News stories from Sunday August 17, 1975

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

After the Ford administration deregulates domestic crude oil prices at the end of August, motorists and homeowners are likely to face increases of 2 cents to 4 cents a gallon for gasoline and home-heating fuel during the following four months, and additional sizable increases in the first half of 1976, according to analysts and industry experts. [New York Times] Samuel Bronfman II was rescued without violence at 4 A.M. today on the ninth day of his kidnapping. Forty to 60 Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and New York City policemen freed him when they surprised a captor in an apartment in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn. Two men were arrested and were charged initially with extortion by the use of the mails. They were identified as Mel Patrick Lynch, 37 years old; a city fireman, in whose apartment Mr. Bronfman had been held, and Dominic Byrne, 53,, operator of a limousine service and a neighbor of Mr.. Lynch. The $2.3 million ransom was recovered. [New York Times] For 24 hours before Samuel Bronfman II was rescued, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents were sitting in stakeout cars outside the Brooklyn homes of the two alleged abductors, evidently unaware that the victim was only steps away. It was apparently the sight of two of the waiting agents that frightened one of the suspects into giving himself away by calling on the city police to ask for protection in what authorities said was an attempt to set up an alibi. [New York Times] Whites say their contacts with blacks slowly but steadily increased between 1964 and 1974. A series of surveys over that period by the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan documented an increasing social mixing of the races and a change in attitude about blacks on the part of whites from negative to positive. [New York Times] President Ford directed Secretary of State Kissinger today to undertake a "critically important mission" to the Middle East this week in search of "a successful conclusion" to negotiations for a new separation of Israeli and Egyptian forces in Sinai. Mr. Ford's instructions followed what Mr. Kissinger described earlier in the day as formal approval by the Israeli government of several "agreements in principle" outlining the scope of a Sinai accord. [New York Times] Israeli officials prepared for Mr. Kissinger's trip to the Middle East with an obvious lack of enthusiasm. The cabinet, after a six-hour meeting, authorized Premier Yitzhak Rabin, Foreign Minister Yigal Alton and Defense Minister Shimon Peres to negotiate through Mr. Kissinger for an agreement with Egypt. But the Israelis strongly indicated that Mr. Kissinger did not have the 90 percent prior agreement between the parties that he had said was a condition for a resumption of his shuttle diplomacy, which was suspended in March when his efforts failed. [New York Times] Portugal's Communist party said that it still planned to hold a rally Tuesday in Oporto, an anti-Communist stronghold in northern Portugal, despite the violent disruption by anti-Communists of a rally in Alcobaca, in central Portugal, Saturday night. The announcement that the Oporto rally would be held was considered by many Portuguese as an act of provocation, or poor political judgment. [New York Times] The Portuguese armed forces are proving much more mod-rate in their outlook toward change in Portugal than the revolutionary rhetoric of the past year has indicated. Advocates of go-slow political and economic policies and the preservation of a democratic, multiparty system appear to be winning majority support against efforts to create some kind of proletarian dictatorship under either the leadership of the Communist party or the armed forces. [New York Times]