The Kremlin has voiced its sharpest objection yet to the tough line toward the Soviet Union that President Ford and Jimmy Carter are taking in the Presidential campaign. A toughly worded statement in the official Communist Party newspaper Pravda warned today in its headline: “Mr. Candidates, Don’t Overstep the Line of the Permissible.” The article rebuked both men for having exceeded what Moscow felt were the bounds of propriety in their remarks to American voters. “Even allowing for the methods used in bourgeois countries by candidates chasing votes, such acts are quite inadmissible and have understandably outraged the Soviet people,” Pravda said. In particular, it criticized Mr. Ford for having invited what it called “émigré riffraff” into the White House earlier this week to explain his position on Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. The reprimand was unsigned and strategically placed opposite Pravda’s international‐affairs page, suggesting that it carried official weight. It was the first time that the Kremlin had injected its opinions directly into the American election campaign. While Moscow still appears to favor Mr. Ford slightly, as a known quantity, it has indicated increasing irritation with the promises of both candidates to combine a strong defense posture with a no-nonsense treatment of the Soviet Union.
A Yugoslav district judge, arrested last May in his courtroom as the result of his advocacy of civil rights, was convicted today of treason and other crimes and sentenced to six years imprisonment. The judge, 55‐year‐old Franc Miklavcic, was accused of advocating the separation of his native republic of Slovenia from Yugoslavia, a charge he denied. Most of the evidence supporting this contention, the basis of the treason charge, was drawn from several inferential passages in a private diary kept by Judge Miklavcic and seized by the secret police a raid. In common with other prominent Slovenes prosecuted or otherwise harassed, Judge Miklavcic had been a member of the Christian Socialist Party before World War II. It was a leftist, democratic party that allied itself with Marshal Tito’s partisans during the Axis occupation of Yugoslavia. Mr. Miklavcic himself won medals as a member of the Tito forces during the war.
The Supreme Court of Ireland today approved the emergency powers bill, but warned that the measure made “such inroads into personal liberty that it must be construed strictly.” The bill is to be signed tonight by President Cearbhall O. Dalaigh, who expressed doubts about its constitutionality when he referred it to the nation’s top judicial body three weeks ago. It empowers the police to detain suspected terrorists for as many as seven days without stating specific charges against them. Since this contradicts the Constitution, it was necessary for the Government to set the Constitution aside before introducing the bill. This was done by securing from Parliament a declaration of a state of emergency.
The Brazilian cargo ship Sylvia L. Ossa sank roughly 140 miles (230 km) west of Bermuda within the area of the Atlantic Ocean described as the Bermuda Triangle, with the loss of all 37 crew. An overturned lifeboat from the ship and an oil slick were the only traces of the sinking of the vessel, which had been transporting iron ore to Philadelphia in the United States.
A curfew imposed on the West Bank town of Hebron by Israeli military forces entered its 12th day today as top Government officials sought to dampen the religious passions aroused among Muslims and Jews by acts of desecration committed at a Hebron shrine revered by both faiths. Both Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Defense Minister Shimon Peres, who are at odds politically, visited Hebron today to inspect repairs being made at the shrine in the aftermath of vandalism and rioting there. The incidents at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, which is reputed to contain the remains of Abraham, who is venerated by both religions, resulted in a total military curfew being placed on Hebron’s 60,000 Muslim Arab residents. They also resulted in demands from some Israelis and Arabs that curbs be placed on the actions of members of Gush Emunim, a fundamentalist Jewish group. Many members of the group live in Qiryat Arba, a controversial new Jewish settlement that abuts Hebron.
Syrian tanks and infantry increased their pressure today on the Palestinian stronghold of Aleih, east of here, but though the fighting was fierce, they gained little ground. Syrian artillery also pounded roads and villages between Aleih and Beirut, setting numerous fires. They burned all day on the wooded slope that rises steeply from the sea just south of the capital to the ridge west of Aleih. To the south, Syrian artillery reportedly started shelling the port of Saida shortly before nightfall, causing ships anchored in the harbor to take to the sea. Saida, 25 miles south of here, is the last supply gate for Muslim‐held West Beirut, where the Palestinian movement has its headquarters and a large concentration of troops. Syrian ground forces pulled up within striking distance a few miles east of Saida yesterday. Later the Palestinian command said that Syrian guns were firing star shells — flares — on Saida, possibly in preparation for a night attack.
Thailand’s military junta has begun nationwide roundup of leftist writers, professors and intellectuals under a new directive allowing detention of suspected Communists for up to 30 days with no bail and no charges. The first victims of the new law have been some of the most noted figures in Thailand’s intellectual community, who have either been seized or are being hunted—Khamsing Srinawk, whose stories have won wide acclaim in the English-speaking world; Srilak Sivarat, a scholar and leader of the Thai peace movement, and Dr. Saneh Chanarik, the deputy rector of Bangkok’s Thammasat University. This afternoon, the publisher of one of Thailand’s leading left‐wing weekly magazines, Pansak Vinyaratn, was plucked from a bus taking him, his wife, Didi, who is an American, and their two children out to a plane headed for Hong Kong. He is being held without bail with no charges in the Central Intelligence Division prison. Those held can be sent to “re-education centers” after 30 days if they show no signs of repentance.
Wall posters appeared in Shanghai and other cities in China today accusing four senior leftists, including Chairman Mao Tse-tung’s widow, Chiang Ching, of having plotted against the Communist Party. There were unconfirmed rumors that the four had tried to assassinate Hua Kuo-feng, the new party chairman. The Shanghai posters identified the tour officials by name and denounced them as an “antiparty plot group,” according to foreign diplomats who saw them. Other posters said, “Crush the heads of the four dogs,” and “Crush and strangle the gang of four.” The leftists, all members of the Politburo, were reportedly arrested last week after a Politburo meeting that named Mr. Hua Chairman of the party, succeeding Mao. In addition to Miss Chiang, they were Chang Chun‐chiao, the senior Deputy Prime Minister and head of the general political department of the army, Wang Hung‐wen, the youthful second‐ranking member of the party, and Yao Wen‐yun, an acerbic propagandist.
The South Korean Government said yesterday that firing by antiaircraft ground batteries in Seoul Thursday had wounded 21 persons, eight seriously, and one of them died later at a hospital. All those wounded had been hit by flying shrapnel. The batteries fired twice for a total of four minutes yesterday evening, apparently to chase away an unidentified aircraft flying into a restricted zone over the heart of Seoul. Initial reports said the aircraft was Northwest Airline’s cargo plane bound for Seattle, Washington. The airline’s office here refused to confirm the report.
Japan has selected the McDonnell‐Douglas F‐15 as its next mainstay fighter for its Self‐Defense Forces. Ko Maruyama, Deputy Minister of Defense, said the choice of the F‐15 by the Self‐Defense Force staff office would not be changed by the Defense Ministry, but that costs would force the agency to reduce the number of fighters assigned to each squadron or to cut the number of squadrons. The staff office’s plan calls for the purchase of 170 F‐15’s. According to the defense agency, the F‐15 is expected to cost more than 6 billion yen, or $20.7 million, If the proposed 170 F‐15’s are purchased from McDonnell-Douglas, the expenditure would reach more than 1,000 billion yen, or $345 million.
Prime Minister Fidel Castro said today that he would renounce Cuba’s 1973 antihijacking agreement with the United States because of what he described as American complicity in the crash of a sabotaged Cuban airliner off Barbados last week. In Washington, Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger said that the United States had nothing to do with the bomb that exploded aboard the airliner and warned that the United States would “hold Cuba strictly accountable for any encouragement of hijacking or any act of terrorism that may flow from its renunciation of the treaty.“ Speaking at a rally in Havana in honor of the 73 passengers and crew members killed in the crash. Mr. Castro said the anti-hijacking agreement could not survive “this act of terrorism.” Be charged that the United States Central Intelligence Agency had been directly involved in the sabotage, which, he said, was carried out through “mercenaries” by anti-Castro groups based in the United States. The Prime Minister said that he was invoking the clause of the treaty allowing either side to renounce it by giving six months’ notice. He said that Cuba would make no efforts to renew the pact, now set to expire on April 15.
The 1976 Ebola Outbreak: The World Health Organization said today that team of specialists would fly to Africa to try to find the cause of a mysterious disease carried by green monkeys that has killed more than 300 people. An agency spokesman said the team of, four to six specialists, would leave for the Sudan and Zaire as soon as official approval was received from the two countries. The disease, called a viral hemorrhagic fever, is a variant of the so‐called “Green Monkey” or “Marburg” disease, the spokesman said. It was first identified in 1967 in Marburg, West Germany, when 30 laboratory technicians became sick after handling green monkeys from Uganda and Kenya. Seven of the technicians died.
Prime Minister John Vorster had extended discussions today with Roelof W. Botha South Africa’s Ambassador to the United States, apparently to decide whether South Africa should attend a conference on South-West Africa that Secretary a State Henry A. Kissinger has proposed as the means of resolving the impasse on the future of the territory, also known as Namibia. Neither man had any comment on the discussions, which were also attended by the Foreign Minister, Hilgard Muller. But officials in touch with the discussion said that the mood was somber, reflecting Mr. Vorster’s strong personal disinclination to any direct contact between South Africa and the South‐West African People’s Organization, which would be a key participant at the talks.
John Kani and Winston Ntshona, two black actors who won Tony awards on Broadway last year, will be brought to trial in connection with their performances last week in the prize-winning play, “Sizwe Banzi is Dead,” Kaiser Matanzima, chief minister of the Transkei, said tonight.
The two candidates for Vice President of the United States debated for the first time in American history, as Democrat Walter Mondale and Republican Bob Dole, U.S. Senators for Minnesota and Kansas respectively, faced off in Houston’s Alley Theater in a nationally televised event. Both candidates would later lose in a U.S. presidential election (Mondale in 1984 and Dole in 1996) as would Gerald Ford (in 1976) and Jimmy Carter (in 1980). The vice-presidential candidates met in debate, trading sporadically acrimonious words over whether Republican fiscal prudence or Democratic social programs would better serve the nation’s economy. Senator Dole described Jimmy Carter as a man without a program and said his opponent, Senator Mondale, was the Senate’s most liberal member. Mr. Mondale, for his part, attempted to tie President Ford and Senator Dole to their records and to former President Nixon.
Charles F. Ruff, the Watergate special prosecutor, has declined to begin an inquiry into whether President Ford, as a Congressman in 1972, sought to block an investigation of Watergate by a committee of the House of Representatives at the behest of the Nixon White House. Representative John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan, made public today a letter from Mr. Ruff in which the special prosecutor said that “neither the information previously available nor recent statements concerning” the efforts to stifle an investigation “would justify this office’s initiation of an investigation.” The investigation proposed for the House Banking and Currency Committee in 1972 was not undertaken. In a separate letter to Representative Elizabeth Holtzman, the Brooklyn Democrat, M. Ruff said that Watergate investigators had considered the question of efforts to manipulate legislative investigations and determined that “there was insufficient likelihood” that corruption under the Federal legal definitions could be established.
The White House today ordered Clarence M. Kelley the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to abandon a proposed speech that was sharply critical of recent news coverage of his agency. In the speech, intended for delivery to a group of New Mexico news executives in Albuquerque tonight, Mr. Kelley had planned to announce that the bureau would no longer cooperate with certain reporters who had “journalistically bludgeoned” the bureau with selective news articles and “heavy handed interpretation.” The reporters were not identified. After a telephone conversation with Attorney General Edward H. Levi, who reached Mr. Kelley in Chicago on a stopover on his flight to Albuquerque, the F.B.I. Director issued a statement explaining why he was abandoning the prepared speech. As written, he said, the speech appeared “to give the wrong impression and does not truly reflect my Feelings about the press.”
President Ford said in Ames, Iowa today that Jimmy Carter was a political quick‐change artist who would harm farmers by using their produce as a diplomatic weapon. Mr. Ford, speaking to a large and densely packed audience at Iowa State University, said that Mr. Carter “has strange way of changing his accent as ‐ he moves about this great country — in California he tries to sound like Cesar Chavez; in Chicago he sounds like Mayor Daley; in New York he sounds like Ralph Nader; in Washington he sounds like George Meany.” “Then he comes to the farm belt and he becomes a little old peanut farmer,” he added. The crowd groaned with disapproval as the President mentioned the leader of the largely Mexican‐American Farm Workers Union, the big city machine Mayor, the consumer advocate, and the president of The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations.
Jimmy Carter denounced Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford today, charging them with failure to reverse the country’s rising crime rate. In a combative speech in Detroit, the Democratic Presidential nominee ridiculed most of the anticrime programs created by the Republicans since 1969 and traced the growth of serious crime in America Federal ineptitude and insensitivity. “Restoring order to our society is not a question of liberal versus conservative, Republican versus Democrat, black versus white, rich versus poor,” he said. “It is a question of leadership.”
President Ford has apparently modified the Administration’s policy on Middle East negotiations and brought it closer to that favored by Israel. In a meeting yesterday with a group of editors from the American Jewish press, Mr. Ford said: “I say that any settlement in the Middle East should come from direct negotiations between Israel and the Arab nations.” In the past, Administration officials, such as Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, have deliberately left ambiguous whether future negotiations in the Middle East should be direct, as favored by Israel, or indirect, as favored by Arabs and, in fact, practiced since the October 1973 war by Mr. Kissinger in his shuttle diplomacy.
There is “no evidence whatever” that the swine flu vaccine has caused any deaths among the 2.5 million persons who have received it, according to the Center for Disease Control. The center, which has investigated 35 deaths of persons who died within 48 hours of receiving a flu shot, is the main federal agency conducting the program.
Industrial production failed to rise last month for the first time in 18 months, according to the Federal Reserve Board’s index measuring the physical output of factories, mines and utilities. The index remained unchanged during September, following increases of 0.5 percent in each of the preceding two months.
Dismissing fears that the economic recovery had stopped, a group of business and government economists forecast continued growth toward the end of this year and into 1977 and 1978. The economists, in a report made to business leaders, said the “pause” in the recovery, which has prompted fears of a new recession and undermined stock prices, had been overestimated.
The surgeon who removed Senator Hubert H. Humphrey’s cancerous bladder last week said yesterday that pathological tests showed that, cancer “had penetrated the bladder wall and involved some of the regional lymph nodes.”
A lawyer for 10 present and retired members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters says he has filed a class-action suit accusing three teamsters’ union pension funds of cheating their members out of pensions. Lawrence Wainer, who filed the suit in United States District Court on behalf of the 10, said yesterday that the 80‐page document included the affidavit of Florida man who contended that his life had been threatened when he tried to collect his pension. David Dutchak, 76 years old, said in the affidavit that although he was a teamsters member from 1944 until his retirement in 1967, he was denied his pension because he had belonged to different union locals during those years. “He was told by a lady at the union local in Florida that if he persisted in trying to get his pension he could be thrown in a ditch,” Mr.. Wainer said. “He went directly home, and an hour later got an anonymous phone call from a man who said, ‘For $1,000 and a plane ticket, you can be killed.’ ”
A federal agency ruled that the Gulf Oil Corporation must pay millions of dollars to a major interstate pipeline company because Gulf failed to deliver as much natural gas as its contract called for. The agency, the Federal Power Commission, rejected a recommendation by its administrative judge that the matter be referred to the Justice Department.
Amtrak has announced that it will speed up the schedule of 28 trains starting October 31, the first time in its history that schedules will have been shortened. The shorter schedules will affect long distance trains in the East and Northeast and corridor trains in the Middle West, the rail passenger corporation said. Many of the schedule speedups are less than 30 minutes. Amtrak said that the shorter schedules were a result of track improvements carried out by Conrail.
Maine Indian leaders have agreed to explore ways to press their claims to 60% percent of the state’s land without further, disrupting municipal finances. Governor James B. Langley and governors of the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy, Indians met yesterday to discuss the land dispute, which has dried up the market for Maine bonds. “We have opened a dialogue,” said Thomas Tureen, a lawyer for the Indians. “We have begun to explore a possible way out of the present situation we are in.”
A ban of all non-essential uses of fluorocarbon propellants in spray cans was proposed by the Food and Drug Administration. Scientific evidence has accumulated in recent years indicating that the fluorocarbon gases tend to diffuse into the ozone layer and deplete it. This depletion is considered harmful because the ozone layer protects the earth from ultraviolet radiation.
The Audubon Bird Sanctuary said today that a rare book containing 100 hand‐colored bird engravings, valued at more than $70,000, had been stolen from the sanctuary’s museum. Edward Graham, museum curator, said the hook was one of a four‐volume set entitled “Birds of America,” written by John Audubon and published in 1837. It was the only book of the set on display at the museum.
Ringo Starr releases the single “A Dose of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” which peaks at 26 in the US but fails to chart in the UK.
In a matchup that will mark the World Series debut of the designated hitter and the return of the New York Yankees, the Cincinnati Reds will open the defense of their baseball championship tomorrow with Don Gullett pitching against Doyle Alexander.
Stock prices rose slightly in slower trading, The Dow Jones industrial average closed up 1.08 points at 937. For the week, the key barometer dropped 15.38 points as investor apprehension over the sluggish economic recovery put heavy pressure on the market.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 937.00 (+1.08, +0.12%)
Born:
Mondriel Fulcher, NFL tight end (Oakland Raiders), in Coffeyville, Kansas.
Elisa Aguilar, Spanish women’s national team and WNBA guard (Olympics, 2004, 2008; Utah Starzz), in Madrid, Spain.
Yoon Son-ha, South Korean actress and singer (“Fighting Girl”), in Jeonju, South Korea.
Minh Tuyet (stage name for Tran Thi Minh Tuyet), Vietnamese-born American pop singer known as “the Vietnamese Pop Princess”; in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Kamiar Rokni, Pakistani fashion designer; in Bahawalpur, Pakistan.
Died:
Carlo Gambino, 74, Italian-born American crime boss who led the Gambino family mob and from 1957 until his death, “The Commission” that coordinated the activities of the Five Families (Gambino, Bonnano, Colombo, Genovese and Luchesse) that controlled organized crime in New York City, of a heart attack. His obituary in The New York Times described him as “the pre‐eminent figure in organized crime in the country” and said that “nothing in his appearance betrayed the immense power he reputedly wielded over organized crime in the United States”, adding that his face “made him look like everybody’s ideal of a kindly old uncle.”
Erwin Lambert, 66, German building contractor and war criminal convicted of “aiding and abetting the murder of at least 300,000 people” for his construction of gas chambers and involuntary euthanasia centers at Treblinka extermination camp and other concentration camps.
David Friedkin, 64, American scriptwriter and director for radio, film and television.
