News stories from Saturday September 16, 1978

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

A boy was killed and two other children were wounded by gunshots apparently fired by a sniper in Merrill, Mich. The children were shot as they played in a street outside a tavern, police said. The shots apparently came from the roof of a vacant building across the street. Pat O'Boyle, owner of the tavern, said he had chased the children away from the bar at least once before the shooting started. Saginaw County sheriffs deputies said William Mills, 12, was killed. The other two children, Michael Brown, 4, and Delphine Merritt, 16, were listed in good condition at a hospital. [Los Angeles Times] Pegasus 1, a 23,000-pound scientific satellite, launched in 1965 but unused since 1968, was expected to tumble into the earth's atmosphere and burn early tomorrow, space officials said. Its impact area is limited to the southern part of the United States, parts of Latin America, the Sahara in Africa, India and China. NASA officials rated the likelihood that any debris would strike a human at 1 billion to 1 and said debris probably would fall into the ocean. [Los Angeles Times] Pontiac engines are to be installed in some 1979 Oldsmobiles and Buicks, but customers will be told before they buy the cars, a General Motors spokesman said. The plan was disclosed when G.M. asked the Environmental Protection agency for clean air certification of the 301-cubic-inch V8 engines in Delta 88 Oldsmobiles and Century, Regal and Le Sabre Buicks. Last year, similar use of Chevrolet engines in Oldsmobiles, without telling buyers, generated public outcry and court action against the auto maker. [Los Angeles Times] Democratic Sen. J. Bennett Johnston built a 60% to 40% lead over state Rep. Louis (Woody) Jenkins as voters nominated candidates in Louisiana's first open primary. Johnston was elected in 1972 to the seat held by the late Sen. Allen Ellender for 36 years. In U.S. House races, incumbent Reps. Robert Livingston, Lindy Boggs, W. Henson Moore, John Breaux and Gillis Long scored easy victories. Rep. David Treen was unopposed in the 3rd District, which contains part of suburban New Orleans. All candidates, regardless of party, were entered in the open primary. [Los Angeles Times] Striking teachers in Bridgeport, Conn., held a rally to show support for 135 colleagues jailed during the strike which has closed the school system. Talks were held between striking teachers and school officials in Cleveland, Fall River, Mass., and in the Chicago city college system. The Seattle school board voted to go to court to break its teachers' strike, and the Tacoma, Wash., board planned to hire replacements for 1,600 striking teachers. [Los Angeles Times] At least four persons were killed when two tornadoes struck in Jasper County, Iowa, the Iowa State Patrol office in Des Moines reported. Two of the four were killed when one tornado whipped through a motel complex and business area at the junction of Interstate 80 and Iowa Highway 46 two miles south of Grinnell. Unofficial reports indicated that one of the victims was a small boy: Two other persons were killed when the second funnel ripped through a farm home south of Laurel. [Los Angeles Times] The General Services Administration has caused substantial financial losses by using irregular bidding practices for work done on government-leased buildings, the General Accounting Office said in a report. It said the G.S.A. had permitted building owners to make alterations without competitive bidding, had not obtained cost estimates before allowing building alterations and sometimes negotiated renewal leases before the work was done. [Los Angeles Times] Owners of 65 service stations in Nebraska, Illinois and Iowa will be able to continue selling gasohol -- a mixture of gasoline and alcohol -- at least through Dec. 16 while the Environmental Protection Agency reviews pollution and mileage studies on the automotive fuel. Gas Plus Inc., a Nebraska firm that markets the product, has asked the E.P.A. for a waiver from a new federal law barring the use of certain gasoline additives, such as alcohol. Gasohol boosters contend the addition of alcohol to gasoline would cut down the nation's consumption of oil, and help farmers by creating greater demand for grain, from which alcohol is made. [Los Angeles Times] A Bay Area congressman has charged that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation may be endangering the lives of hundreds of thousands of Californians by rejecting a geological survey warning of the possibilities of a major earthquake at the Auburn dam site in Northern California. Rep. Leo Ryan (D-South San Francisco) said it was "unbelievable" that Asst. Reclamation Commissioner Robert Jansen would "dismiss the findings" of the government geologists, who predicted last month that a quake measuring between 6.5 and 7.0 on the Richter scale could occur at the dam site. [Los Angeles Times] The U.S. space agency canceled the launch of two satellites when both spacecraft were found to have faulty tape recorders. Spokesmen for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said the tape recorders in Tiros N, a meteorological satellite originally planned for launching Friday, and Nimbus G, an environmental monitoring satellite scheduled for launching Monday, were sent back to the manufacturer for repair. If the recorders can be fixed quickly, the space agency will attempt to launch Tiros on Sept. 28 and Nimbus on Oct. 2. [Los Angeles Times] After a four-year court fight, Penelope Brace is on the job as the Philadelphia Police Department's first woman detective. Miss Brace, who has been an officer for 13 years, accused the city of sex discrimination in a suit filed in 1974. The department, with the support of Mayor Frank Rizzo, refused to promote her, saying that women were not strong enough to perform the duties of patrol officers. A federal judge ordered her promotion. [Los Angeles Times] Aristotle Onassis was so angered by his wife's spending that he arranged for a new Greek law that cut her inheritance to less than 2% of what he had agreed to in their marriage contract, author Stephen Birmingham writes in a forthcoming book on Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. She had expected to inherit at least $100 million after his death under the terms of the 1968 contract, Birmingham wrote, but Onassis became enraged at her spending habits. In 1974 the Greek parliament enacted a law stipulating that a marriage contract between a Greek citizen and a foreigner was legally invalid. Onassis then persuaded his wife, who did not know about the new law, to sign an amendment to the contract that would provide her with $200,000 a year after his death. "She signed this readily, supposing that it was in addition to the millions she would one day inherit," Birmingham wrote. "What she was actually accepting was a tiny share -- less than 2% of what might have been her inheritance." Birmingham said that Onassis' daughter, Christina, "agreed to settle something in excess of $20 million on her stepmother, just to be rid of Jackie's demands." [Los Angeles Times] Ramon Serrano Suner, Spain's foreign minister from May, 1941, to September, 1942, denied that Spanish diplomats spied for Japan in the United States during World War II. U.S. government documents made public last week said American intelligence uncovered a Spanish spy ring that was set up just after the outbreak of war between the United States and Japan late in 1941. Serrano Suner said some Spanish journalists working in the United States spied for Japan, but they had no official authorization. [Los Angeles Times] Six imprisoned members of a Greek Cypriot underground movement shot a guard and seized five others as hostages in a bid to escape from Nicosia's central prison, police reported. A government spokesman said the prisoners were demanding safe passage out of the country but the government would not negotiate with them "on any matter." He did not say if the prisoners specifically named any country where they wanted to go. [Los Angeles Times] A London court granted preliminary approval for extraditing suspected West German terrorist Astrid Proll, who is on her country's list of 40 most-wanted urban guerrillas. Proll, believed to be a founder of the Baader-Meinhof gang and an accomplice in the murders of two West German policemen, said she would be killed if jailed in West Germany. Her lawyer said she would come "to the same sticky end as the others in Germany's prisons." Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof died in their cells last year, officially of suicide, but their supporters say they were murdered. [Los Angeles Times] A virology technician was admitted to a British hospital as a possible smallpox victim. A spokesman for the West Midlands Regional Health Authority said Norma Rees was admitted to the hospital, in a Birmingham suburb, because she had contact 22 days ago with Britain's first smallpox victim in five years. But he said Mrs. Rees is not ill and has only one spot as a possible indication of the suspected disease. Janet Parker, 40, who died Monday of smallpox, was treated in the hospital where Mrs. Rees works. [Los Angeles Times] The wife of a Russian sentenced to be shot on charges of spying for the United States appealed to President Carter to intercede in his case. Tamara Filatov told Western reporters she had written to the President in desperation, begging him to save the life of her husband, Anatoly. Filatov, who once worked as an interpreter in Algiers, was sentenced to death in July for treason after a secret trial which coincided with that of Anatoly Sharansky as well as other Helsinki group dissidents. [Los Angeles Times] Japanese police raided more than 20 hideouts of radicals in Tokyo and nearby areas in a bid to forestall violence during a demonstration planned for Sunday against Tokyo's new international airport. Police said more than 7,000 people were expected to take part in a rally near the $2.6 billion airport at Narita, 41 miles from Tokyo. [Los Angeles Times] Gen. Zia ul-Haq was sworn in as Pakistan's new president, but said he would step down as soon as another suitable man could be found. "It was not my choice . . I will remain in office until the next elected president can take over," he said. General Zia, who seized power in a coup that toppled former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in July, 1977, said he would retain his positions as chief martial law administrator and army chief of staff. Zia succeeded Fazal Elahi Chaudhry, who stepped down. [Los Angeles Times]