News stories from Saturday September 9, 1978

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

The Senate will "rise to the occasion" and pass the natural gas compromise bill, Senate Democratic leader Robert Byrd said at his weekly news conference. Byrd said he did not have the votes to push the compromise through, but opponents did not have enough to stop the bill. The legislation, which took a House-Senate negotiating conference 10 months to produce, has become the key section of President Carter's energy package. Byrd said chances for shutting off a filibuster against the bill were good if one should develop when it is considered in the Senate this week. [Los Angeles Times] Advertising man Gerald Rafshoon took a net pay cut of about $200,000 a year to become President Carter's image builder, the White House disclosed. Rafshoon, who joined the White House staff in June, has resigned as president of his Atlanta advertising firm and placed all his assets in a trust. As a presidential assistant he earns $56,000 a year. The White House statement said that Rafshoon and his wife had had a net income of $250,000 to $300,000 in 1977 and had a net worth of least $905,000. [Los Angeles Times] Striking firemen in Chattanooga, Tenn., faced with court-ordered arrest, ended their day-old walkout and returned to work. Fire chief Joe Knowles said soon after the deadline set by the court that all men scheduled for duty had returned to work or would do so. The city employs about 400 firefighters. Judge Wilkes Thrasher had warned union leaders that public employee strikes were illegal in Tennessee and that firefighters faced 10-day jail terms and a $50 fines. Meanwhile, a full-scale "sick-out" by Manchester, N.H., firefighters entered its fourth day. In both cities, the main issue is wages. [Los Angeles Times] A fisherman who had abandoned his sinking boat during a storm off Oregon was rescued after 24 hours in the chilly Pacific. The Coast Guard picked up Oscar Jamison about 20 miles north of where he had radioed that he was abandoning his vessel. He was reported in good condition, and the Coast Guard attributed his survival to his wet suit, designed to provide protection for six to eight hours in Alaskan waters. A storm Friday had caught the Oregon tuna fleet off guard, sinking seven boats. No other crewmen were reported missing or injured. [Los Angeles Times] A new rabies vaccine that gives better protection and produces virtually no adverse reaction was described by the national Center for Disease Control in Atlanta. The vaccine was developed by inactivating a strain of rabies grown in human cell tissue. Work on the vaccine began in the 1960's and, although it still has not been licensed, the center said it was now being used experimentally on humans in the United States and Israel. [Los Angeles Times] The General Services Administration was overcharged more than $300,000 for the services of computer consultants whose qualifications had been falsified to put them into higher pay brackets, according to a G.S.A. draft audit report. By overstating the number of years of experience and pertinent education they had, some consultants received pay as high as $45 an hour when they had no relevant experience and others were paid $25 an hour when they should have received only $16, according to the auditors. The consultants were employed by Computer Sciences Corp. of El Segundo, Calif., and two of its subcontractors. [Los Angeles Times] Gov. Jay Hammond was certified as a 101-vote winner over former Gov. Walter Hickel in Alaska's Aug. 22 Republican gubernatorial primary. Hickel, a former U.S. interior secretary, was expected to petition for a recount. State Sen. Chancy Croft of Anchorage was declared the Democratic nominee for governor in another close race; he won by 272 votes over former state Sen. Ed Merdes of Fairbanks. Hammond officially received 31,899 votes to 31,798 for Hickel. Croft received 8,911 votes to Merdes' 8,639. [Los Angeles Times] Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith planned a nationwide broadcast tomorrow to tell the country's angry whites how he intends to respond to the downing of a civilian airliner by guerrillas with the loss of 48 lives. There was speculation that Smith's "new course" for Rhodesia would include some form of mobilization. Leaders of neighboring black countries that shelter guerrillas were reported expecting attacks against guerrilla bases in their territory. [Los Angeles Times] North Korean President Kim Il Sung called for the United States and South Korea to join in tripartite talks on reuniting the two Koreas. In a speech at ceremonies in Pyongyang marking his nation's 30th anniversary, Kim indicated that the two Koreas could continue to maintain separate political systems under reunification. [Los Angeles Times] An American-born Israeli bomb squad expert who was injured in the explosion of a terrorist bomb in Jerusalem last week died of his wounds at Jerusalem's Shaarei Zedek Hospital. Steve HiImes, 31, who immigrated to Israel from Los Angeles in 1973, was injured Tuesday when a suspicious-looking object he had been called to investigate exploded. [Los Angeles Times] Syrian forces blasted the Christian sector of Beirut with rockets and artillery in what former Lebanese President Camille Chamoun said was an attempt to disrupt the Mideast summit at Camp David, Md. Cars, broken power poles and other debris smoldered in the streets of the embattled sector after a five-hour barrage. The shells set many apartment buildings on fire. Police said at least four Christians were killed. [Los Angeles Times] Gunfire broke out in several parts of Managua and there were reports that leftist guerrillas bombed a national guard outpost near Masaya in the latest upsurge of violence by Nicaraguans opposed to President Anastasio Somoza. The Red Cross said heavy gunfire was reported in at least six locations in the capital and ambulances had been dispatched. [Los Angeles Times] Spain's Premier Adolfo Suarez arrived in Havana for a two-day state visit and was welcomed formally by Cuban President Fidel Castro. Suarez is the first Spanish leader to visit Cuba and the first head of state from Western Europe to go there since the Cuban revolution in 1959. [Los Angeles Times] Canadian Labor Minister John Munro has resigned, saying he violated cabinet rules by telephoning a judge on behalf of a constituent. Munro called the judge because he was tardy in giving a character reference for an Ontario landlord who was convicted of attacking a tenant, according to a Munro assistant. In his letter of resignation to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, Munro said he considered his phone call a violation of Trudeau's rules, which bar cabinet ministers from communicating with the judiciary except through the minister of justice. The prosecutor in the tenant's case reported the incident to the Ontario attorney general after the judge recessed the case to take Munro's call in his chambers. [Los Angeles Times] The Soviet Union disclosed it had launched from an orbiting spacecraft an unmanned probe that is to send back data on the planet Venus. The "interplanetary station," named Venus 11, is to "continue the scientific exploration of Venus" and, on its way to the planet, is to monitor the characteristics of solar wind, cosmic rays, gamma rays and other phenomena of outer space, according to the Soviet news agency Tass. [Los Angeles Times] Author Saul Bellow, winner of the 1976 Nobel Prize for Literature, has been ordered to pay $200,000 in legal fees incurred in a long divorce fight with his former wife, Susan. A Chicago judge has ordered Bellow to pay an additional $500,000 in alimony, $800-a-month support for their son, Daniel, 15, costs for the boy's private schooling and medical care and the cost of moving his former wife to New York City. [Los Angeles Times] In Topeka, Kan., Republican patriarch All Landon turned 91 as he continued with plans to stump for his daughter in her U.S. Senate campaign. In his annual birthday interview, the 1936 G.O.P. presidential candidate said that he thought Jimmy Carter would be a one-term president, saw the decline of the dollar as a symbol of the loss of U.S. world leadership and said that he had told the crocuses in his yard that he would see them again next spring. [Los Angeles Times]