Daily News from New York, New York • 8

00 WHAT ELSE IS npens wans METRO elected Oct. 16, was met at the airport by several hundred well-wishers, including acting Premier Giulio Andreotti and the Vatican secretary of state, Jean Cardinal Villot. Music on Vatican radio The Vatican radio celebrated the Pope's return home by playing selections of Mexican music, including bullfight trumpet flourishes. The 58-year-old Polish Pope stepped from the plane wearing his traditional white vestments and carrying a broad-brimmed bishop's hat. John Paul, who has said that he hopes to travel to the U.S.

and his native Poland, heard oh his return to Rome that Poland's Catholics will hold a vigil today to pray for a papal visit and for religious freedom in their Communist country. Rome (UPI) Pope John Paul, tanned and smiling', returned home yesterday from a week-long tri to Latin America, his first foray outside Italy as spiritual leader of the world's 700 million Catholics. His AeroMexico DC-10 jet landed at a Rome airport after an 8 -hour flight from Nassau in the Bahamas, where he made a two-hour stopover en route from Mexico. "At the end of this first papal voyage that has carried me across the oceans, in the noble and beloved land of Mexico, one feeling prevails over all the others that are crowding my trembling and moved soul the sentiment of gratitude," the Pope said. The pontiff who was thronged by crowds running into the millions during his first trip outside Italy since-being collisions.

The Pinto burst into flames when it was struck in the rear. Meanwhile, in Detroit, Ford announced it was changing the design of automatic transmissions that federal safety investigators say may have killed at least 23 persons by accidentally slipping into reverse. The transmissions involved are installed in 9 million cars and trucks, and could lead to the largest auto recall ever. Flood jury begins weighing evidence Washington (UPI) A federal jury began deliberations yesterday in the bribery trial of Rep. Daniel Flood (D-Pa.) on charges of conspiracy, bribery and perjury.

The jury retired for the night after deliberating for two hours. Flood, 75, who was reelected last November, is accused of influence peddling. Clear way on making car air bcqs a 'must' Washington (UPI) A federal appeals court cleared Ve way yesterday for making passive restraints such as air bags mandatory equipment on American cars by 1984. The court turned down a challenge to the Department of Transportation's 1976 ruling on air bags brought by Ralph Nader. Cruise missile fired from Red bobber Washington (AP) The Russians have launched a new kind of cruise missile from one of their Backfire bombers in a 750-mile test firing, -intelligence sources here said yesterday.

The United States is working on an air-launched cruise missile with a range of about 1,500 miles. It plans to begin deployment in December 1982. WORLD Teen pleads guilty in kil'ing of widow, 74 An 18-year-old youth who strangled and robbed a 74-year-old widow in her Bronx r.partment and returned three days later with two friends to ransack Othe place while she still lay dead on the floor pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter in Bronx Supreme Court yesterday. Bronx District Attorney Mario Merola said that the youth, Michael Nesby of 3485 Bivona climbed through a window of the apartment of Mrs. Isadora Vidal in the same building last May 5, beat and strangled her and -fled witn some money and jewelry.

Merola said that Nesby returned on May 8, with Miguel Rosado, 20, of 3324 Edison Ave and Robert Igoe, 21, of 709 Lafayette both Bronx, and ignoring the woman's body, they carried everything they could from the apartment. A detective halts tr 8c pleads guilty Police Detective Anthony Gagliardo interupted his bribery trial yesterday and pleaded guilty to four charges, including one that he had taken $200 to reveal confidential police information on a gambling operation. The trial was in its fourth day when Gagliardo, 40, of 163 Albany Deer Park, L.I., changed his plea. Robert Crane U.S. plans cutoff of riot insurance The Federal Insurance Administration said yesterday that it will end all riot reinsurance in the state March 3 because the Legislature has failed to lower fire insurance rates in high-risk cmmunities.

Federal law requires that communities. Federal law requires that or lose federal riot reinsurance. If the Asembly, Senate and governor's office fail to reach a compromise on lowering fire insurance rates, homeowners and businessmen would be forced to pay much higher rates for riot coverage after March 3. The cost of such coverage is now quite low because private insurance companies can protect themselves from extraordinary losses by reinsuring their policies with the federal government. Frank Lombardi NATION Sid Vicious freed on bail News photo by Willie Anderson Punk rock star Sid Vicious (John Ritchie) puts arm around mother, Ann McDonald, as they leave Manhattan Criminal Court.

Ritchie gave a vial of blood to technicians before posting collateral for $50,000 bail and walked free for the first time in 55 days. His blood sample will be compared with others taken in a room at the Chelsea Hotel, 222 W. 23d St, where his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, 20, was slain. He has been charged with the killing. in Vet suit cites A damage suit against Dow Chemical and five other firms was filed in Manhattan Federal Court yesterday on behalf of.

4.2 million Vietnam-era veterans charging that they were exposed to an allegedly cancer-causing defoliant Agent Orange during the The suit, brought by veteran Thomas Stalling and Carolyn Birinyi, whose husband Michael died of cancer, also demands that the firms stop selling or distributing the defoliant. The suit supersedes a $10 million damage suit filed by Paul Reutershan, a Vietnam veteran from Norwalk, who died of cancer last December. Gifts to help restore giant mural at LaG Laurance Rockefeller and DeWitt Wallace, founder and retired publisher of the Reader's Digest, will each pay $18,750 to restore a 235-foot long, 12-foot-high mural that was painted on the wall of the rotunda of the LaGuardia Marine Air Terminal in the early' 1940s by noted abstract artist James D. Brooks. The mural, called was painted over in the mid-1950s.

Ag Orang Ofcftfl 1. feral a trevn Turkish editor is shot dead Istanbul (AP) Gunmen ambushed and shot to death Turkish newspaper editor Abdi Ipecki last night, the state television reported. The broadcast said that Ipecki's car came under pistol fire in a busy sector of Istanbul at rush hour. One bullet pierced his heart. He died a few hours later in a hospital.

Ipecki, 50, was the editor of the influential Istanbul daily Milliyet and was known for his moderate line. Statue in Rhodesia honors white troops Salisbury, Rhodesia (AP) The' military dedicated a monument yesterday to white Rhodesian soldiers, a statue some here believe will be torn down once the country's black majority takes political control in three months. Except for the regimental band of the Rhodesian African Rifles, a black unit, all the participants in the -ceremony were white. Rhodesia's white, Asian and colored people of mixed race minority overwhelmingly voted "yes" in a referendum Tuesday to introducing black-majority rule. The country has 6.8 million blacks, 220,000 whites and 30,000 Asians and coloreds.

Rhodesia junks, race laws but Salisbury (AP) Rhodesia's race laws were wiped out yesterday when Acting State President Jack Pithey signed eight acts that open previously segregated state schools, hospitals and suburbs to all races. However, economic barriers and a stringent school zoning system means that few blacks can afford homes in white suburbs or the recently increased fees at white schools and hospitals. Gilfigan is dumped as the chief of AID Washington (News Bureau) Former Ohio Gov. John J. Gilligan has been eased out as head of the Agency for International Development after a series of flareups over administration policies, including the decision to use $4 million from the foreign aid program to bring the bodies of the Jonestown suicide-murder victims back from Guyana.

Meanwhile, the State Department has agreed to work with a San Francisco religious group to transport 585 unclaimed bodies of the victims from Delaware to California for burial. The bodies of 913 victims were brought to Dover Air Force Base, Del. Jeffrey Antevil Ford sued for 4M as pa Pi fa in Pinto collision Austin, Tex. (Combined Dispatches) Relatives of two men killed in a fiery Ford Pinto crash Jan. 20 have filed a federal suit against Ford Motor Co.

and a local dealer for $4 million. The car was among 1.5 million-. pre-1977 Pintos ordered recalled last June after federal crash tests found' they leaked too much fuel in rear-end 1.