Article on advanced methods of seismic exploration for oil; work of Mobil Oil crew outside Mesquite, Nev, described; illus; diagram (L)

Improved Technology Aids Wider Oil Search

Prime Min Mustafa Khalil releases statement from European telecommunications consortium denying accusations that Egyptian Government acted improperly in awarding consortium $1.8 billion contract (M)

Payment Charge Denied In Egyptian Phone Pact

After weeks filled with comfort and coy suggestions that it might never arrive, winter gusted into the metropolitan area yesterday in a burst of cold that hunched shoulders, rattled teeth and led the mind to contemplate distant springs.

Gusting Winds Br‐r‐ring a Preview of Winter

A picture caption in Ihe Arts and Leisure section Sunday gave an incorrect date for a program by the Waverly Consort at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The program will be given Friday night.

CORRECTIONS

Pennsylvania University biologist Dr Daniel H Janzen finds tropical fig trees, species of wasps and orangutans have unique dependence on each other for existence; finds mutually beneficial relationship, spanning thousands of years, is evidenced in complicated series of events in which wasps pollinate figs and lay their eggs in fruit, orangutans eat fruit and then distribute fertile seeds in feces, insuring reproduction of figs throughout forest; drawing (M)

Vital Triangle: Wasps, Figs, Clever Apes

$2.68 billion 'hold the line' school budget, increase of $360 million over this year's, is submitted to Mayor Koch; School Chancellor Frank J Macchiarola holds increase is essential to help educate tens of thousands of academically deficient students; Mayor's Office of Management and Budget indicates that request for increase is considered unrealistic (M)

CITY'S SCHOOLS SEEK $2.68 BILLION BUDGET

Senate gives final approval to windfall profits tax on oil industry calculated to raise $178 billion from '80 to '90, about 38% of windfall that Pres Carter says decontrol will enable industry to reap over that period; bill provides that tax will phase out automatically when total revenue reaches $214 billion, sometime after $178 billion figure is reached in '90, by which time it assumes price of oil will rise to $30 a bbl; Sen Jackson fails in effort to key tax rate to increases in world price of oil, to insure that Government gets share of higher profits resulting from OPEC actions (M)

‘WINDFALL’ OIL TAX RAISING $178 BILLION IS VOTED BY SENATE

Brit Prime Min Margaret Thatcher emphasizes agreement with US on merits of decision to deploy new missiles, speech, Washington (S)

MRS. THATCHER VOWS TO BACK U.S. ON IRAN

Postal Rate Commission, 3-2, rules that Postal Service can go ahead with experimental electronic mail business in 25 cities through 1983; insists that electronic transmission part of service be handled exclusively by private companies; Postal Service had wanted to offer service in conjunction with Western Union as sole electronic communications company, but commission ruled that more competitive service is preferable; FCC chairman Charles D Ferris hails ruling; National Association of Letter Carriers and American Postal Workers Union express concern that decision might harm employees and postal agency financially and delay setting up system; commission Chairman A Lee Fritschler says service will get 95%, rather than 55%, of total revenues from service under commission's approach (M)

Electronic Postal Plan Is Approved

UN General Assembly adopts without dissent code outlawing taking of hostages; convention is result of 3 years of negotiations initiated by West Germany (M)

U.N. CODE OUTLAWS TAKING OF HOSTAGES

Patriotic Front leaders agree to cease-fire plan aimed at ending civil war; agreement offers sound hope that diplomatic isolation of Rhodesia will finally end; Rhodesian Governor, Lord Soames, has been technically in charge of country since his arrival on Dec 12 but has been unable to do anything in absence of cease-fire agreement; Nkomo and Mugabe comment; their illus (L)

RHODESIAN GUERRILLAS AGREE TO BRITAIN'S CEASE‐FIRE PLAN; SIGNING IS SET FOR TOMORROW

EEC imposes $9.8 million fine on Panasonic Electronic Corp and its European distributors for allegedly conspiring to keep prices of Pioneer equipment artificially high in France by refusing to provide other French distributors with supplies at lower prices charged in neighboring EEC countries (S)

Company In Record E.E.C. Fine

Financial and management profile of 20th film division Century-Fox Film Corp, which since August has lost 9 executives, including Alan Ladd Jr, who resigned as president of pictures division; appointment of Alan Hirschfield to replace him reinforces controversial trend at Fox and in industry toward diversified entertainment corporations and professional management; chairman and chief executive offcer Dennis C Stanfill comments on Fox's development of tier of film subcontractors, whose films Fox finances and distributes; such subcontractors include Ashley Boone, David Brown and Richard Zanuck; pors of Stanfill, Hirschfield, president C Joseph LaBonte, Ladd, Boone, Brown and Zanuck; list of Fox' revenues, net income, earnings and main lines of business (L)

Changing Face of Fox Film

NYC Rent Guidelines Board approves fuel surcharge of $12 a month from Jan through June for 300,000 rent-stabilized apartments; defeats proposal to raise rents in another 10,000 apartments; board's action is scored by both tenant and landlord spokesmen; meeting illus (M)

$12 FUEL FEE ADDED TO MONTHLY RENTS FOR 300,000 TENANTS

Ayatollah Khomeini says militants occupying US Embassy are expressing will of Iranian people and are not setting separate foreign policy, TV interview with Moslem journalists; says Carter is not letting deposed Shah return to Iran because he knows he is key to crimes and treason of US; rejects recent calls from UN Security Council and International Court of Justice to release hostages; Revolutionary Council issues statement holding US responsible for Shah's crimes and accusing Panama of being accomplice by giving him refuge; statement denounces World Court's verdict; tenor of remarks by Khomeini and militant students seem to constitute warning to Foreign Min Ghotbzadeh that he is too conciliatory on hostage issue; Ghotbzadeh says international board of inquiry will be convened in beginning of Jan; says former Foreign Min of Ireland Sean Mac Bride and Louis-Edmond Pettiti, head of Paris Bar Association, are being considered for panel; acting Interior Min Hojjatolislam Hasheimi-Rafsanjani says board of inquiry might be given priority over trials; Judge Mohammed Mohammedi-Gilani says hostages will be tried under Islamic law (M)

Khomeini Backs Hostages’ Captors And Denies They Make Own Policy

OPEC oil ministers begin price conference in Caracas, Venezuela, on Dec 17; Ali Akbar Moinfar of Iran confirms that his country has raised oil price $5 a bbl to $28.50; Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani of Saudi Arabia and Mani Said al-Otaiba of United Arab Emirates indicate that they will oppose price increase above $24 a bbl; both countries have also indicated that they will hold production at current level, despite expectation that demand will hold steady and non-OPEC production will rise; Moinfar illus (M)

OPEC Session Opens Amid Pricing Discord As Iran Confirms Rise

Amalgamated Transit Union Local 241, representing 8,000 bus drivers, repairman and central office employees, and Local 308, representing 3,000 motormen, strike Chicago Transit Authority for 1st time since 1922, leaving more than million commuters seeking alternative means of transportation; strikers ignore temporary restraining order granted to authority by Cook County Circuit Court Judge Donald J O'Brien; Byrne says she will not mediate strike as her prececessors did in other labor disputes; strike is precipitated by city efforts to reduce cost-of-living increase in contract; authority attorneys will seek $500,000 in damages for each day of strike; illus of traffic jam (M)

Chicago Transit Workers Strike, Affecting a Million

Congressional Research Service report indicates that because of reduced demand for imports, Iran has been able to buy from elsewhere essential items it had previously purchased from US; says Iran's internal difficulties are main reason for its ailing economy; says exports to Iran have fallen off so significantly that its vulnerability to US trade embargo has been reduced; says in first 9 months of '79, US exports to Iran slipped to $885.5 million from $2.5 billion in '78; Japan tells US that it will not participate in economic boycott, but number of European countries have begun to reduce their trade with Iran; illustration of rice piled on Houston, Tex, pier after longshoremen refused to handle it (M)

Iran Shifting Trade From U.S.

Iran's oil minister confirmed a price increase to $28.50 a barrel during the first day of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries&#8217; meeting in Caracas, Venezuela, further clouding hopes for uniform pricing. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates vowed to stay at $24, at least through the first quarter of 1980. [A1.]

BUSINESS Digest

Article on various methods dentists used to quell fear of dentistry among patients observes that National Institute of Dental Research is spending some $300,000 in '79 on 6 projects aimed at reducing dental anxiety; projects noted (M)

Dentists Try New Ways To Quell Fear

The commuters who had struggled with jammed buses and subways and congested highways during last week's Long Island Rail Road strike gladly packed themselves aboard the trains yesterday, the first weekday since the line resumed operating under a Presidential order.

Long Island's Trains Are Jammed, And This Time the Riders Love It

Exxon and Chevron USA raise wholesale gasoline prices 6c a gallon, citing increase in Saudi Arabian crude oil prices; Chevron raises price of heating oil and diesel fuel by 6c a gal, and Exxon raises some of its distillate prices by 3c a gal (M)

2 Refiners Lift Gas Price 6¢

NYS Appeals Court dismisses $500,000 award to Queens man, Daniel Hoffman, who as child had been improperly assigned to classes for the mentally retarded; Judge Matthew J Jasen writes, in majority opinion, 'the court system is not the proper forum to test the validity' of educational decisions or to 'second-guess' such decisions (M)

Court Kills Award to Man Taught as Retarded Pupil

article on increasing reliance by US on intelligence satellites in effort to remedy shortfall in its surveillance of USSR which has resulted from loss of listening posts in Iran and other neighbors of Soviets; notes crash program is in progress to develop substitutes for lost listening posts which depends heavily on improving capability of reconnaissance and communications satellites; illus (M)

U.S. Increases Reliance On Intelligence Satellites

Article on increasing number of schools that are teaching students 'critical TV viewing skills'; cites curriculum developed by Southwest Educational Development Laboratory; drawing (M)

December 18, 1979

Headlines from December 18, 1979

Improved Technology Aids Wider Oil Search

Payment Charge Denied In Egyptian Phone Pact

Gusting Winds Br‐r‐ring a Preview of Winter

CORRECTIONS

Vital Triangle: Wasps, Figs, Clever Apes

Billboard 200

The Long Run

On The Radio: Greatest Hits: Volumes I & II

Cornerstone

Journey Through The Secret Life Of Plants

Greatest

Historical Context for December 18, 1979