PEOPLE

There is a murder trial under way in Edinburg, Texas, and the University of Texas was mentioned in the course of the examination of the jurors. "Mr. Foreman," said Presiding Judge J.R. Alamia to Houston criminal lawyer Percy Foreman, "I will have to admonish you that every time you say University of Texas you will say University of Texas No. 1." Foreman has complied with this request, and Alamia, a former Texas prelaw student, has beamed at every mention. Murder trials in Texas sure are a lot of fun.

It may make clothes clean, says Arthur Godfrey, but he has discovered that it pollutes water. So the Old Redhead has threatened to stop making commercials for Axion, a laundry presoaking agent, unless the Colgate-Palmolive Company allows him to admit that it is a pollutant. "They told me it was an enzyme," said Godfrey, "and that enzymes don't pollute anything, they just eat the dirt out. Now I find that it's not only a detergent, it has more phosphates than any other detergent." (Being fertilizers, phosphates stimulate the growth of algae and other undesirable organisms.) Added Godfrey, "How can I preach ecology and sell this stuff?" He has given Colgate-Palmolive a couple of weeks to decide whether they will accept a commercial that announces, in effect, "Caution, this product may be hazardous to the health of your water supply." If they won't, presumably somebody else will be showing us all those napkins covered with grape juice and ketchup.

"I almost eliminated the chance we had for a good game," observed Spiro T. Agnew after his first round in the Bob Hope Classic. The Vice-President spoke less forthrightly than usual—what he meant was he almost eliminated Doug Sanders. Playing in a foursome with Sanders, Senator George Murphy and Hope himself, Agnew hooked his first shot into the rough and shanked his second into Sanders' head, for a one-inch cut and a little blood. The sang was froid, however. Sanders' first words to Agnew were, "I hope you've got a lot of insurance."

Governor Claude Kirk of Florida is fond of putting on his University of Florida coach's shirt and pacing along the sidelines at Gator football games, so it hit him kind of hard when the suggestion was made at a recent Southeastern Conference meeting that outsiders—particularly "certain governors"—be barred from the sidelines. "It's aimed right at me!" he fumed, admitting that the chance to get down there during games was one of the things that led him to run for governor in the first place. However, Kirk hasn't said that if the privilege is taken away he'll resign.

John Carlos has announced that he is asking the Philadelphia Eagles for $1 million, a tidy sum for a 15th-round draft choice who never even played college ball. Carlos, however, considers this minus a plus. "I played a lot of street ball, and that's more valuable," he says. "You take more knocks and fall on the concrete without shoulder pads and any protection." As for his contract demands, Carlos explains blithely, "I can't see starting at $400,000 and working up to a million, so I'm starting at a million and working down." Says Eagle General Manager Pete Retzlaff, somewhat less blithely, "I need this like a hole in the head. A 15th-round draft choice like Carlos might get a minimum contract of $12,000." In other words, it was pointed out, Carlos and the Eagles are at present a mere $988,000 apart.

Columnist-Playwright Art Buchwald seated a party of his personal friends in the first row of the balcony rather than the orchestra for the New York opening of his play Sheep on the Runway, and he reports that some of them thought it wasn't very chic "until Vince Lombardi got there, after which they decided it was all right after all." Chicnesswise, arriving with Ethel Kennedy isn't bad either.

"I am not superstitious," Albin Chalandon, French Minister of Equipment and Housing, assured his fans when he drew No. 13 in the first European Parliamentary Ski Championships at Val d'Is√®re, and thus undaunted he went out to win the 43-gate giant slalom. Chalandon was followed by Britain's Lord Congleton, Dr. G√ºnther M√ºller of the Federal German Parliament, the Earl of Limerick and some 100 other parliamentarians from seven countries. A sizable field and a splendid triumph—but then Chalandon has been skiing Val d'Is√®re for about 30 years.

TWO PHOTOS