News stories from Saturday September 27, 1975

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

The Organization of Oil Exporting countries announced today, after four tense, quarrelsome days of talks in Vienna, that there would be a 10 percent increase in the price of oil effective Oct. 1, but that it would freeze the new prices for at least nine months as a gesture of goodwill. [New York Times] The Ford administration publicly criticized the oil cartel's 10 percent price increase and said that as a result gasoline prices would increase by one to one and a half cents a gallon in the United States. There were expressions of relief in the White House and the State Department that the cartel increase was not any higher. Mr. Ford repeated a persistent administration criticism: that the failure of Congress to approve the administration's recommendations for an overall energy policy had made the United States vulnerable to the price rises of foreign oil exporters. [New York Times] Norway, which is due to become Europe's biggest oil producer, intends to hold down oil production and tightly control an expected bonanza in revenues, Premier Trygve Bratteli said in an interview. Mr. Bratteli said it would be "a disaster" if increased oil-industry activity lured Norwegians out of industries in small towns in the north and drew them to the prosperous south, if the economy was distorted, if the traditional way of life was altered beyond recognition. [New York Times] The Watergate special prosecutor's office is expected to announce next month that it has found insufficient evidence to warrant filing formal charges against Charles Rebozo, a close friend and financial associate of former President Richard Nixon, according to sources close to the investigation. The investigation centered on allegations that Mr. Rebozo may have improperly converted political contributions to his own or Mr. Nixon's personal use. Internal Revenue Service agents developed "some" evidence that Mr. Rebozo may have understated his income by "less than $25,000 over a two-or three-year period" and that in several instances his statements contradicted other testimony. One source said that there were "financial records we were unable to obtain because the people who had them had the right not to turn them over to us." Without these records, the source said, "we were unable to plug up all the loopholes in the case." [New York Times] A series of orders to his staff from the head of the Environmental Protection Agency to cut back the number of antipollution regulations has caused some conservationists to charge that the Ford administration has abandoned the national commitment to clean air and water. The orders by Russell Train appear to parallel President Ford's announced drive to reduce the effect of what he believes are unnecessary or arbitrary actions by the federal government. [New York Times] The nation's public employee unions, confronted with sharply stiffening resistance to their demands by elected officials, are beginning to fight back with increasing resentment. A leader in the union counterattack is Jerry Wurf, president of the 700,000-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. He says "the politician who one day is calling us bandits and greedy isn't above calling us two days later and asking us to help in his campaign." [New York Times] The Chase Manhattan Bank has, for the first time, urged the federal government to intervene in the New York fiscal crisis. "We feel from both a local and national perspective that temporary Federal support for New York City is of the highest priority," Dennis Longwell, president of Chase Manhattan Bank of Central New York said in a letter. Mr. Longwell said the document had been worked out at Chase Manhattan headquarters in New York for submission to the Joint Economic Committee of Congress. The bank's position, in effect, pits David Rockefeller, Chase Manhattan's chairman, against his brother Nelson, the Vice President, who has counseled President Ford not to intervene in New York. [New York Times] A growing concern over medical malpractice litigation played a role in forcing the question of terminating the extraordinary medical care of Karen Anne Quinlan, the 21-year-old woman who has been in a coma for five months, into court and the public conscience. The case, which is scheduled to go to trial Oct. 20, raises complex medical and legal issues that go beyond fixing a statutory definition of death that lawyers say have never been argued before in court. [New York Times] Ignoring last-minute appeals for clemency and defying a wave of violent protest in other parts of Europe, the Spanish government executed by firing squads five political terrorists convicted of having killed policemen or civil guards. Death by firing squad instead of the garrote traditionally used in Spain in executions was the only concession that the government accorded the five condemned men, who were among 11 sentenced to death by military courts. Six were granted clemency. Two of the executed men were members of the E.T.A., the Basque nationalist group. These were the first executions of E.T.A. members, and a violent reaction from that organization was feared. [New York Times]