Dr. Zhores A. Medvedev, a prominent Soviet biochemist and dissident who was living in exile in London, revealed the occurrence of two disasters that had been kept secret by the Soviet Union’s rulers, describing both in detail in the British scientific weekly New Scientist. Medvedev was the first to report two incidents now known as the Kyshtym disaster of 1957, in which an explosion of stored nuclear wastes contaminated an area inhabited by 270,000 people, and the Nedelin catastrophe, a rocket engine explosion that killed numerous rocket scientists and high-ranking Soviet military officers.
Spain officially reported that an air force general and a colonel secretly managed Lockheed Aircraft Corp.’s sales in Spain and earned commissions worth $277,000 each. The two officers, General Luis Rey Rodriguez and Colonel Carlos Grandal Segade, were suspended from military posts last month. Preliminary government findings said that there were no indications of bribery by Lockheed, but that there were irregularities in Avionica, Lockheed’s local agent that was run secretly by the two officers. Avionica arranged the sale of seven C-130 Hercules transports to the Spanish air force between 1971 and 1975. The government findings were arrived at after studying more than 1,500 photocopies of documents handed over by the U.S. Justice Department.
One million tons of mud, dumped 24 hours earlier by flash floodwaters, covered much of Trapari, Sicily. The flood left 10 persons dead, eight missing and thousands homeless. Muddy storm waters rushed into the city of 70,000 Friday, flooding 40% of the city’s ground floor apartments and shops. Four inches of rain fell during a five-hour downpour.
One of Italy’s wealthiest businessmen, Francesco Ravano, and the general manager of his insurance firm were fined a total of $6 million on fraud charges. Ravano and Enrico Zenoglio were arrested in the first major case arising out of Italy’s new tough currency regulations designed to shore up the slipping lira. They were accused of opening foreign bank accounts worth $1.2 million without notifying the government. Ravano was fined $4.2 million, Zenoglio $1.8 million and the $1.2 million account was ordered seized.
A severe drought this year has led to a catastrophic East German grain harvest and the threat of food shortages, adding to the country’s economic problems. The fall mists are already rolling over the hills and fields of Saxony and the farmers-all collectivized since this part of Germany became Communist under Soviet occupation-are trying to salvage every potato, beet and grain of wheat from the harvest. “The wheat harvest was as much as 20 to 30 percent less than it was last year,” said Siegfried Neubert, an agricultural official of the Dresden District administration. “We’ll certainly be negotiating with the Soviet Union and the United States for grain imports.”
About 7,000 people joined in a peace march and brief religious service in the County Tyrone town of Omagh to protest Northern Ireland’s sectarian warfare. The march was led by Mrs. Betty Williams, 32, a Roman Catholic housewife and leader of the women’s peace movement. In Edinburgh, Scotland, another 5,000 people demonstrated in support of the peace movement.
A sonar search for the legendary Loch Ness monster has turned up a fuzzy outline of an object which resembles a prehistoric dinosaur on the bottom of the deep Scottish lake, scientists said. But Martin Klein, conducting the expedition sponsored by a newspaper and science academy, was cautious about making any claims about the discovery except to say it warrants further investigation.
A United Nations commission, UNESCO, voted overwhelmingly today — 78–15 — to shelve a Soviet-sponsored declaration that the United States contended would reduce freedom of the press in the world.
The Israeli military headquarters in Tel Aviv said tonight that an Israeli warship sank an Arab vessel off the coast of Lebanon early this morning and captured two others. A statement said that the intercepted vessels had “terrorists on board” and that the one that had been sunk had “refused to obey orders.” It was sunk “after due warning,” according to the announcement. One man on board was reported killed and two wounded. The announcement did not say where the incident had occurred but acknowledged that the craft had been intercepted “outside territorial waters” by a routine patrol.
Raymonda Tawil, an outspoken supporter of the Palestine Liberation Organization, leaned forward in a sofa chair on her sunny terrace and said: “I am not a criminal and I am going to continue my work.” Mrs. Tawil was placed under house arrest early in August by Israeli military authorities responsible for administering this West Bank municipality, which has been occupied by Israel since the 1967 war. No formal charges have been lodged against her. A policeman is always posted at her front door and her telephone has been disconnected. She is permitted, however, to see visitors if they give their names and show proof of identity to the policeman, who carefully records it.
Three Palestinians were each sentenced today to 15 years in prison for an attack on the Syrian Embassy here last month. They were also ordered to be under three years of supervised freedom after imprisonment. The sentencing came after a trial that lasted a matter of hours. The prosecution had asked for sentences of 20 years each. The three also face possible extradition to Syria. The Syrians held public hangings earlier this year after three Palestinians shot up a Damascus hotel. A Syrian counselor wounded in the attack on the embassy in Rome is still in the hospital recovering from his wounds. Hunen Hatem, 45, was hit in the leg when the invaders opened fire with submachine guns.
Pakistan President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto said his country would revoke its military alliance with the United States if Washington blocks the purchase by Pakistan of nuclear equipment from France, a Dutch newspaper said. “We are the only country associated with America that can’t buy weapons on credit in the United States,” Bhutto complained in the interview published in Amsterdam. Both nations belong to the Central Treaty Organization.
In India, as part of a program of compulsory sterilization instituted by a decree of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi during her proclaimed “national emergency”, nearly 800 men were forced to undergo vasectomies in an event in the state of Haryana at the village of Uttawar.
Justice Department investigators have obtained records of secret Bahamian bank accounts of Park Tong Sun, a South Korean businessman, showing that he brought large amounts of cash into the United States over the last five years, sources familiar with the case said today. One implication of this evidence is that Mr. Park, who is known as Tongsun Park in the United States, might have received funds from South Korea’s Central Intelligence Agency laundered through Bahamian banks and then used the unrecorded money to influence United States Government officials, one source said. Another authoritative source said that the money from the Bahamas was engendered by Mr. Park’s business interests abroad and that there was no independent way its source could be identified. The records would only show cash entering the Bahama accounts and cash being withdrawn for transit to the United States. Indeed, the source said, Mr. Park reported his transmissions of cash to customs officials when he entered the United States on business trips.
Seoul is not exactly the pearl of the Orient. Cloaked in a thick industrial haze, its atmosphere resembles a scratchy black and white movie-sooty, stark, and full of faces leathered by icy Siberian winds. In the United States it is generally considered admirable for a member of Congress to forsake a luxury junket to Europe for a presumably austere working visit to South Korea to check the welfare of American forces, attend military briefings, and make the sobering trek to the Demilitarized Zone. But as hundreds of members of Congress, Washington aides, governors and mayors know, Seoul has a silver lining. From arrival to departure, South Korean Government officials, politicians and others heap upon them lavish attention. gifts, and entertainment ranging from formal receptions to bawdy drinking parties amply stocked with women. Visiting Americans are encouraged to let their hair down. and several former and present members of Congress, among others, are known around town for having consistently done so. Washington investigators are probing allegations that Seoul’s hospitality is part of a campaign, directed by President Park Chung Hee and run by the South Korean Central Intelligence Agency, to bribe and coerce members of Congress into supporting the Seoul regime.
Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos said Associated Press correspondent Arnold Zeitlin had been denied permission to reenter the Philippines because of alleged activities “that endanger the security and prestige of the country.” A government report accused Zeitlin of writing distorted reports of a Moslem uprising and independence movement in the southern Philippines in 1974 and of making contact with elements who work for the violent overthrow of the government. He was also charged with agitating and inflaming labor and student segments. Zeitlin denied the accusations.
A legislative election November 15 that may set Canada’s French-speaking province of Quebec on the road to independence is causing concern about its possible economic consequences. With polls pointing to a marked upsurge in the voting strength of the Quebec Party, which favors independence, a climate of nervousness is developing among those who want to keep Quebec part of Canada and in particular among the English-speaking minority that controls a major part of the financial and industrial strength of the province.
Despite strong pressure from the Mexican Government not to publish, the liberal editor and reporters who four months ago were ousted from the newspaper Excelsior issued a new political weekly today that is highly critical of Mexico’s outgoing President, Luis Echeverria Alvarez.
Former President Isabel Martinez de Perón, who is imprisoned at a naval arsenal under maximum-security restrictions, is facing big trouble in the Argentine courts. Two federal judges investigating Mrs. Perón’s use of public funds during her presidency, which was ended by a military coup March 24, have issued indictments charging fraud and administrative irresponsibility for which she and her closest advisers are to be tried. With the announcement of the indictments October 26, Mrs. Perón was removed from the resort chalet at Villa Angostura in the Andean lake country where she had been confined since her arrest during the coup. At the chalet she had the services of her Spanish maid, Rosario, and she kept the three French poodles given her by her late husband, Juan D. Perón, whom she succeeded in the presidency on July 1, 1974. She could receive visitors, under military control, as well as correspondence, publications and musical records.
The Saharan guerrilla movement says its fighters have killed 6,500 Moroccan and Mauritanian troops, wounded 6,000 more, and captured 609 over the last year. The figures were given by Mohammed Salem Ould Sądeck, information secretary of the self-proclaimed Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic, at a news conference here on the anniversary of the Moroccan march into Spanish Sahara. Mr. Sadeck said that the march marked the “armed occupation” of the former Spanish Sahara, which has been partitioned between Morocco and Mauritania.
Africa’s common market took shape in Lome, Togo late last night when 15 nations signed the final papers setting up the Economic Community of West African States. Eleven presidents, one vice president, a prime minister and two finance and economy ministers ratified five protocols attached to the treaty they agreed upon 18 months ago after a five-year campaign by Nigeria and Togo to launch the ambitious enterprise. The immediate aim is a customs union to be followed by a “real community of peoples.” Last-minute problems that were settled by the heads of state involved the location of departmental headquarters. voting powers and how budget payments should be calculated.
Guerrilla warfare in Rhodesia was endorsed by leaders of neighboring black countries. After meeting in Dar es Salaam, the black presidents called this the only way for the territory’s African nationalists to gain independence under black majority rule. The black leaders, reacting angrily to recent Rhodesian raids on guerrilla camps in Mozambique, also called on the Socialist bloc and other friendly nations to increase material and diplomatic support-including arms-to the fighters. The statement did not directly mention the Rhodesia conference in Geneva, where the territory’s white minority Government and black nationalist leaders are meeting in an attempt to negotiate a peaceful transition to majority rule within two years. However, the document appeared to signal the presidents’ lack of support for the negotiations in that it described efforts to find a peaceful solution as an imperialist plot to buy time for the Government of Prime Minister Ian D. Smith.
President-elect Jimmy Carter said yesterday that, because President Ford so effectively used the element of fear against him in the campaign, he could not have won the election this week had it not been for the exposure he gained in their three nationally televised debates. Speaking with reporters before he began a vacation on the Georgia island of St. Simons, Mr. Carter pledged to democratize the White House unfettered by special interests.
Revival of the economy is being studied by aides of Jimmy Carter and key members of Congress. Aides of President-elect Jimmy Carter and some key members of Congress have independently decided that government spending programs could be stepped up quickly to create new jobs, if they still believe in January that that is what is needed. They have decided that such a speedup is feasible, and they are focusing on spotting specific job creation programs that might be funded speedily and ways of carrying out such a plan.
The successor to Roy Wilkins as executive director of the N.A.A.C.P. will be Benjamin Hooks, the first black member of the Federal Communications Commission. Mr. Hooks, a 51-year-old lawyer and minister, was chosen unanimously by the board of the civil rights organization.
The vaccination program against swine flu is lagging, causing some experts to doubt that the delayed effort can achieve its goal of protecting most adult Americans before the upcoming flu season. One-third of the way through its planned span, less than 10 percent of those the national program was intended to reach have been inoculated. The head of the New York City program called the turnout poor.
More than 100 mayors will attend an emergency two-day meeting in Chicago to try to agree on a strategy for implementing their national urban policy under President-elect Jimmy Carter. Newark Mayor Kenneth Gibeon, president of the National Conference of Mayors, which called the meeting, said that federal programs to encourage housing construction would have top priority.
Betty Ford has made a complete recovery from breast cancer despite the duties of the President’s wife and the strenuous role she had in the Presidential campaign, her doctor said today. “At this point, there is no evidence of any cancer recurrence.” Dr. William Lukash, the White House physician, said. “She’s made a complete recovery, physically and psychologically.” The doctor said that the chemotherapy treatments that Mrs. Ford had undergone for two years after her breast cancer surgery had been completed. She will undergo a physical “evaluation later this month at Bethesda Naval Hospital, the doctor said.
Chrysler Corp. reopened two key manufacturing plants at Twinsburg, Ohio, and Trenton, Michigan, that had been closed by wildcat strikers despite tentative agreement on a new national contract for 109,000 hourly workers. A third facility shut by strikers — the Etobicoke, Ontario, casting plant — remained closed. In Detroit, meanwhile, United Auto Workers and Chrysler negotiators met through most of the day but were unable to work out details of a contract for Chrysler’s 9,000 salaried workers. The UAW plans early this week to set a deadline at giant General Motors for reaching a new contract for its 390,000 U.S. workers.
It was “dangerous” and “the grossest invasion of privacy.” Secretary of the Treasury William E. Simon said about widespread publicity given to a Thompson submachine gun that he wants to keep at his New Jersey estate as a collector’s item. Simon has a federal permit for the gun, which he keeps at his home in McLean, Virginia. But he will be leaving office in January and plans to return to New Jersey, which requires a gun permit from a county judge. Simon charged that politics was at least partly to blame for the uproar — Judge Charles M. Egan Jr. of Morris County is a Democrat. Egan has ordered an investigation of the permit request.
A doctor charged with murdering five patients 10 years ago must stand trial, a New Jersey judge ruled. Dr. Mario Jascalevich, 48, is accused of murdering patients at the Riverdell Hospital in Oradell, New Jersey, in 1966 with curare, a muscle relaxant, which arrested breathing. Jascalevich’s attorney had argued that the statute of limitations applied to all crimes not punishable by death and that capital punishment was no longer legal in New Jersey. The judge ruled that there was no statute of limitations on murder.
“Willful and wanton negligence” were charged in a lawsuit filed against an Oklahoma corporation by the father of a nuclear plant employee who became contaminated with plutonium. William Silkwood, father of Karen Silkwood, filed the $160,000 damage and conspiracy suit against the Kerr-McGee Corp., 23 of its officers and employees, three FBI agents and a former Nashville journalist, Jacque Srouji. Miss Silkwood was killed in a car crash in November, 1974, on the way to a meeting with a New York Times reporter and a union officer to discuss her plutonium contamination. The father charged that the case had not been adequately investigated.
Four former reservation clerks for United Airlines who had been discharged five years ago at the end of their maternity leaves were awarded $152,000 in damages in federal court. The judge hearing the sex-discrimination suit had earlier ordered the airline to rehire the women at no loss in seniority, a decision that United appealed. The damages represent lost earnings for the four women since 1971, when the airline fired them because they had not returned to work when their maternity leaves expired. Their lawyer had argued that the policy of imposing a 30-day limit on maternity leave for women was discriminatory.
J. Paul Getty’s eldest granddaughter has challenged his will, contending that the oil billionaire was not in his right mind when he left much of his fortune to a museum. The granddaughter, Anne Catherine Getty, accused the museum director and a Getty attorney of persuading Mr. Getty to change his will only three months before he died last June in England. She said he was easily influenced because he was old and sick and “not of a sound and disposing mind.” She filed a 15-page challenge in Superior Court here yesterday, barely within the time limit to contest wills already admitted to probate. The will was admitted July 7, a month after her 83-year-old grandfather died, leaving a fortune estimated at from $2 billion to $4 billion. He left bequests to his fifth wife and several women friends, and directed that 21 percent of the stock in the Getty Oil Company — worth an estimated $700 million — go to the J. Paul Getty Museum. The museum is an ancient Roman villa brought from Italy and reassembled on a bluff in Malibu, overlooking the Pacific Ocean just north of Los Angeles.
Citizens’ band radio buffs who spotted an error in a Sears, Roebuck & Company advertisement for CB radios apparently spread the word over the air, forcing the retailer to sell hundreds of $300 units for $84.88, a Sears spokesman said yesterday. The spokesman, W. H. Rees of Los Angeles, said an advertisement in two daily newspapers here last month offered a CB radio normally priced at $99.95 on sale for $84.88. The picture that ran with the. advertisement, however, was of a CB model that sells for $300. Mr. Rees said the six higher-priced CB models in stock at the local Sears outlet were sold out within hours and more customers soon appeared, demanding the radios. The store received more radios to honor rain checks offered after the stock was sold, Mr. Rees said, but purchases were limited to one per household. He added that Sears lost “many thousands of dollars” on the sales.
A classaction suit alleging sex discrimination has been filed against the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company. The suit was filed yesterday by two women employees of the company’s plant in Fairmont, Minn. The women, Lona Sokolosski and Patricia Railsback, contend that the company has discriminated against women in hiring, job assignment and classification, compensation, promotion and maternity benefits. The plaintiffs also contend that women employees have been more susceptible to layoffs because of company policies and that the company has not provided training to women for better-paying jobs. The suit asks that the company be ordered to pay several million dollars in back pay and interest from 1972 to the present. No specific amount is named.
One of the most beautiful of the Federal buildings in the West, the Old Mint in downtown San Francisco, has been completely renovated and will be put in full operation tomorrow as part museum, part Federal office building. In the basement vaults, visitors can see the storage space for the $200 million in gold and silver coins that made it possible for commerce to resume here after the city was ravaged by the earthquake and fire in April 1906. Bank vaults were damaged by the fire, and most of them could not be opened immediately, but the Old Mint’s concrete and steel shutters had been closed against the heat, and the building with its treasure hoard escaped serious damage in the holocaust.
Biological research at Yale University involving the recently discovered recombinant DNA technique has provoked public concern as to the potential human risks associated with genetic engineering. But Dr. Frank H. Ruddle, chairman of the Yale Biological Safety Committee and professor of biology and human genetics, stressed that all research at Yale was conducted “at or above the minimal levels of physical and biological containment established by the National Institutes of Health in July 1976.” The controversy on recombinant DNA research centers on the danger of creating new strains of harmful and infectious DNA elements whose biological properties could not be completely predicted. This issue became a subject of debate in the last year at the University of Michigan and in Cambridge, whose City Council voted to declare a three-month moratorium on recombinant research at Harvard. “We are not going to produce Andromeda strains which will wipe out the universe,” said Prof. Edward A. Adleberg, professor of human genetics and a member of the Biological Safety Committee. “When mammals die, their bodies decompose and their DNA mixes with bacteria. Although I can’t prove it, I believe that any recombination that we could produce has already occurred over and over again in nature.”
Major League Baseball:
Twins relief ace Bill Campbell becomes the first of the free-agent crop to sign with a new team, joining the Boston Red Sox with a contract calling for $1 million over 4 years.
Born:
Pat Tillman, NFL safety (Arizona Cardinals) who left sports in order to join the U.S. Army war against al-Qaeda; in Fremont, California (killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan, 2004).
Cameron Spikes, NFL guard (St. Louis Rams, Houston Texans, Arizona Cardinals), in Madisonville, Texas.
Troy Hambrick, NFL running back (Dallas Cowboys, Arizona Cardinals), in Lacoochee, Florida.
Lamar Chapman, NFL defensive back (Cleveland Browns), in Liberal, Kansas.
Alfie Michaud, Canadian NHL goaltender (Vancouver Canucks), in Selkirk, Manitoba, Canada.
Laurie Baker, Team USA women’s ice hockey forward (Olympics, gold medal, 1998), in Concord, Massachusetts.
Carlos Quintana, Puerto Rican boxer and 2008 World Boxing Organization welterweight champion; in Moca, Puerto Rico.
Catherine Clark, Canadian journalist; daughter of Joe Clark, in High River, Alberta, Canada.
Alie Ward, American actress (“Nash Bridges”) and podcast host (“Ologies”), in San Francisco, California.
Sal Vulcano, American improv and stand-up comedian, actor, and producer, member of the comedy TV series group “Impractical Jokers” (2011-present), in New York, New York.
Iresh Zaker, Bangladesh actor and business executive; in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Died:
Dr. Alexander S. Wiener, 69, American hematologist known for his discovery of the Rh factor and blood transfusion techniques.
Patrick Dennis (pen name for Edward Everett Tanner III), 55, American novelist known for the bestselling Auntie Mame: An irreverent escapade.
