In Paris, a bomb destroyed the house of Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the Front National. Although six people were slightly injured, Le Pen and his family were unharmed. The perpetrators of the attack were never identified.
The Soviet Union made a highly restrained speech to the general conference of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, barely touching on the two most controversial issues of press freedom and Israel. The speech raised hopes that the meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, would be free of big power political in-fighting.
Irish Republican commandos shot one police officer to death and wounded another in the Falls Road section of Belfast, police said. The area is a stronghold of the mainly Roman Catholic Provisional Irish Republican Army. A third man was wounded at Fintona, 70 miles northwest of Belfast.
Concorde production will be suspended, Britain and France agreed, with fewer than a dozen of the supersonic airliners sold of the hundreds planned. Five more will be built but none after that unless more orders come in soon. Future joint projects will concentrate on subsonic aircraft with a better chance of making money.
The leader of Albania’s Communist Party, Enver Hoxha, has told a party congress that he foiled plans for a military coup d’état against him several years ago. According to a broadcast from Tirana, the Albanian capital, he made the statement yesterday during the first part of a keynote speech at the seventh congress of the ruling Labor Party. But his remark was not reported by the official press agency, A.T.A. The broadcast quoted Mr. Hoxha as having said that a faction headed by Defense Minister Beqir Balluku had plotted to seize power with foreign assistance. “This was a very great and dangerous plot,” Mr. Hoxha said. He listed the former Defense Minister and seven other officials as traitors. All have been dropped from power over the last three years without explanation.
Higher crude oil prices are widely predicted as the outcome of the December 15 meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Guesses range from under 10 percent to as high as 25 percent. The impact of the increase, unlike the 1973-74 quadrupling of prices that brought on worldwide recession, is not expected to destroy the recovery.
An Arab effort to capitalize on Israel’s links with South Africa reached the 31st General Assembly today, in one of a series of draft resolutions condemning the policy of apartheid.
Christian soldiers from the remains of the Lebanese army will join the Pan-Arab peacekeeping force in policing the country’s cease-fire, the largest Christian militia announced. The participation of troops loyal to Christian President Elias Sarkis apparently is designed to appease Christian factions who object to having the Arab force patrol Christian territory.
Syria has reportedly sent 3,000 additional troops into Lebanon. Travelers from the Bekaa Valley, in the east of the country near the Syrian frontier, reported that soldiers crossed into Lebanon last night with their tank and armored cars already painted in the colors of the Arab peacekeeping force agreed upon to restore order in the country. Reports in the Beirut press today said that some thousands of Saudi and Sudanese troops had arrived in Syria on their way here. Other contingents from Yemen and Southern Yemen and Libya will be sent here eventually to be part of the Arab force decided upon by two Arab leaders’ conferences held last month to try to bring peace to Lebanon. Arab heads of state recommended a force of 30,000 men.
Saudi Arabia confirmed today that it had commissioned a study on the feasibility of towing icebergs from the Antarctic to the arid desert kingdom where the ice would melt into water for drinking and irrigation.
A senior Iranian diplomat was shot and seriously wounded near his Paris home, police reported. The diplomat was identified as Homayoun Keykavoussi, a counselor at the Iranian Embassy, and his condition was listed as extremely serious. The attack was the sixth against a foreign diplomat in France in the past two years. There are several thousand Iranian students in France, many of them opposed to the regime of the Shah of Iran.
Richard Helms, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, has decided to retire as Ambassador to Iran, United States officials said today. Mr. Helms, who is 64 years old, was named to the Teheran post in 1973. He notified President Ford of his intention to retire several days ago, the sources said, but Mr. Ford decided to delay an announcement until after the voting today. Mr. Helms will remain in office until the end of the year. Mr. Helms was director of the C.I.A. from 1966 to 1973, a period of some of the agency’s most controversial activities at home and abroad.
India’s lower house passed constitutional amendments tending to give permanence to the authoritarian course adopted last year by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The vote was 366 to 4, with most opposition members boycotting the tally and some of them in jail. One of them called the changes a codification of the emergency powers concentrated in Mrs. Gandhi’s hands.
A group of Thai student leaders, who helped overthrow a dictatorship in Thailand three years ago, appealed in a radio broadcast for the ouster of the new rightist Bangkok government. In the broadcast over the Communist Voice of the People of Thailand radio, the students called the government of Prime Minister Thanin Kraivichien and its military backers ultra-right-wingers and fascist warlords. They said the administration should be overthrown in favor of a “people’s government.”
The new authorities in China have charged Mao Zedong’s widow, Chiang Ching, and the three other senior leftists who have been the targets of denunciation, with disrupting industrial production and interfering with the management of the economy.
For the first time outside China, a representative of the Peking Government today explicitly named and condemned the purged leftist members of the leadership, whom he charged with trying to usurp power during the illness of Mao Zedong and after his death.
Mexico and the United States are making rapid progress toward a prisoner-exchange agreement under which Americans sentenced in this country could serve out their terms in jails in their own.
The first legislative elections in Cuba since 1958 took place with the indirect participation people who had voted in October 10 (with runoffs on October 17) for the members of Cuba’s 169 municipal assemblies. Of more than 30,000 candidates, the 10,725 who had been selected as municipal legislators then chose the 469 deputies of the National Assembly of People’s Power (Asamblea Nacional del Poder Popular).
Jamaican opposition leader Edward Seaga and former Prime Minister Hugh Shearer came under a blast of shotgun fire when their campaign motorcade passed a local headquarters of the ruling People’s National Party. police reported in Kingston. Neither was hit, but 10 persons were injured, six seriously.
Ethiopia has executed 23 members of the Marxist-Leninist Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party and “other dissidents.” Addis Ababa radio reported. They were found guilty of murdering farmers. teachers, students and others, the radio said in a broadcast monitored in London. The executions followed a trial by court martial, and the verdicts were approved by the head of state, Brigadier General Teferi Bante.
Armed forces in Burundi deposed President Michel Micombero without violence, according to an official broadcast from the capital. He had ruled since a coup in November 1968.
The Rhodesia talks in Geneva remained stalled as the white government delegation and black leaders disagreed about a date for black majority rule, but another meeting was set for tomorrow. A tense Prime Minister Ian Smith warned he would leave the talks until the other participants in the meeting have “come to their senses.”
Former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter narrowly defeated U.S. President Gerald Ford to win the 1976 United States presidential election, becoming the first candidate from the Deep South to win since the Civil War. Carter received 297 electoral votes after narrowly winning Ohio and its 25 by a little more than 11,000 popular votes out of four million. Ford, who had 240 electoral votes, conceded the election at 3:30 the next morning in Washington, and telephoned his congratulations to Carter by telephone at 11:00 AM. Mr. Carter swept his native South and added enough Northern industrial states to give him an electoral vote majority. He was the first man from the Deep South to be elected president in a century and a quarter.
Mr. Carter won the nation’s Bicentennial Presidential election, narrowly defeating President Ford by sweeping his native South and adding enough Northern industrial states to give him a bare electoral vote majority. Three of the closely contested battleground states slipped into Mr. Carter’s column shortly after midnight tonight — New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas. The President-designate lost New Jersey and Michigan, Mr. Ford’s home state, while Ohio, Illinois and California were still up for grabs. New York teetered between the rivals for hours, contrary to all expectations, before delivering a small majority to Mr. Carter — a majority that gave the Democrat a bonanza of 41 electoral votes. When Mr. Carter finally carried Hawaii by a far narrower margin than customary for Democratic candidates in that Democratic stronghold, it gave the Georgian 272 electoral votes in 23 states, two more than a majority. Mr. Ford had 160 electoral votes in 23 states, and five states were still in doubt.
The congressional elections dealt defeat to at least eight incumbent Senators without greatly changing the party makeup in the new Senate. In the House races, where results were coming in more slowly, there also was no evidence of much shift in the Democratic majority. In the House, the Democrats’ 2-to-1 majority was not substantially changed. The Democratic Senators who lost were Vance Hartke of Indiana, Joseph M. Montoya of New Mexico, Frank E. Moss of Utah, and Gale W. McGee of Wyoming. The other losers were James L. Buckley, Conservative-Republican of New York, and Bill Brock of Tennessee, J. Glenn Beall Jr. of Maryland, and Robert Taft Jr. of Ohio, all Republicans. Senator John V. Tunney, Democrat of California, was in a close race with S. I. Hayakawa, a Republican, who had been president of San Francisco State College.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, former ambassador to the United Nations, won the election for the U.S. Senate as the first Democrat from New York since the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. The Republican-Conservative incumbent, James Buckley, conceded defeat at 10.50 P.M.
In Pennsylvania, Representative John Heinz III, a Republican who is heir to the Heinz fortune, narrowly won the seat of the retiring Senate Minority Leader, Hugh Scott. He defeated Representative William Green, a Democrat, who conceded.
Atlantic City residents celebrated a victory in the New Jersey vote to permit Las Vegas-style casinos in the resort city. The pro-casino forces established an early strong lead.
In Connecticut, Lowell Weicker, a Republican, held his United States Senate seat, easily defeating his Democratic challenger, Gloria Schaffer, and running well ahead of President Ford, whose contest with Mr. Carter was much closer.
The Supreme Court deadlocked, 4 to 4, with one abstention, in a major case that would have decided how far an employer must go toward accommodating his employees’ religious scruples against, for example, working on the Sabbath. The effect is to leave the lower court’s decision in effect but no Supreme Court precedent is set.
In an unusual statement from the bench, Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun angrily denounced today a decision in favor of the Government that was issued by five of his fellow Justices this morning in a complicated tax case. Noting that the government had appealed the contrary analysis by the tax court, he said the Supreme Court should have deferred to the tax court in such a specialized case.
The nation’s welfare rolls totaled 11.2 million people in June, the lowest level in 18 months, the Department of Health. Education and Welfare said. The rolls have been declining because of smaller families, a stronger economy, the drive to weed out ineligible recipients and the year-old campaign to collect support payments from absent parents, a HEW spokesman said.
A major portion of a 1969 federal antitrust suit against five of the nation’s largest drug manufacturers has been dismissed by U.S. District Judge Miles Lord in Minneapolis. If the dismissal of one of three counts is upheld in appellate court, it will reduce from $203 million to about $41 million the damages the government could collect. Lord threw out the section which alleges that three of the firms used deceit to help one firm obtain a patent on certain antibiotics and then sold the antibiotics to government agencies at inflated prices. More than 100 lawsuits have been filed in the complex case since 1968 and the firms already have paid out more than $230 million.
The Federal Power Commission tentatively shaved pennies off the natural gas price hike it granted to producers earlier this year, a move that could ultimately save consumers hundreds of millions of dollars. The hike on July 27 almost tripled the price producers will get on gas from new wells sold across state lines. That hike would have increased a consumer’s bill by about $10 to $15 a year. The new rates will be made public Friday.
The Federal Trade Commission launched an investigation to find out if companies that offer high school students crash courses for college entrance tests are defrauding the public. The agency said it wants to know if such operations really can increase students’ test scores, and if so whether the amount of increase is as great as advertised. A spokesman for the College Entrance Examination Board said 1.4 million students take its test every year, but the organization opposes outside tutoring. “We do not recommend coaching schools because we feel that the Standard Aptitude Test measures verbal and mathematical abilities — not achievements — that have been developed over a lifetime.”
Officials of the Korean Cultural and Freedom Foundation are refusing comment on allegations that only 8% of the $1.3 million the organization raised in fiscal 1975 actually went for charitable purposes. New York Attorney General Louis Lefkowitz has been asked by the state Board of Social Welfare to bar the fund from further solicitation. The action came after the foundation’s president, Bo Hi Pak, denied in a news conference that either he or his group took part in a scheme to buy favorable treatment from congressmen on behalf of the South Korean government. Pak, a close associate of evangelist Sun Myung Moon, would only add that no funds ever were “siphoned off for use by Korean agents here.”
The Gulf Oil Corporation denied in Washington the assertion of Tongsun Park, a South Korean businessman, that it paid him $1 million a month. Federal investigators looking into charges that Mr. Park tried to influence the American government on behalf of South Korea thus face a discrepancy.
For the first time, more Americans are moving away from populous metropolitan areas than are moving to them — an abrupt reversal of the long-established trend toward urbanization, says a population study by the Rand Corp. It found “unmistakable” signs of population growth in remote rural areas in every region of the country. It said that each year between 1970 and 1975, as overall population growth slowed, for every 100 people who moved to metropolitan areas, 131 moved out. In the five years before, 94 moved out and 100 moved in. Many metropolitan areas — including New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Seattle and Los Angeles — stopped growing altogether.
A preliminary injunction sought by the tuna industry against the government’s ban on yellowfin tuna fishing for the remainder of this year was denied in San Diego by U.S. District Judge William B. Enright. The ban was imposed after the Department of Commerce contended the quota of porpoises killed in the taking of yellowfin-78,000-has been exceeded for the year. The marine mammals accompany schools of yellowfin and serve as scouts for tuna fishermen. The order allows the taking of yellowfin to continue through Friday, but if no other court acts on the matter, the ban will take effect.
A test well drilled 90 miles east of Atlantic City, New Jersey, indicates that oil and natural gas are likely to be found under the ocean floor off the New Jersey shore. The U.S. Geological Survey reported that the well, drilled in 298 feet of water by a group of oil companies early this year, indicated “organic-rich potential source rocks” between 9,400 and 13,900 feet. The test well, in the Baltimore Canyon, was intentionally drilled away from any subsurface feature that would be likely to hold oil. Rather it was supposed to examine geological features that show the potential of generating and producing petroleum in the area.
Major League Baseball:
San Diego Padre Randy Jones beats out Met Jerry Koosman for the National League Cy Young Award. Jones led the league with 315 innings, and posted a 22-14 record for the 5th-place Padres.
Born:
Matt Cullen, NHL centre (NHL Champions, Stanley Cup, Hurricanes-2006, Penguins, 2016, 2017; Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, Florida Panthers, Carolina Hurricanes, New York Rangers, Ottawa Senators, Minnesota Wild, Nashville Predaors, Pittsburgh Penguins) and philanthropist; in Virginia, Minnesota.
Sidney Ponson, Aruban MLB pitcher (Baltimore Orioles, San Francisco Giants, St. Louis Cardinals, New York Yankees, Minnesota Twins, Texas Rangers, Kansas City Royals), in Noord, Aruba.
Dwayne Ledford, NFL center (San Francisco 49ers), in Morgantown, North Carolina.
Barry Cantrell, NFL punter (Dallas Cowboys), in Margate, Florida.
Kris Kaspersky (pen name for Nikolay Likhachev), Russian computer hacker; in Uspenskoye, RSFSR, Soviet Union (killed in skydiving accident, 2017).
