News stories from Sunday August 8, 1976

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

President Ford said that he wants a middle-of-the-road Republican as a running mate, not someone as "extreme" as Senator Richard Schweiker, Ronald Reagan's choice for Vice President, Mr. Ford said that putting Mr. Schweiker on the Reagan ticket "hasn't produced results" for Mr. Reagan. The President made his remarks in an interview that was released for publication to coincide with the second anniversary of his accession to the presidency. Meantime, John Connally, who has been believed to be a likely running mate on the Ford ticket, said it was "highly questionable" whether he would agree to run for Vice President. [New York Times] President Ford went to Philadelphia, where he made a brief address at the closing session of the 41st International Eucharistic Congress and he told the audience of about 100,000 Roman Catholics that he shared their concern over "the increased irreverence for life." This remark won sustained enthusiastic applause from the listeners who apparently took it as an allusion to the anti-abortion movement. Pope Paul VI also made an address by satellite from Italy. [New York Times] The mysterious respiratory disease in Pennsylvania killed two more people, bringing the number of deaths to 27. State officials and the American Legion asked everyone who attended the American Legion state convention in Philadelphia last month, where the illness is believed to have had its origin, to meet at Legion posts throughout the state tonight, where they will be asked to reply to a questionnaire relating to their activities at the convention, The answers might help an intensive investigation into the cause of the disease. [New York Times] Clarence Kelley, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said in a television interview that he had deliberately been "deceived" by aides who withheld from him knowledge of a number of illegal burglaries by F.B.I. agents in recent years. He said that he was investigating which subordinates had participated in the deception that, he said, was "cause for concern." [New York Times] The body of John Rosselli, an organized crime figure who had been missing 11 days, was found in a 55-gallon oil drum floating in intracoastal waters in north Miami. The Dade County chief deputy medical examiner said that there was "no doubt that it was a gangland killing." Mr. Rosselli, who was 70 years old, last year acknowledged in Senate hearings his role in a plan by the Central Intelligence Agency to assassinate Prime Minister Fidel Castro of Cuba in the early 1960's. [New York Times] Pakistan's refusal, despite intense American pressure, to drop plans to develop its own nuclear reprocessing plant has brought relations between the two countries to a near crisis. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger arrived in Lahore today for talks with Prime Minister Zulfikar All Bhutto. It was understood that Mr. Kissinger was prepared to tell Mr. Bhutto not only that the United States government would not permit the sale of fighter-bombers to Pakistan but that all American economic aid might be cut off unless the Pakistanis yielded on the issue. [New York Times] Efforts to bring about a cease-fire in Lebanon became deadlocked. Leftists and Palestinians accused Syrian forces of deliberately delaying a cease-fire that had been scheduled for last Thursday to enable the rightists to occupy more territory. Fighting raged in Beirut's commercial center, already devastated, and there were clashes in the suburbs and around the beleaguered Palestinian refugee camp of Tell Zaatar, where the International Red Cross has had to suspend its evacuation of the wounded. The leftist press predicted a new all-out attack on the camp by rightist Christians following the capture by Christians of the nearby Moslem enclave of Al Nabaa. [New York Times]