December 31, 1978

The economic soothsayers have already prophesied that the new year will be less happy than the old. Real Gross National Product (as opposed to fake Gross National Product) will slacken in 1979. The lines before the unemployment compensation windows will lengthen. The inflationary pot will bubble. In brief, toil and trouble.

Shall we face n fact and the New Year at one and the same time? The fact is that no matter how hard you try to count up, on your handy fingers, the 10 best plays of 1978, you're bound to get stuck somewhere along about four and one‐half. There aren't 10 best plays of 1978. Oh, I do understand that the word “best” is at best a relative notion. If a season has 11 plays and one of them is such a clinker that it blushes with shame alongside the remaining 10, then the remaining 10 are the “best,” aren't they? I say they're not. If they aren't good, they can't he best. I stand on “good, better, best,” and that's an end of it.

disclosure of additional hazardous dump sites in Niagara Falls revd; map (S)

Residents of Ludlow sec of Yonkers, NY, are fighting to prevent Westchester County from expanding sewage plant on Hudson and locating a sludge-dewatering facility there; illus (M)

BETHPAGE THE Alford family of Hampton Bays and the Ablan family of Port Jefferson Station had hoped to spend their Christmas and New Year's Day holidays in Bangkok and Hong Kong with several other families from the Island who have found it easy to get to many exotic places in the world from their temporary homes in‐Iran.

WHEN Penn State takes on Alabama tomorrow in the Sugar. Bowl, a match that will determine the nation's No. 1 college football team, a number of its players will have New Rochelle on their minds and close to their hearts, or, to he more specilc. on their left and right pec??oral muscles and covering their craniums.

There was a time, as recently as five years ago, when recessions came like the flu, by surprise. Not so the Recession of ‘79, if it comes. For never has a relapse of the nation's economy been more anticipated, more analyzed, more advertised.

Survey of important cultural events of 1978; illus

HR Select Com on Assassinations concludes that, on basis of circumstantial evidence, there is likelihood that Dr King was assassinated as result of a conspiracy (M)

Weiniger int (M)

NYS and NYC business and pol leaders step up effort to attract foreign business; aims of effort, shaped in Albany and NYC over last 18 mos, outlined; efforts to retain existing corps and businesses discussed; illus (L)

some Grumman employees and dependents who recently left Iran discuss situation there (M)