Britain’s resurgent Conservative Party registered major gains tonight in three by-elections for Parliament. The contests represented the first important test of political sentiment here since the drastic slide in this country’s currency began a month ago. Most observers regarded the result as a firm indication that the Conservatives, who have been running slightly ahead of the governing Labor Party in nationwide opinion polls, could regain office if a general election were held now. Prime Minister James Callaghan is not lepally required to call an election until 1979, but a series of major defeats on important issues in the House of Commons could force his hand.
East Germans are showing a new restiveness over the restrictions that have sealed them off from the West since World War II. Perhaps a hundred thousand East Germans have requested permission to emigrate and East German writers are not being punished for dissenting in books and periodicals published in West Germany. The trend was apparently started in part by detente, and Communist leaders are in a quandary over how to deal with it. From a score of talks with party members, students and ordinary citizens in East Berlin and in Dresden, it seems clear that many East Germans are no longer willing to accept with passivity the restrictive decrees that have shaped their lives and sealed them off from the West for 30 years since the end of World War II. Free movement to the West has been impossible for anyone under retirement age since the building of the Berlinwall in 1961. Escape attempts, many of which end in death, have diminished in recent years. Now, thousands of dissatisfied people are turning the system against itself with applications for emigration. East-West detente and the weakening of Soviet control over the other Communist parties in Eastern and Western Europe appear to have started the chain of events.
The Soviet Union has expelled an American woman and a Dutch woman for allegedly smuggling foreign currency and anti-Soviet literature into the country, the Tass news agency said. Tass, quoting the Minsk newspaper, Sovietskaya Byelorussia, named the two as Catherine Wobera, 29, of San Francisco, and Jurrendian Brejdweld, 21, of Apeldoorn, Holland, and said they would henceforth be denied entry to the Soviet Union.
Eight Jews were recently summoned to the offices of the secret police in Riga and ordered to discontinue a seminar on Jewish culture and history, dissident sources in Moscow said today. The eight, all of whom have applied to emigrate to Israel, were warned that further seminars would result “in a lot of bad things for them,” according to the sources. Police officials reportedly told them that their study of Jewish and Israeli culture involved nationalistic propaganda and was antisocialist.
Western countries failed in an attempt to shelve a declaration on government control of the media which is before a general conference of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. The declaration, which is backed by the Soviet Union, would give governments the right to control all information originating within their borders.
A Pole being deported from Denmark wielded dummy weapons made of bread colored with shoe polish to hijack a Polish airliner today and force it to land in Vienna, Austrian officials said. Policemen armed with machine guns ringed the plane as it landed at Schwechat Airport, but the hijacker surrendered at once and was taken into custody. He was identified as Andrzej Jaroslaw Karasinski, 20 years old, who they said had been ordered deported home after serving a four-month term in Denmark for burglary, theft and forgery. The hijacking took place while the airliner, a Soviet-made TU-134 carrying 29 passengers, was flying over Polish territory on a flight frem Copenhagen to Warsaw. A passenger who sat next to the hijacker said he brandished what appeared to be a hand grenade and a pistol as he handed a stewardess a note threatening to blow up the plane unless it was diverted to Vienna. The police said weapons were made of partly chewed rye bread colored with shoe polish.
Lebanon’s President Elias Sarkis today appointed a Muslim officer in the Lebanese Army, Colonel Ahmed al-Hajj, as commander of the Arab peacekeeping force that is expected to take up duties in the country in the next few days. The President’s choice of Colonel Hajj was seen here as his first major step to put into effect the peace proposals approved late last month by Arab leaders at meetings in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The appointment is expected to be followed no later than this weekend by a takeover of peacekeeping duties by the 30,000-member force, which will probably be dominated by Syrian troops. The choice of Colonel Hajj was also seen here as an attempt to reconcile the positions of the Muslim-leftist-Palestinian coalition on one side, and the rightist Christians on the other. The Christians have generally been abiding by a cease-fire declared two weeks ago after more than a year and a half of civil war. The Lebanese leftists and Palestinians would have been reluctant to accept a Christian as commander of the Arab force. Mr. Sarkis is a Maronite Christian and before the civil war the Lebanese Army, now split into various factions, was mainly under the command of Christian officers.
Iraq agreed 22 months ago to give the Soviet Union air and naval bases on its soil in exchange for $4 billion worth of arms, the magazine Events reported. The Arab weekly said the intended supply of warplanes, warships, tanks and missiles would enable Iraq to replace Syria as Russia’s main Arab ally. “Obviously, the Soviets are aiming through this protocol to upstage Iran as the leading military power in the Persian Gulf,” the magazine said. No confirmation was available for the report, which said the secret agreement had been signed last August 17.
The South Korean Ambassador to the United States contributed $2,000 in 1973 to a California Congressman’s gubernatorial campaign, wined and dined him, gave gifts to members of his family and helped obtain the release from a South Korean prison of an Army constituent facing a death sentence for murder.
Relations between the United States Embassy and President Park Chung Hee’s Government here have turned unusually chilly, and the South Korean leader is reported infuriated over allegations that American agents eavesdropped on him in his office. South Korean politicians and diplomats in Seoul said they had never seen relations between the two governments so strained as now. After published charges in the United States that President Park’s agents attempted to buy Congressional influence in Washington, American diplomats here adopted an uncharacteristic posture of stiffness and formality in dealings with senior Korean officials. The Seoul sources, some of whom have access to the President’s inner circle of advisers, said President Park was far more concerned about assertions of American spying on him then he was about the election of Jimmy Carter as President. Mr. Carter suggested in his campaign a possibility of withdrawing American troops and tactical nuclear weapons from South Korea. Significantly, these officials said, American diplomats have not officially denied, in public or in private, assertions in the United States that President Park was under surveillance by United States intelligence equipment or operatives in his executive compound, called the Blue House.
Chinese officials told a visiting delegation today that a trial was planned for Mao Zedong’s widow, Chiang Ching, and three other purged leftist leaders accused of plotting to seize power in Peking.
Japanese Deputy Premier Takeo Fukuda, a leading critic of Prime Minister Takeo Miki, has resigned, a Fukuda spokesman said. He said it was not immediately known whether Miki had accepted the resignation. The move came when the Diet (parliament) wound up its special session on a general election called for December 5. The spokesman said Fukuda has decided to quit now that the Diet has passed major economic legislation, such as bills to increase railroad fares and telephone and telegram charges and to issue state bonds to cover budgetary deficits.
An Indonesian airliner crashed and exploded in southern Borneo, killing 26 persons and critically injuring 12, the Antara news agency reported. It said the Fokker F-27 of the domestic airline Boura was coming in for a landing at Banjarmasin, the capital of Kalimantan province, when it crashed. The cause of the crash was not announced.
The Ford Motor Co. of Canada Ltd. and the United Auto Workers union have reached a tentative contract agreement, a company spokesman in Toronto said. The 14,000 hourly workers who went on strike in southwestern Ontario could be back at work Monday, he said. Ratification meetings are to be held in the next few days. No details of the agreement were revealed.
An Argentine federal appeals court ruled today that former President Isabel Martinez de Peron, now jailed at a naval arsenal, could not be tried a second time on a charge of fraud of which she had already been acquitted. The ruling by the three-judge court confirmed the decision of a federal judge last December acquitting Mrs. Peron, who was then President, of a charge of drawing a $700,000 check from a public charity to pay a personal debt. .After the military overthrow of Mrs. Peron’s Government las: March, she was arrested and an attempt was made to reopen the case. A federal prosecutor said that the earlier ruling had been a scandal. Mrs. Peron’s legal problems are not over, however. Investigators are reported to have turned up irregularities in the use of funds of the Solidarity Crusade, the public charity that she headed, and are preparing new charges.
Refugees from southern Angola report that heavy fighting is continuing, a government official in Namibia (South-West Africa) said. Pastor Ndjoba, chief minister of the northern Owambo region, said the Angola refugees believe the campaign by troops of the Marxist Popular Movement government backed by Cuban soldiers is aimed at suppressing the Ukwanyama tribe, which supports the pro-West National Union for the Total Independence of Angola.
Rhodesian independence under black majority rule by March 1, 1978 was proposed by Britain in an attempt to get the stalled Geneva conference on Rhodesia moving. The proposal brought bluntly negative replies by four nationalist leaders who demand independence within a year. The offer was made by Ivor Richard, Britain’s representative at the United Nations and chairman of the Geneva conference on the future of the territory. The proposal — an attempt to gain some momentum at the week-long conference — evoked a bluntly negative response from the four nationalist leaders present in Geneva. They are demanding independence and black majority rule within a year. “It’s got to be 12 months or we go,” said Robert Mugabe, a militant nationalist with close links to the guerrillas who have been fighting Rhodesian Government forces. The comment of Bishop Abel Muzorewa, the American-educated clergyman and a leader of the Rhodesian African National Council, was, “Terrible.” Joshua Nkomo, who has forged an alliance with Mr. Mugabe, hooted with laughter when asked what he thought of the suggested date. And the Rev. Ndabaningi Sithole, a once-powerful nationalist figure who has few allies now. said: “We don’t like it. It is too far away.”
Prime Minister Ian D. Smith said on returning to Salisbury, Rhodesia today that he had been forced to leave the Geneva conference on the future of Rhodesia by what he described as a readiness by the British to appease black “extremists.”
Jimmy Carter discounted suggestions that his narrow victory might thwart his plans for a wide range of federal programs and policies he proposed during the campaign, predicting “they will be achieved.” Confident and relaxed in his first news conference as President-elect, he said he would work closely with President Ford during the transition and that if the economy remained stagnant a tax cut could be a “strong possibility.”
Senator Robert Dole defended himself against criticism that his combative, sardonic campaign style might have contributed to President Ford’s defeat. Mr. Dole told an interviewer that, on the Ford-Dole ticket, he had been “cast in the role of lightning rod.”
Barring unexpected shifts, the final national tally will show Jimmy Carter with 297 electoral votes and President Ford with 241. It seemed nearly certain that Mr. Ford will win the six electoral votes in Oregon, the last state to be decided.
President Ford today began working on plans for the transition period before the January 20 inauguration of Jimmy Carter, designating a Presidential Counselor, John O. Marsh Jr., as his liaison representative with Mr. Carter.
While President-elect Jimmy Carter savored his victory and began to pull together the reins of state, the quiet country church from which he has said he draws spiritual sustenance was being torn apart by racial tensions and leadership questions. At an emotional meeting that sent one parishioner from the Plains Baptist Church and left another crumpled and crying in the sanctuary, the church’s young minister, the Rev. Bruce Edwards, told the board of deacons that he would not yield to their demand that he resign because he opposed the church policy against admission of blacks, a policy he called “immoral and sinful.” The four active deacons who were present listened quietly for the most part but made it clear that they also would not yield. Through it all the opponents called each other “Brother.” The result of the deadlock is that the church membership will be called upon to vote on whether to dismiss Mr. Edwards. The vote will be taken “Sunday week,” as the pastor put it — a week from Sunday.
Ronald Reagan has sent out signals that he plans to be active in the rebuilding of the Republican Party as it attempts to recover from the loss of the White House to Jimmy Carter and the Democrats.
Wholesale prices rose substantially in October for the second consecutive month despite a drop in food prices, the Labor Department announced. The increase was six-tenths of 1 percent. Wholesale prices of industrial commodities, a major trend indicator, rose 1 percent. This was attributed largely to higher costs for fuels and cars. It was the largest monthly increase in wholesale industrial prices in a year.
The FBI issued a warrant for a man in connection with the discovery of a “bomb factory” in Chicago believed to belong to a Puerto Rican terrorist group called the FALN — the Spanish acronym for Armed Forces of National Liberation. Chicago police arrested two men after raiding a northwest side apartment Wednesday night. They found 211 dynamite caps, 50 pounds of explosives and “several bombs already rigged.” The warrant was for Carlos Alberto Torres, 24, described as a Puerto Rican. The FALN has claimed responsibility for more than a dozen bombings in major U.S. cities in the last few years.
Louisiana Governor Edwin W. Edwards said he made “a horrible mistake” when he told reporters last week that he saw nothing wrong with American businessmen bribing foreign officials to do business overseas. “I just blew my cool. As you know, I don’t drink but I wish I did so I could blame it on that.” Edwards’ remarks last week came during an informal news conference in Baton Rouge the day after he admitted that his wife had accepted $10,000 in cash from South Korean businessman Tongsun Park in 1971. The gift was just something Park had wanted to do for a good friend and had nothing to do with bribery, Edwards said.
The shotgun killing of a high-ranking Mafia figure outside his home in New York City late Wednesday night may be the start of a bloody struggle for control of the late Carlo Gambino’s vast underworld empire, police reported. They said the victim, Pietro Licata, 70, was a retired captain in the Joseph (Joe Bananas) Bonanno “family” — one of the five Mafia crime families under Gambino’s control until his natural death at the age of 74 last month. The head of the Bonanno family, Carmine (Lillo) Galente, has been tipped to take over the Gambino empire, police said.
A federal jury reported itself deadlocked in trying to reach a verdict in former San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto’s libel suit against defunct Look magazine. The six women of the jury reported they were deadlocked 5-1 but did not indicate in which direction they were leaning. The third trial over Alioto’s suit against Cowles Communications, Inc., began in San Francisco last October 18. The sole issue before the jury is whether a 1969 Look article that alleged Alioto was “enmeshed in a web of alliance with the Mafia” was published with malice.
Chrysler Corp. and United Auto Workers negotiators headed into the final hours of bargaining confident they could agree on a new contract and avoid a strike by 118,000 U.S. and Canadian workers at 3 PM PST today. “We still have some major problems before us,” UMW Vice President Douglas A. Fraser told reporters in Detroit.
A New York City-financed program to train welfare recipients and place them in private jobs was “a dismal failure, a waste of public money and a hoax on the trainees,” said state Welfare Inspector General Richard V. Horan. He said the $281,240 program enrolled only 225 welfare recipients in 18 months. Of those, 142 graduated, but only 10 were placed in private employment — and only five of the 10 held their jobs for more than 30 days. “The program failed simply because it was ill-conceived and unprofessionally executed,” Horan said in his report to city officials.
Doctors treating 32 kepone poisoning victims from Hopewell, Virginia, said they are attempting to lower the victims’ cholesterol levels to determine if this will flush the poisonous pesticide from their systems. A preliminary study using the drug cholestryamine to reduce cholesterol levels resulted in a seven-fold increase in elimination of kepone in the seven patients treated.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it is resuming sales of timber from its national forests after a self-imposed three-week moratorium to allow the department to adjust its rules to a recently passed law. Last October 15, President Ford signed a law that replaced the rigid language of an 1897 act that had been interpreted by the courts to prohibit “clear cutting,” the practice of cutting down all trees in a specific area. The new law gives the department authority to use clear cutting under controlled conditions.
American motorists will burn more gasoline this year than any year in history despite the government’s continuing pleas for reduced fuel consumption, the Federal Highway Administration said. As usual, Californians are expected to use more gasoline than drivers in any other state — an estimated 11.4 billion gallons. Nationally, a total of 118.8 billion gallons is expected to be used in 1976 — 4.4 billion gallons more than in 1973, when the previous record was set.
A $235 sticker price cut for the 1977 Gremlin was announced by the American Motors Corporation. The subcompact’s new price of $2,995 involves a reduction of about 7.7 percent from the original price and makes the new Gremlin about the same price as the 1976 model and the lowest priced of all 1977 domestic cars.
U.S. District Court Judge Warren J. Ferguson declared that the Family Viewing Hour (actually a two-hour period between 7:00 and 9:00 in the evening Eastern time in which programs containing violent scenes and sexual content were not to be aired), instituted by the FCC, was unconstitutional as a violation of the First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech. The suit had been brought by the Writers Guild of America, the Screen Actors Guild, and numerous production companies and had named the nation’s three commercial TV networks (ABC, CBS and NBC). A decree made by the National Association of Broadcasters in 1975 was also overturned, giving stations free rein on what to air in the pre-prime time slots.
An advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration has split on whether caffeine is a safe ingredient in cola drinks. In a report released today by the drug agency, some panel members decided that more research was needed. Others said that it was “prudent to assume” there might be a potential health hazard, particularly for children. An F.D.A. officer said that the agency would interpret the second conclusion to mean that caffeine should be removed from cola drinks. The 11-member panel of non-Government scientists was split roughly half and half on the issue, he added.
Major League Baseball:
The first mass-market free-agent reentry draft is held at New York’s Plaza Hotel. Among those available are Reggie Jackson, Joe Rudi, Don Gullett, Gene Tenace, Rollie Fingers, Don Baylor, Bobby Grich, and Willie McCovey. McCovey and Nate Colbert are the only two players not selected, but McCovey will catch on with the Giants in spring training and have a banner year at his old position.
Stock prices rebounded from Wednesday’s selloff, with the Dow Jones industrial average up 3.91 points to 960.44. The advance was led by many blue-chip issues. Credit markets also recovered and interest rates moved down.
A massive, unexpected demand developed for new bonds being offered by the Municipal Assistance Corporation. Financial officials attributed the demand to new investor confidence in New York City produced in part by Jimmy Carter’s election. As a result, the agency found customers in national credit markets for all $250 million of its new securities, at an interest rate lower than had been expected.
Increased membership in the New York Stock Exchange to other qualified brokers and dealers would be possible under a major new proposal. The Big Board’s membership roster has been fixed at about 1,370 since the late 1920’s. A top-level committee named by the exchange’s board proposed that brokers and dealers gain seats by paying annual dues, as well as by the traditional practice of buying memberships from other members. The plan must be approved by the directors and exchange members.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 960.44 (+3.91, +0.41%)
Born:
James Dale Ritchie, American serial killer; in Anchorage, Alaska (killed in police shootout, 2016).
Dwaine Carpenter, NFL cornerback (San Francisco 49ers, St. Louis Rams), in Pinehurst, North Carolina.
Kevin Frederick, MLB pitcher (Minnesota Twins, Toronto Blue Jays), in Evanston, Illinois.
Bruno Junqueira, Brazilian racing driver, in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
Jeremy Pelt, American jazz trumpeter, in Los Angeles, California.
Died:
Edith Shackleton Heald, 91, British journalist.
Massimo Dallamano, 59, Italian film director known for “Spaghetti Western” movies, was killed in an auto accident.
