North Adams Transcript (Newspaper) - December 26, 1975, North Adams, Massachusetts NORTH ADAMS ADAMS WILLIAMSTOWN MASSACHUSETTS 94 FRIDAY DECEMBER 26 1975 20 PAGES CENTS Fighting erupts ending Beirut lull Flood A city firefighter sweeps up water in Drury High School's book supply room after the building's sprinkler system froze and the pipes burst yesterday sending torrents of water through the school Story page 11 Transcript BEIRUT Lebanon AP fighting raged through the night in Beirut he Tripoli area and in east of Beirut after a brief lull Christmas morning Mortar and rocket duels terrorized Christian and Moslem residential districts of the capital Hundreds of families spent the night in air raid shelters or basements The government radio said all streets were unsafe and the city's northern approaches were closed to traffic Snipers are everywhere shooting at even housewives who venture out buy the day's bread an announcer warned Commandos of the army strike force guarding banking and business houses in downtown huddled in their personnel carriers and armored cars unable o check the firing The private armies wore tiring across the troops buffer zone from every direction a police spokesman said Three policemen and seven civilians were reported killed by sniper fire during the night The toll among the combatants was not known In Tripoli Lebanon's second largest city GO miles north of Beirut Moslem gunners exchanged rocket and mortar fire with Christian militiamen from the nearby town of despite five army buffer zones Moslem Premier Karami's seaside Tripoli home and adjacent villas belonging to his brothers were surrounded by hostile leftist Moslem militiamen after a clash between them and he moderate Moslem guards at he houses Karami had a long meeting in Beirut with Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat in an attempt to reconcile the Moslem factions in Tripoli and to slop the new fighting Tripoli and A Christmas cease-fire in eastern Lebanon collapsed as mortar and rocket duels broke out again between the Christian town of and a siring of neighboring Moslem villages Police said I wo bodies had been recovered and that seven wounded were hospitalized An official Iraqi delegation arrived from Baghdad for another Arab at- tempt to mediate a settlement of I he civil war Syria has made several mediation attempts There was no reaction to a report in the leading Beirut newspaper Al Anwar that both Christian and Moslem members of the cabinet had approved political proposals they hoped would end the war The paper said the proposals call for an even division of seals in parliament instead of the present 6 to 5 Christian advantage appointment of the Moslem premier by parliament in- stead of by the Christian president transfer of some powers from the president lo the premier creation of a special group o work out economic and social reforms to improve the lot of the Moslems and Syrian tees that the Palestinian guerrillas will respect restrictions contained in their agreements with the Lebanese government may be radically affected by man Christmas Mixture of joy and sorrow ni en By The Associated Press For millions around the world Christmas was the quiet traditional holiday of gift giving church and a day at home the holiday like any other day also had its extremes of joy and sorrow In East Vincent Township Pa five persons including three children were found slain in their home on Christmas morning In Tennessee four persons were killed and two wounded in a gun battle Another three persons were killed in an apparent robbery in a furniture store in Florida on Christmas Eve In Kenosha Wis two men and a woman found dead Christmas night in a shopping center parking lot were victims a double police said today All three were dead of gunshot wounds to the chest authorities said More than died in automobile accidents during the holiday In Bayonne two persons were killed in a fire early Christmas Day A blaze Christmas Eve took the lives of three children in Cheltenham Md Another fire destroyed two sound stages and caused million damages at the Samuel Goldwyn studios in Los Angeles on Christmas Day There were also events beyond the ordinary on the joyful side of mas Marietta van Dorp wife of a Dutch banker gave birth o quadruplets in London Jenny Jones a Korean orphan spent her first The weather Rain tonight changing to snow flurries Low in 20s Flurries ending tomorrow High in mid to upper 30s Details page 10 Christmas in her new American home after her adoption was held up for more than a year by red tape Her adoptive mother called arrival on Christmas Eve a miracle The average family's Christmas was far less miraculous Typical though they are not a typical family were the Gerald Rudolph Fords residents of the White House Washington President and Mrs ford and their three sons daughter and daughter-in- law opened gifts after a breakfast of pancakes sausage and scrambled eggs Their traditional dinner included roast turkey mashed potatoes and gravy green peas with pearl onions cranberry sauce salad rolls Christmas cookies and pecan pie with icecream The President also went skiing on the snowy slopes in Vail Colo where the family is vacationing The snow was less enjoyable for many others Storms in Illinois and Indiana created hazardous driving conditions There was also i rare White Christmas in parts of Texas and rain or freezing rain in much of the rest of the country It was the kind of day to stay inside but not everyone seemed happy to do so At the state prison in Concord some MO inmates demanded that another 20 convicts in solitary confinement be allowed out for a meal and when tbc demand was refused staged a hour rebellion They look several prison employes hostage but the hostages escaped with no serious injuries The inmates also set fires that left half the cells unusable and the kilchen and dining hall heavily damaged State police were called in and fired tear gas forcing the riotous prisoners into a courtyard where they faced near zero temperatures before returning to their cells Another prisoner Patricia Hearst the newspaper heiress awaiting trial on hank robbery charges joined in a party with other inmates at lie San Mateo County Jail in California She and the other women were given gifts such as perfume and toiletries from the Service League of San Mateo but were not allowed Calif IAD A University of California research team says man's activities could have a radical effect on the climate ranging from making the world warmer to making it cold enough to set off a new ice age The team's computer experiments at Lawrence Laboratory show that current efforts at widespread clearing of tropical jungles could cause temperatures to drop and rainfall to decrease around the planet World-wide average temperatures would drop about a third of a degree if widespread tropical vegetation is stripped and more open land un- covered the researchers said That may seem insignificant they pointed out but in Iceland it was less than a degree and a half down from statistically normal temperatures that generated a little ice age that froze 300 years ago The experiments also show however that loading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide through continued burning of such fossil fuels as coal and oil tends to make earth warmer he team reported in the British scientific journal Nature Now he researchers said the world's average temperature is only seven to 10 degrees warmer than it was years ago when the great GOP conservatives may be getting to Ford VAIL Colo AP President Ford's change of position on three key bills last week indicates he con- wing of the Republican party is having success in worrying him about his political image The President signed the energy and tax cut extension bills and said he will veto a common site picketing all actions opposite to what he had said would do As time for decision on each measure Ford was subjected to ex- treme pressure from many groups but especially from within his own Republican party Administration sources say pressure on the President ranged from intimations from party conservatives that he could lose political support lo his GOP challenger Ronald Reagan lo outright financial pressure in which contributors pointedly showed hey could and would withhold funds from the Ford campaign Reagan Ihc former California governor seeking lo take the GOP presidential nomination away from Ford urged velo of all three of the controversial bills winning favor from party conservatives whose views his stand reflected Veto of the trio also was endorsed by he recent Southern Republican Conference in Houston which greeted Reagan warmly hut subjected Ford representatives to tough questioning on issues close to the hearts of conservatives Veto of the strongly backed by the labor lobby may have cost Ford the services of Labor Secretary John T Dunlop who wrote the measure with Ford's blessing Dunlop said Wednesday he wants lo take Iwo or three weeks to think about whether he should Business groups and contractors opposed Ihc hill and sources say many unsigned checks languished at Ford campaign headquarters wilh he donors promising to sign them only il Ford vetoed it For weeks the President had vowed to veto any extension of the 1975 tax cut unless Congress coupled it with a firm limit on federal spending He asked for a tax cut with a spending lid of billion for fiscal 1977 Congress voted an month extension of the tax cut without a spending lid Ford vetoed il to the pleasure of conservatives and the House to the surprise of mosl observers sustained 17 votes Congress then sent practically the same back to Ford but wilh vaguely worded language in which the lawmakers said would try to restrain spending next year It Congress lo do nothing But Ford signed it anyway ice age covered most of the northern hemisphere They reasoned that since green equatorial jungles absorb the sun's warming rays and keep the moist clearing jungles would reflect sun's energy back lo space and cause less recycling of moisture warming As a result they said rainfall would decrease by a a year in the zone and as much as inches a year al the equator The scientists stressed that while computer models arc fallible the trends up or down are likely lo prove correct Meteorologist Hugh W Ellsaesser a member of the group said the changes in global climate from widespread jungle clearing would be by the continued burning of fossil fuels Ellsaesser said if Ihc pace of fossil fuel burning continues to rise in the century many scientists believe the pileup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would double causing temperatures to rise by al least degrees Were it not for hat warming in- fluence he said jungle clearing might well be enough to trigger expansion of the polar ice caps and start a new ice age The researchers conceded that their conclusions are highly speculative but they claimed that major changes are actually in climate now and they can be measured precisely From 1890 to 1940 said average temperatures in the northern hemisphere rose more than a degree as the earth warmed bul since the northern have dropped nearly three-quarters of a degree and the continues Peru bus crash kills 22 persons LIMA Peru AP A bus slid off a mountain road into a gorge high in the Andes on Eve killing at least 22 persons and injuring 30 others from the ancient Inca capital of Cuzco said today Fall of Vietnam Cambodia Indochina top story of 1975 By The Associated Press The Fall of Vietnam and Cambodia has been voled Ihc top news story ol 1975 In their annual Top Ten poll editors and news directors of Associated Press member newspapers and radio and TV stations decided that the second most story of the year was the attempts to assassinate President Ford The capture of Inside Cheshire 7 IB 19 18 12 11 4 20 Pick ol tho Programs Spoils Vermont 8 suburban 9 8 Patricia Hearst placed third in the voting The fall of Vietnam and Cambodia last spring headed the Top Ten list with votes There were votes for the two assassination at- tempts in September against Ford Miss Hearst's capture also in tember was close behind wilh 2.805 votes Her kidnapping had been the fourth on the list of top news stories The Watergate scandal was the top story of 1974 This year the editors and news directors placed Watergate aftermath stories seventh with voles Only one other story on 1974 Top Ten lisl also appeared again this year It was economy fifth with votes this year and second in 1974 The Indochina fighting in 1974 a year after American involvement had ended was not among the Top Ten stories last year The Top Ten stories of 1975 in the order of their selection 1 The fall of Vietnam and Cambodia 2 The two assassination attempts against President Ford 3 The capture of Pally Hearst 4 The New York City fiscal crisis 5 The American economy in- recession and the slarl of recovery 6 Cambodia's of the con- tainer ship Mayaguez in May and the use of American military force to free her 7 The Watergate aftermath in- the sentencing by Judge John J Sirica in February of John Ehrlichman and John Mitchell 8 The of questionable CIA activities 9 Ford's cabinet reshuffle in November and Vice President Nelson Rockefeller's decision to drop as Ford's 1976 running mate 10 The disappearance of James Hoffa the former Teamsters union president K Inside job AP A motorist in Worcester found it a lot easier from inside his car after a storm dumped and warmer to clean his windshield nearly 11 inches of snow on the city
