magic number” to two for clinching the East Division title. Dave Roberts (15–16) blanked the Yankees in the opener, pitching a five-hitter. A double by Mickey Stanley and single by Mark Wagner in the second inning, a homer by Rusty Staub in the third and doubles by Chuck Scrivener and Ben Oglivie in the seventh accounted for the Tigers’ tallies. The defeat was the sixth straight for the Yankees, who ended their slump in the nightcap behind the five-hit hurling of Grant Jackson (7–1). The complete game was Jackson’s first since 1970 when the lefthander was with the Phillies. Graig Nettles smashed his 30th homer of the season to account for three runs in the third inning.
A single by Ron Cey with the bases loaded in the ninth inning drove in two runs and gave the Dodgers a 7–6 victory over the Reds. Will McEnaney, who has been a disappointment as a Reds’ reliever this season, took over in the ninth with a 6–5 lead and drew his sixth defeat against two victories. Davey Lopes, who had hit a homer earlier in the game, greeted McEnaney’s arrival with a single. After Bill Buckner was retired, Reggie Smith doubled, Lopes stopping at third. Rawly Eastwick relieved and, after passing Steve Garvey intentionally, gave up Cey’s winning single. Charlie Hough (12–8) notched the win for LA.
The Phillies split a twi-night doubleheader with the Expos, winning the first game, 9–3, and losing the second game, 3–2, but moved closer to the East Division title when the Pirates also divided a twin-bill with the Cardinals. The Phillies’ lead remained at six games with nine left on their schedule and with seven remaining for the Pirates. In the opener, the Phillies broke a 3–3 tie with two runs in the fifth inning on a double by Bobby Tolan, singles by Greg Luzinski and Dick Allen and a sacrifice fly by Mike Schmidt. Four more runs in the ninth iced the verdict. In the nightcap, the Phillies posted their pair in the fourth inning, one run scoring on a single by Larry Bowa and the other on a triple by Jim Kaat. The Expos came back to knot the count in their half with a single by Bombo Rivera, a club-record 35th double by Tim Foli and singles by Ellis Valentine and Earl Williams. The winning run followed in the sixth when Valentine walked and raced home on a double by Williams.
Pinch-hitting in ninth inning, Billy Baldwin came through with his first major league homer to carry the Mets to a 4–3 victory over the Cubs. The Mets counted their initial run in the second on a wild pitch by Ray Burris with the bases loaded. Ed Kranepool hit for the circuit in the third. Pete LaCock, who had four hits, scored twice for the Cubs. Jerry Morales accounted for two RBIs. The Mets tied the score at 3–3 in the eighth on a double by Felix Millan and singles by Kranepool and Dave Kingman.
The Astros, trailing 2–1, erupted for eight runs in the fourth inning, including a homer by Cliff Johnson with two men on base, to defeat the Giants, 14–5. John D’Acquisto, the fourth of five pitchers for the Giants, tied an N. L. record by uncorking three wild pitches in one inning after relieving in the seventh. J.R. Richards (18–15) was the winner.
The Pirates, who had a chance to gain ground on the Phillies in the East Division race, blew their opportunity by losing the first game of a twi-night doubleheader to the Cardinals, 10–6, before coming back to win the second game, 11–1. In the opener, the Cardinals took a 4-2 lead in the second inning, going ahead to stay when Mike Tyson hit an inside-the-park homer with two men on base. Lou Brock and Don Kessinger each contributed two RBIs. Willie Stargell and Craig Reynolds homered for the Pirates. Reynolds’ blow was his first in the major leagues. Jim Rooker (14–8) pitched a six-hitter for the Pirates in the nightcap and also rapped two singles and scored twice. Dave Parker had three hits and drove in three runs. Bob Robertson also accounted for three RBIs, hitting a double with the bases loaded in the ninth when the Pirates exploded for six runs.
The Royals eased some tension in their drive to capture the West Division title by edging the Rangers, 2–1, in 14 innings to pull six games ahead of the Athletics with only eight games left for each club. The Rangers counted their run in the fourth on a single by Gene Clines, sacrifice by Toby Harrah, a wild pitch and sacrifice fly by Mike Hargrove. The Royals’ tying tally came in the sixth when George Brett walked, Amos Otis singled and Hal McRae hit a sacrifice fly. The contest, which took four hours, 35 minutes to complete, then proceeded with a parade of zeroes until the Royals finally broke the tie in the 14th. John Wathan opened the stanza with a single off Steve Foucault and Jim Wohlford walked. After relievers Craig Skok and Jeff Terpko each retired one batter, McRae came through with a clutch single, scoring Wathan. Larry Gura (3–0) is the winner with 5 innings of shutout relief.
San Diego Padres 6, Atlanta Braves 4
Boston Red Sox 0, Baltimore Orioles 3
Oakland Athletics 2, Chicago White Sox 4
Milwaukee Brewers 0, Cleveland Indians 2
New York Yankees 0, Detroit Tigers 3
New York Yankees 8, Detroit Tigers 0
Cincinnati Reds 6, Los Angeles Dodgers 7
Philadelphia Phillies 9, Montreal Expos 3
Philadelphia Phillies 2, Montreal Expos 3
Chicago Cubs 3, New York Mets 4
Houston Astros 14, San Francisco Giants 5
Pittsburgh Pirates 6, St. Louis Cardinals 10
Pittsburgh Pirates 11, St. Louis Cardinals 1
Kansas City Royals 2, Texas Rangers 1
Stock prices fell slightly in much slower trading. The Dow Jones industrial average ended the session off 1.49, to close at 1,009.31. Concern that the Federal Reserve Board may be temporarily forced to tighten its monetary policy sent stock prices down slightly yesterday in slower trading.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1009.31 (-1.49, -0.15%)
Born:
Stephanie McMahon, American sports administrator and chief marketing official with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE); in Hartford, Connecticut.
Carlos Almeida, Angolan basketball player and politician, in Luanda, Angola.
Died:
Ben Broussard, MLB first baseman and outfielder (Cleveland Indians, Seattle Mariners, Texas Rangers), in Beaumont, Texas.
Miloslav Gureň, Czech NHL defenseman (Montreal Canadiens), in Uherske Hradiste, Czechoslovakia.
Bruno VeSota, 54, American character actor and director (“They Stand Accused”, “Chopper”, “Teenage Doll”, “Wild Rovers”), of a heart attack.
Romney Brent, 74, Mexican-American actor and writer (“Dinner at the Ritz”).
Philip Gbeho, 72, Ghanaian composer and musician, director of the National Symphony Orchestra Ghana (NSO Ghana) and composer of the African nation’s national anthem, “God Bless Our Homeland Ghana”
John J. Emery, 78, American real estate developer who commissioned construction of the 49-story Carew Tower in 1931, at the time the tallest U.S. skyscraper west of the eastern seaboard.
