News stories from Sunday September 21, 1975

Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:

Patricia Hearst and her parents are expected to testify tomorrow when a hearing resumes in Federal District Court in San Francisco on her request to be freed on bail. One of the questions Miss Hearst will he asked is why she gave her occupation as "urban guerrilla" when she was booked after her arrest last Thursday. "It would be my advice that she must testify," the lawyer, James Martin MacInnes, a specialist in federal criminal defense, said. [New York Times] The Federal Energy Administration announced that it was removing the 60-cent-a-barrel fee on imported petroleum products, mainly to end uncertainties about the future of the fee that threatened to create shortages this winter of imported home heating oil and heavy industrial oil. Officials said that the fee's removal, retroactive to Sept. 1, should produce a prompt price reduction of about 1½ cents per gallon on imported home heating oil. They also said that President Ford would decide by the end of the month whether to lift the $2-a-barrel on imported crude oil. [New York Times] A high-ranking Syrian mediation mission appeared determined to establish a durable truce among Lebanon's warring factions on the left and right as an uncertain calm settled over Beirut. Syria's Foreign Minister, Adbul Halim Khaddam, said "we will not leave Lebanon until the crisis is solved, even if we have to stay a month." On Saturday night he had cajoled the leftist and rightist leaders into a cease-fire that has only been occasionally violated. Ultimately, the leftists hope to alter the National Covenant of 1943, which gives a leading political role to Lebanon's Maronite Christians and divides electoral offices on the basis of religious affiliation. Altering the National Covenant is anathema to the Phalangist leader, Pierre Gemayel, who has threatened to "internationalize the crisis" if it is not resolved soon. [New York Times] The African elephant, the largest land animal alive, is declining in numbers so rapidly that some wildlife experts fear that within a decade it may be on the verge of extermination in much, if not all, of Africa. The most acute threat is a sharp increase in illegal slaughter to supply a booming ivory trade. [New York Times]