The U.S. State Department said today that two recent Soviet underground nuclear tests were apparently close to the 150‐kiloton level negotiated in the new treaty limiting such explosions. Robert L. Funseth, the department spokesman, said the Soviet tests on August 27 and September 28 were currently under review by an interagency committee, but preliminary data showed that despite considerable margin of uncertainty “the explosions were consistent with the 150-kiloton limit.” There had been reports that the explosion’s had exceeded that level, but officials in Washington said that data did not support such a conclusion. The treaty, setting a limit of the equivalent of 150,000 tons of TNT, has not been ratified by the Senate and is legally not binding, but Moscow and Washington have both pledged not to exceed it during the preratification period.
General Alexander M. Haig Jr., Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, said today there were serious readiness deficiencies within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, including what he described as “a garrison mentality” among the troops. The shortcomings, he said, are “exacerbated” by trends toward “a diminished cushion of warning time” of an impending attack by the Warsaw Pact forces. In a speech before the annual meeting of the Army Association, General Haig said, however, that the NATO command was taking steps to improve the readiness of the conventional forces, and he cautioned against any hasty change in strategic doctrine. The Haig speech was an obliquely phrased response to critics who argue that the NATO forces are unprepared for a blitzkrieg and that the alliance should shift its strategic emphasis to preparing for a short, intensive war in Europe. This theme has been expounded recently by Senator Sam Nunn, Democrat of Georgia, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and by Lieutenant General James F. Hollingsworth, a former corps commander in South Korea, in a still secret report to the Army staff.
A voluminous and detailed guide to help governments narrow the gap between rich and poor nations by the year 2000 was prepared by a group of economists and issued at the United Nations. After three years of study, the team compiled data showing that global resources would be sufficient to support growing populations and higher living standards without environmental harm. Limits to growth, the report said, are not physical but political and institutional inadequacies in the developing countries and faulty relations between third world countries and developed ones.
David O’Connell, reputedly once commander of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, was sentenced today to 18 months in jail for belonging to the outlawed organization. It was the second time in just over year that Mr. O’Connell, a 39‐year‐old former schoolteacher, had been jailed for I.R.A. membership. He was released from the top‐security Portlaoise prison six months ago after serving nine months of a one‐year sentence. He was arrested July 21. Mr. O’Connell was acquitted of other charges of having assaulted and obstructed a detective at an I.R.A. funeral the day of his arrest. The mainly Roman Catholic I.R.A. is fighting a guerrilla war in Northern Ireland to drive out the British and to unite the province to the Irish Republic.
Police hunting a gang believed to have taken several million francs from a Paris bank vault in August have arrested a man trying to exchange some of the stolen treasury bonds. The thieves tunneled from an underground sewer into a branch of the Societe Generale and emptied the vault. Garage owner Raymond Brisacier, 40, has been charged with attempting to exchange stolen goods. The police said they arrested him in a Paris post office and later found about $58,000 worth of stolen treasury bonds at his home.
Air quality in many European cities has improved as a result of environmental programs developed by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, its Committee on the Challenge of Modern Society reported. Russell E. Train, administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, told participants at the fall session of the committee that a survey of NATO cities with populations over 600.000, plus Luxembourg, Oslo and Reykjavik, showed 47 cases of improved air quality, 27 cases of stable air quality and only one city whose air pollution had worsened. That city was not named.
A four-hour strike idled most industrial and commercial activities in the Italian automobile capital of Turin. It was the first major organized protest against austerity measures introduced by the government last week. In Milan, provincial unions have announced a two-hour walkout in protest over the austerity measures. The three national unions, however, are split over plans for a nationwide general strike.
A Soviet trawler’s catch and gear were ordered confiscated and an Irish court fined its skipper the maximum $170 for illegal fishing within Ireland’s 12-mile limit. The Irish government also rendered a bill to Captain Nikolai Shinkaruk, 34, of Murmansk, for an unstated amount to cover the cost of ammunition fired by patrol vessels in halting the trawler Belomoyre September 29 off County Waterford. Despite his innocent plea, the captain was convicted of fishing a half mile inside the limit.
President Ford’s decision to lift the ban on some advanced military equipment for Israel apparently caught middle-level State Department and Defense Department experts by surprise. This reinforced the view in both agencies that the decision had been timed primarily for political purposes. Nevertheless, the White House and State Department continued to deny that Presidential campaign politics had played a part in the decision. Robert L. Funseth, the State Department spokesman, again cited Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger’s comment on Monday that the decision “was handled as a routine decision in an on‐going relationship.” Normally, before a Presidential decision is made on a weapons sale, staff work has been completed and officials in both the State and Defense Departments are aware of a pending action. But in this case, only high officials were apparently aware that last week Mr. Ford agreed to the new items and informed Israel on Saturday. According to State Department officials, the main new items involved were night‐fighting electronic equipment and a bomb originally developed for the Vietnam War that can cause extensive fire and concussion damage. The bomb, listed formally as a cluster bomb, contains a type of weapon known as fuel‐air explosives, and is effective against large groups of enemy forces. It kills by causing wide incendiary damage and by also creating a temporary vacuum that can suffocate the enemy.
Syrian troops, aided by artillery and tank fire, pressed Palestinian forces defending the strategic towns of Aleih and Bhamdun on the Damascus highway east of Beirut. The new Syrian offensive forced the cancellation of cease-fire talks because Palestinian and Arab League negotiators would have been required to go through the towns under Syrian shelling. The Syrian Army, having struck at Palestinian guerrillas south of Beirut yesterday, opened new drive today against Palestinian units 12 miles east of Beirut. The drive was seen as part of a Syrian campaign of alternately using military and political pressures to force the leadership of the Palestinian Liberation Organization to accept a settlement in Lebanon on Syrian terms. The attack today was carried out by Syrian forces supported by artillery and heavy fire from dug‐in tanks. By nightfall, according to a Palestinian spokesman, the Syrians had gained some ground hear the village of Shanayh south of Bhamdun. But he said the attackers had been held off outside Bhamdun and Aleih.
Meanwhile, the Syrian forces that began a drive in southern Lebanon yesterday with the apparent aim of cutting off the Palestinian‐held port city of Saida did not advance today, although it was clear that they could have done so. Moving out yesterday from Jezzin, 20 miles east of Saida, they advanced five miles westward and took the town of Rum. In doing so, they crossed the last steep foothills that presented the Palestinians with natural defense lines east of Saida. The Syrian troops remained in the Rum area today, apparently content for the moment at least to he within striking distance of Saida, the only remaining major supply port for the Palestinian main force and Lebanese leftists in the predominantly Muslim western part of Beirut. The Syrian objective, it seems, to hem in the Palestinians militarily to the point where political and logistical support from other Arab Governments can no longer help them defy the Syrian wishes. The Palestinian leaders had hoped to obtain such help at a conference of Arab heads of state scheduled to open in Cairo Monday.
Thailand’s new military leadership announced that democratic elections would not be held for at least four years and that full democracy might not be restored for a decade, The broadcast statement was made amid reports of potential unrest among left-wing students.
After a week of tumultuous political conflict in China, diplomatic analysts in Hong Kong believe that they can begin to perceive the outlines of what happened, but they still lack hard evidence on many points. Like readers of cunningly devised detective story, the analysts are trying to piece together half dozen known facts, a bizarre tale of intrigue unexpectedly furnished by Chinese in Peking, and series of Aesopian hints in the Chinese press. First the facts: Hua Kuo‐feng, virtually unknown only a year ago, has been confirmed as Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, succeeding Mao Zedong. Mr. Hua will also be chairman of the Military Commission and Prime Minister, an unprecedented combination of posts in the party, army and government that no Chinese leader, including Mao, ever held before. No Chinese official has denied reports that the four leftist party leaders, including Mao’s widow, Chiang Ching, have been arrested after being charged with fabricating Mao’s alleged last saying. Chinese spokesmen have only said “no comment,’ though in the past they have quickly denied other reports they considered untrue. This does not confirm the arrests but, as one Chinese Communist in Hong Kong remarked, it gave him growing “feeling” they might be true.
American businessmen in the Philippines were considering a class-action lawsuit against the new U.S. tax law’s reduction in the tax exemption on income earned by Americans abroad, the American Chamber of Commerce said. Other actions suggested by the chamber included refusal to file tax returns, renouncing American citizenship, lobbying with Congress for a change in the law and a mass return to the United States. The law reduces the tax-exempt ceiling on income of Americans living abroad from $25,000 to $15,000.
A Philippine opposition leader said a referendum on the martial law rule of President Ferdinand E. Marcos is “a goodby to Philippine democracy” and called for a nationwide boycott of the plebiscite. Jovito R. Salonga, a former senator and a vocal opponent of Marcos’ one-man rule since martial law was imposed September 21, 1972, said the referendum Saturday would institutionalize dictatorship in the Philippines.
Eighty-eight bystanders were killed when a Lloyd Aéreo Boliviano Boeing 707 crashed into a house, a school and a soccer field after failing to gain sufficient speed during its takeoff from Santa Cruz in Bolivia. A spokesman for the Bolivian Air Force said that most of the students had gone home for lunch but that at least 60 had remained inside the building. The jet, being used as a cargo plane and staffed by a crew of three, was returning to Miami after delivering livestock and clipped the tops of large trees 200 yards (180 m) from the end of the runway, “crashed through a line of people waiting to buy kerosene for cooking from a street vendor”, gone through the school and through a field where two groups of students were practicing outside a local stadium for a soccer football game, then impacted the stadium wall, setting a fire in a locker room that caused eight students to die of asphyxiation. The impact came at 1:32 in the afternoon.
Police were called in to control housewives who formed long lines in Rio de Janeiro to buy black beans, the food staple of Brazil’s poor people and now rationed because of shortages caused by floods and drought. The lines, and subsequent clashes between customers and police, began early Monday morning when supermarkets opened to sell limited quantities of a shipment of beans that arrived last week from Chile.
The death toll from a mysterious fever [Ed: Ebola Virus] sweeping northern Zaire in central Africa reached 253 today, but doctors reported no new cases in the last six days and hope the epidemic is under control.
Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian D. Smith today warned the black nationalist leaders invited to the coming Geneva conference that many “moderate” Africans were ready to cooperate in forming an interim government if the nationalist leaders did not come to terms under the provisions of the agreement he negotiated last month with Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger.
An official in the Transkei said today that two award-winning black actors. Winston Ntshona and John Kani, would be released from detention when they had “satisfactorily” answered questions relating to a performance six days ago.
A wide-ranging federal inquiry has found that 14 persons in nine states died within 48 hours after receiving swine flu inoculations since the national immunization program began less than two weeks ago, but federal officials said their investigation had found no evidence that any of the deaths were caused by the vaccine. At the 45 vaccination centers in New York City, meanwhile, few people showed up for the shots. The first three reported deaths of persons who had been inoculated occurred in a Pittsburgh clinic and touched off nationwide concern and suspension of the swine flu immunization program in a number of states. The director of the Allegheny County Health Department said in an interview that preliminary results of medical tests into the deaths had shown no evidence that the vaccine was responsible. In what is presumed to be an effort to reassert the worthiness of the effort, the White House announced today that President Ford would receive a shot of the vaccine tomorrow.
President Ford campaigned through four New York metropolitan area counties, attacking Jimmy Carter as a Democrat who would raise taxes and “spend, spend, spend.” Mr. Ford portrayed his Democratic challenger as an advocate of programs that would cost at least $100 billion to carry out. The President was well received in New York and New Jersey. Tailoring his speeches to the interests of his generally friendly suburban audiences, the President repeatedly said he had stemmed Democratic spending programs by his vetoes and portrayed his opponent as the executor of a Democratic platform that would cost at least $100 billion to implement. “Do you want your taxes raised so that you can pay for the $100 billion program of Jimmy Carter?” he asked the crowd spread out on the lawn of the Rockland County Courthouse in New City. He got back the response he wanted‐a resounding “No!”
President Ford, reversing recent Agriculture Department pronouncements, decided today to increase price-support loans for farmers who grow wheat, corn and other livestock-feed grains. The President’s decision was announced by John A Knebel, acting Secretary of Agriculture, who denied in response to persistent questioning at a news briefing any political motivation for the move and its timing. He said the only reason was the current economic situation faced by grain producers. The action came one day after Jimmy Carter the Democratic nominee asserted that an increase was long overdue. Election day is three weeks away.
For the first time since 1959, the U.S. flag has been displayed atop the Alabama statehouse in Montgomery, which served the Confederacy as its first capitol. The hoisting of the national flag above the state flag and Confederate flag ended years of bitter controversy. Sources said Governor George C. Wallace had “just decided the time had come to do it.” Before, the U.S. flag flew from a staff on the capitol grounds, while the state flag and the Confederate flag were displayed atop the dome. The Confederate flag did not join the state flag over the capitol until 1963, when then Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy visited Wallace to discuss the state’s integration problems.
Two top leaders of a Hare Krishna temple in New York City pleaded not guilty to charges of unlawfully imprisoning two members of the religious sect through brainwashing. Harold Conley, 35, temple supervisor, and Angus Murphy, 24, the group’s president, and the International Society for Krishna Consciousness were indicted by a grand jury on charges of illegally holding two disciples, Eric Shapiro, 22, and Marylee Kreshower, 23. The two disciples were being held in $50,000 bond each as material witnesses while their parents sought to have them committed to mental institutions, Assistant District Attorney Michael Schwed said.
The majority of the trustees of the Teamsters’ troubled Central States Pension Fund, under growing pressure from three federal investigations, are planning to resign later this month, informed sources said in Washington. The resignations will be submitted once the 15 trustees decide among themselves who will go and who will stay. Investigators are checking allegations that the $1.4 billion fund has misused union members’ pension money and maintains ties to organized crime.
Changes in the federal income tax code will delay the mailing of the basic tax forms until after Christmas, two weeks later than usual. Traditionally, the IRS mails Form 1040, the long form used by those who itemize deductions and have other special deductions for income — and Form 1040A, the short form for those with simple returns and who take the standard deduction — around December 25.
Thousands of cards authorizing citizens to buy Federal food stamps are being diverted from the mails into an illicit market, and local officials around the country are refusing to help the Postal Service do anything about it, according to the chief postal inspector.
A mistrial was declared in the robbery-murder trial in Boston of Susan E. Saxe, 27, former honor student at Brandeis University who turned to revolutionary politics. Miss Saxe, once on the FBI’s most-wanted list. was accused of two counts of armed robbery and one of felony murder in connection with a 1970 bank holdup that resulted in the death of a policeman. Judge Walter McLaughlin ordered the jurors not to discuss the case because, he said. “There could be a retrial.”
The trustee of the bankrupt W.T. Grant Company accused the Morgan Guaranty Trust Company and 26 other leading banks for which it acted as agent of having controlled Grant’s management “to serve their own interests.”
The United States Commission on Civil Rights released the report, Puerto Ricans in the Continental United States: An Uncertain Future, providing documentation that Puerto Ricans in the United States had a poverty rate of 33 percent in 1974, up from 29 percent in 1970, the highest of all major ethnic minorities in the U.S. The study did not include Puerto Rico itself, which was a U.S. territory.
CBS Inc. announced the dismissal of Arthur Taylor as president and the appointment of John Backe, head of the CBS publishing division, to succeed him. High-ranking executives were also stunned by an announcement by William Paley, chairman of CBS since 1928, who is 75, that he would step down as chief executive officer.
A special task force to press criminal charges in corporate bribery cases has been formed by the Justice Department, a senior official disclosed. The government has forced about 225 companies to acknowledge having made illegal or questionable payments in the last two years, but the cases to be pressed would be the first to involve possible prison terms.
There is a 64% chance that one or more major oil spills will reach land during offshore drilling near the New England coast, according to a study by the U.S. Geological Survey released in Washington, D.C. Two big spills-1,000 barrels or more-are expected during the 20-year life of the oil field, according to the USGS’s “risk analysis.” The. study was prepared to help Interior Secretary Thomas Kleppe decide whether to hold a proposed lease sale off New England next year.
Regulations that would make it illegal for tuna fishermen to kill certain types of porpoises — whether intentionally or otherwise — were proposed in Washington, D.C., by the National Marine Fisheries Service. A spokesman for the service said the regulations are necessary because nearly 134,000 porpoises were killed by tuna fishermen last year. The fishermen frequently use porpoises to locate a school of tuna, the spokesman said, and as a result the porpoises are caught in nets and either drown or choke to death. The porpoise, a mammal, must surface for air.
Cleanup from a major oil spill in the St. Lawrence River may be completed by next week, the U.S. Coast Guard reported. A Coast Guard spokesman said crews and equipment will be withdrawn on October 20, though the service will continue periodic inspection and will respond to any public complaint about any area still in need of cleanup. The spill, which affected miles of shoreline and offshore islands, occurred when an oil barge went aground in June.
The United States currently has no plan for cleaning its waterways of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, a highly toxic chemical identified as a potential source of cancer. Legislation signed this week by President Ford requires the Environmental Protection Agency to develop a program to rid the environment of PCBs but a spokesman for the EPA said, “We just don’t know what we’re going to do” to implement the plan. PCBs have been found in such rivers as the Columbia, Sacramento and Hudson and in the Great Lakes.
X-rays of the skulls of Egyptian mummies and tests of their hair samples have enabled a team of American scientists to identify the mummy of King Tut’s grandmother, who lived more than 3,300 years ago. The mummy was found in 1898, but it had lacked identification.
First electron micrograph of an Ebola viral particle is obtained by Dr. F.A. Murphy, working at the CDC
Major League Baseball, American League Championship series:
The Kansas City Royals, facing elimination, beat the New York Yankees, 7–4, to extend the series. Hoping to wrap up the series in four games, Yankee manager Billy Martin brought back Catfish Hunter on three days’ rest while the Royals did the same, bringing back Larry Gura. Neither fared well, as Gura gave up six hits and two runs in two innings, while Hunter lasted three and surrendered five runs on five hits. Though the Yankees’ bullpen was able to hold Kansas City to only two runs over six innings, winning pitcher Doug Bird only gave up one in 4 ⅔, while lefty Steve Mingori pitched 2 ⅓ and allowed only one tally, picking up the save. The Yankee offense was highlighted by Graig Nettles’ two homers and three RBI. The series was then knotted at two, with a deciding Game 5 to be played the next night.
Kansas City Royals 7, New York Yankees 4
The stock market’s slump was checked by a technical rally. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 15.95 points to close at 948.30. Since reaching its 1976 high of 1,014.79 on September 21, the average had plunged 82.44 points, or 8 percent because of the slowing economy. Credit markets were generally sluggish except for a strong showing by the Duke Power Company’s $100 million offering of 30-year bonds, which will yield 8.42 percent.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 948.30 (+15.95, +1.71%)
Born:
Vanessa Chinitor, Belgian pop singer, in Dendermonde, Belgium.
