February 7, 1974

NYS Atty Gen Lefkowitz files civil suit in State Sup Ct charging 4 member cos of Royal Dutch Shell group with diverting and holding secretly in storage home heating oil meant for NY area homeowners; alleges that under arrangement by Shell Oil Co, 3 other defendant cos kept 1 million bbls of oil at Reserve Tank Corp in NJ, did not rept it to API and did not begin selling it until after imposition of Arab oil embargo; says 600,000 bbls are still in storage and not committed for sale; seeks injunction to prohibit defendants from continuing with scheme and asks that restitution be made to consumers who bought available oil at 'unconscionable and exorbitant prices'; says investigation, which indicates that shortages have been contrived by major oil cos, will continue; notes that defendants, while telling NY customers that it did not have enough oil, tried to conceal facts after investigation began; alleged scheme detailed; Lefkowitz illus; NJ storage tank illus (M)

Soviet dissident historian Roy A Medvedev issues well-documented essay praising and defending dissident novelist Aleksandr I Solzhenitsyn's book The Gulag Archipelago as 'mercilessly truthful' work providing more insight into Russian prison life than Dostoevsky's writings; offers point-by-point rebuttal of official Soviet press denunciations of book; charges controlled Soviet press in some cases with 'deliberate and malicious' distortions of Solzhenitsyn's book; finds only minor faults with some of author's facts and differs with certain 'evaluations and conclusions' in book; takes issue with Solzhenitsyn's suggestion that terrorist tactics and abuses of power had been built into Soviet system from Lenin and was not primarily facet of Stalinism; says Solzhenitsyn's estimates of number of Leningrad purges, '34-35, in wake of pol leader Sergei M Kirov's assassination, and number of peasants deported under Stalin's rural collectivization are too high; supports contentions by recalling purges of his father and late Soviet poet Aleksandr T Tvardovsky

food shortages begin to show up and some industries begin layoffs as effects of ind truckers' strike spread to NYC met area; NYC Consumer Affairs spokesman Jean Ende says consumers will be faced with higher prices and shortages if strike lasts much longer; gasoline shortages at service stations spread as picketing by truckers keeps many oil-co trucks from delivering Feb allocations; major truck stop on Route 17 in Mahwah, NJ, is closed by mgr Jack Walker to avoid violence (L)

photographic images of Venus transmitted by Mariner 10 spacecraft, reveals system of bands and streaks roughly parallel to planet's equator and are believed to show for 1st time nature of planet's weather; indicate winds of Venus constitute symmetric, spiraling system that carries energy from equatorial region to 2 poles; Venusian clouds system and other atmospheric features discussed; photographic image of Venusian clouds transmitted by Mariner 10 (L)

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine guerrillas seize Japanese Amb Ryoko Ishikawa and about 7 members of his staff at gunpoint on Feb 6 inside Japanese Embassy in Kuwait in bid to win freedom for 4 other guerrillas trapped on ferryboat they commandeered in Singapore; demand that 4 guerrillas, members of Japanese Red Army and Popular Front, who unsuccessfully tried to blow up Shell oil refinery in Singapore, be flown to Kuwait aboard Japanese airliner; say operation was carried out in cooperation with members of Japanese Red Army and another Arab underground orgn called Sons of Occupied Arab Territories; Kuwaiti Govt offers group safe conduct out of country if they surrender Japanese hostages unharmed but refuses to allow Japanese airliner carrying guerrillas from Singapore to land in Kuwait; Kuwaiti police intercept telephone calls that guerrillas made from embassy to Beirut, where Popular Front and group's leader Dr George Habash have offices; Kuwaiti ruler Sheik Sabah al-Salem al-Sabah has provided funds for Palestinian resistance movement and considered country safe from Palestinian guerrilla operations (M)