Kenya was granted independence from the United Kingdom shortly after midnight. In a ceremony that took place before 250,000 people at Nairobi Independence Stadium, the British flag was lowered, Prince Philip presented the instruments of independence to Prime Minister Jomo Kenyatta, and the new black, green, red and white Kenyan flag was raised for the first time. Malcolm MacDonald, a native of Scotland and the last colonial governor, became the first, and only Governor-General of Kenya. The nation would become a Republic exactly a year later. More than 100,000 Kenyans shout “freedom!” as the British Union Jack is hauled down in a glittering ceremony marking the African colony’s independence from the crown. Prince Philip, representing Queen Elizabeth, receives the final rifle salute. Several former Mau Mau terrorist commanders say they will join Kenya’s new military force. Premier Jomo Kenyatta’s one white and two African wives are on hand.
An American workhorse helicopter carrying a wrecked Mohawk plane crashed and burned in the Mekong Delta yesterday. Of the five Americans aboard, three were killed, another was missing and presumed killed and the fifth was injured. Rescue workers combed the burned wreckage for the body of the missing crewman. First reports indicated that the H-37 helicopter was downed by communist guerrilla fire. Later reports said the big ship lost control at 1,500 feet, jettisoned the aircraft it was carrying on a sling, but failed to recover and crashed. The only known witness to the crash, which occurred 60 miles southwest of Saigon, was being sought to determine if guerrilla guns or engine trouble caused the crash.
Prince Norodom Sihanouk, Cambodian chief of state, says Cambodia has recalled its envoy to Washington following a protest registered by the U.S. government.
British authorities disclose that Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home has launched a separate bid for new high-level talks with Russia to end the cold war. Some officials of President Johnson’s administration are reported irked. Richard A. Butler, British foreign secretary, has suggested a meeting soon with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko.
The Soviet Union tries to get Red China seated in the United Nations through an 11th hour maneuver before adjournment but the credentials committee approves, 9 to 3, a ruling that the Soviet resolution is out of order. Moscow argues in vain that Nationalist China should be ousted from the U. N.
Secretary of State Dean Rusk will bring to next week’s NATO meeting in Paris a special Presidential message renewing the U.S. commitment to defense of the free world.
A Soviet bureaucrat stated middle-aged Russians felt President Kennedy was “one of us” — meaning ‘young men of the world’ — and feared the cold war might break out of control without his balancing hand.
Bolivian tin miners holding 21 hostages in a spreading revolt against the government stage an anti-government demonstration in the heart of La Paz. But the march fails to whip up popular support. Only 3,000 persons turn out for the miners’ efforts to force the release of three jailed communist agitators. Bolivia steadfastly refused to recognize Vice President Juan Lechin, who is seeking to negotiate with the government on behalf of the rebellious miners over the release of four Americans held by the miners as hostages.
President Abdel Salam Arif of Iraq warned that if Israel proceeds with its Jordan River diversion plan the Arab nations will have no recourse except to war
Argentina asks for the extradition of ex-President Juan Perón. Argentina has requested the extradition of former Dictator Juan D. Perón from Spain to stand trial on charges of raping a 14-year-old girl, a spokesman for the Spanish foreign office said today. Perón, who has lived there as a political exile for the last four years, has been arraigned by an Argentine court on a charge of corruption of a minor, his former mistress, Nelly Rivas, who was 14-years-old when she became a favorite of the ex-dictator. Lieutenant General Julio A. Lagos, ambassador of Argentina, presented Spanish authorities a writ for Perón’s appearance before an Argentine federal criminal court for corruption of a minor. This is tantamount to a request for extradition, the foreign office spokesman said.
“The order from Argentine Federal Judge Alfredo Mangano is to appear before a criminal court to plead in the rape of the then 14-year-old Nelly Rivas,” an Argentine source said. Lagos conveyed the writ to the foreign ministry with the request it be handed over to a Spanish judge for a decision. Spain has only extradited one political refugee as prominent as Perón. He was Premier Pierre Laval of Nazi-occupied France, who was tried and executed as a collaborator. Perón was nonchalant when informed about the Argentine request.
A Church of England minister says that a black market in hotel bedrooms at $500 a night has sprung up in Jerusalem in advance of next month’s pilgrimage by Pope Paul VI. He deplores the commercial approach to the pope’s visit of “Come see the holy father in the Holy Land.” He says Jordan indicates that it may intervene to check the reported black market.
The second earth slide in 24 hours topples two houses into a yawning crater at St. Joachim de Tourelle, Québec, Canada. The ground gave way Wednesday night and swallowed four brothers and their truck. The two houses had been emptied along with 10 others on the brink of the crater. Fishermen pick five persons from one of four houses sent floating to the St. Lawrence River on a sea of mud by the first slide.
The Johnson administration is considering a “complete reorganization and a real shakeup” in the operations of the Alliance for Progress program for Latin America, a high congressional source says. He challenges reports that Teodoro Moscoso, coordinator of the development program, will be dismissed by President Johnson. But he hints that Moscoso may replace the American ambassador to the Organization of American States.
Federal aid to Cuban exiles in Miami, averaging 2½ million dollars monthly, will be cut off next year, the director of the United States Cuban refugee relief program says. Jobs and resettlement to other parts of the United States will be offered to the 53,000 Cubans receiving relief. They will have a choice of accepting a move or remaining on their own.
Newspaper publisher Choi Doo Sun was sworn in as Prime Minister of South Korea, after being selected by newly elected President Park Chung-hee.
The annual European Conference on Experimental Social Psychology opened at Sorrento, Italy.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara today announced a three-and-a-half year pruning program at 33 military installations. He said plans have been drafted to close or reduce activities at the installations — 26 of them in the United States — with a personnel reduction of 16,300 persons. McNamara asserted that at the end of the pruning period the annual savings would amount to 100 million dollars. He denied that his project was a “numbers racket.” McNamara said about half the bases would be eliminated. The other half will be “very substantially reduced to all practical purposes eliminated,” he said. It appeared that under the plan all government employees who want to stay on payrolls will be able to do so by moving to some other office.
The heads of all federal departments and agencies today had orders from President Johnson to make a final attempt to reduce their planned expenditures in the 1965 fiscal year to meet what the chief executive decreed is to be “a time of severe budgetary stringency.” The federal budget, in preparation since last July, is now in its final stages. Budget Director Kermit Gordon must finish assembling the voluminous document by early next week. The new budget, covering the 1965 fiscal year beginning next July 1, will be sent to Congress by the President about mid-January. The White House announced today that President Johnson instructed Gordon last night to send a memo to the heads of government departments and agencies directing them to see personally what final economy measures might be taken. The department and agency chiefs are required to submit reports to Gordon by tomorrow evening.
As announced by the White House, the budget director’s memo requires the government officials involved to:
- Personally reexamine the budget bureau’s tentative allowances for next year’s appropriations, expenditures, and employment figures.
- Identify further reductions which can be achieved through tighter management, improved personnel utilization, and postponement of program expansions and curtailment of programs “which are not in the highest urgency.”
- Take any other steps “appropriate to a time of severe budget stringency.”
The Gordon memo was a follow-up to orders President Johnson gave to members of his cabinet yesterday that they take personal charge of dealing with the problems of holding down government employment to 1963 and 1964 levels and promote economical, efficient government operations. The President is confronted with the prospect of sending Congress the biggest spending budget in the country’s history — along with another budget deficit — at a time when he is asking a skeptical Senate to act promptly on the administration’s 11-billion-dollar tax cut bill. The tax measure is priority legislation aimed at stimulating the national economy and easing present high unemployment.
Former President Dwight D. Eisenhower has passed word to key Republicans that he did not tap Henry Lodge as the Presidential choice when he urged him to enter the race for the GOP nomination.
The House passed two measures which together would provide expansion of more than $2 billion in federal funds for education and job training.
Race should not be a factor in hirings, dismissals or promotions, President Johnson told representatives of 68 large manufacturing firms.
Congress passed and sent to the White House a $4.4 billion public works appropriation bill containing $30 million for accelerated projects in depressed areas.
Senator Hubert H. Humphrey has called on the Food and Drug Administration for an immediate review of a drug which he said is implicated in at least 11 deaths.
The Senate passed a $1.8 billion appropriation measure that adds $60,000 for more attorneys in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
Rep. H. R. Gross (R-Iowa) urged the Senate Rules Committee to investigate the radio and television operations of President and Mrs. Johnson.
Mrs. John F. Kennedy plans to observe a one-year period of mourning for her slain husband and will have no public engagements during that time, it was announced today. Pamela Turnure, her press secretary, made the announcement in response to questions on whether Mrs. Kennedy would campaign for her husband’s successor, President Johnson, in next year’s Presidential election. Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy had planned to start political campaigning for her husband’s reelection before his death. Her trip to Texas was the start of what was to be a number of public appearances with the President. Miss Turnure also said that Mrs. Kennedy and her two children, Caroline, 6, and John Jr., 3, will spend the Christmas holidays in Palm Beach, Florida.
Federal Bureau of Investigation agents raid a house believed to be where Frank Sinatra Jr. was held hostage before his kidnapers freed him early yesterday. Six carloads of FBI agents converge on the ramshackle, one-story house in Canoga Park, a suburb 20 miles northwest of Los Angeles, but find no one inside. The federal officers refuse to disclose any details about the secrecy shrouded move.
Rep. Otto Passman (D-Louisiana) tells the House that despite an appeal from President Johnson he still is opposed to huge foreign aid spending. Chairman of the House subcommittee which handles foreign aid appropriations, Passman says of his visit to the White House Wednesday night: “I’ll go to the White House when I’m invited and I’ll be polite and listen. But if the day comes when I have to yield my own convictions, fully supported by facts, then I’ll go home.”
A blizzard howled across the Northern Plains into the Midwest while a companion storm battered the East with snow and ice.
Minnesota left fielder Harmon Killebrew undergoes knee surgery.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 757.43 (+0.22).
Born:
Juan Carlos Varela, President of Panama (2014-2019), in Panama City, Panama.
Teresa Blake, American actress (Gloria Marsh-“All My Children”), in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
Eric Schenkman, American-Canadian rock and blues guitarist (The Spin Doctors – “Pocket Full of Kryptonite”), in Massachusetts.
Lavale Thomas, NFL running back (Green Bay Packers), in Los Angeles, California.
Steve Pierce, NFL wide receiver (Cleveland Browns), in San Diego, California.
Joe Goebel, NFL center (San Diego Chargers), in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Rick Johnson, NFL tackle (Detroit Lions), in Greenville, Michigan.
Mike Rucinski, NHL centre (Chicago Blackhawks), in Wheeling, Illinois.
Died:
Theodor Heuss, 79, the first president of West Germany (1949 to 1959).
Yasujirō Ozu, Japanese filmmaker, on his 60th birthday.
History Diaries 