Egypt’s military pressure against Israeli troops, apparently intended in part to exert some influence in the crucial Israeli elections today, was continuing at an intense level according to reports by the United Nations Emergency Force. A United Nations spokesman in Cairo reported in a daily briefing that there were 46 outbreaks of shooting along the frontlines on Friday, the latest period for which United Nations reports were available.
Senior Israeli officials believe that a promising momentum has been established in the first week of military negotiations in Geneva on the disengagement of Israeli and; Egyptian forces along the Suez Canal. They said there was a good prospect of agreement in January.
Beersheba, capital of the Negev is beginning to come out of the shock of war, although everyone is all too aware of the fragility of the cease‐fire. “Until the Geneva conference, no one went out of his house except to do what was necessary,” said a housewife whose husband is back temporarily from the air force. “Now something like normal life is starting again,”
Security police at Lod Airport in Tel Aviv arrested a 39-year-old seaman who tried to board a Lufthansa jetliner with a loaded pistol hidden in one of his boots. Police identified the man as Portas Maria Olbo. Although he was carrying a Portuguese passport, police said Olbo told them he was an American and that he had bought the gun in the United States for his brother in Holland. Olbo was jailed to await charges.
Iran is reported to have sent additional forces to the Oman to help Sultan Qabus bin‐Said against Marxist rebels in the district of Dhofar. The report was from rebel sources and independent Western diplomatic sources here. A spokesman for the Omani rebels’ organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman and the Arabian Gulf said a news conference here yesterday that on December 20, an Iranian force of 3,000 men began an offensive against the rebels in “liberated areas” in Dhofar, near the border with Southern Yemen. The rebel spokesman said that as many as 30,000 Iranian troops were now stationed in Oman. Western diplomatic sources discount that claim as exaggerated. They put the numbers of Iranian troops now fighting in Dhofar at 1,200 to 1,500, backed by about 30 helicopter troop carriers and some artillery.
A Soviet delegation met with Iraqi officials in Bagdad to consolidate relations, the Iraqi news agency reported. A visiting Soviet group led by Antoine Constantinov, minister of culture in the Soviet republic of Moldavia, met with an Iraqi delegation headed by Naim Haddad, secretary of the National Progressive Front which is the coalition of the ruling Baath Party and the pro-Soviet Iraqi Communist Party. Haddad said that the two countries were “trying sincerely to raise relations between them to the level of a strategic alliance.”
Three Communist rockets blasted a residential area of the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, killing seven persons and wounding 10. The resulting fire burned more than 20 houses and many squatters’ huts. An earlier rocket that hit a military camp in the palace compound of President Lon Nol killed three persons, a Cambodian soldier and a civilian man and woman. In earlier accounts, only the soldier was reported killed.
Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos completed his second term in office without an outbreak of threatened violence, a national police spokesman said. Former Senator Raul Manglapus, who has been in the United States since shortly before Marcos proclaimed martial law in 1972, had warned that Filipino “freedom fighters” would launch a revolution if Marcos did not step down at the end of his term, which expired noon Sunday. Marcos continues as president under a parliamentary-type constitution which he proclaimed last January.
Police and security officials were on full alert at West German airports after a report that an Arab guerrilla group armed with ground-to-air rockets had entered the country from Belgium. An anonymous telephone call to Cologne airport police had warned that a group of six Arabs was planning a rocket attack on an airliner belonging to either Pan American World Airways, Alitalia of Italy or El Al of Israel. Security officials believed that Bonn and Dusseldorf airports were the most likely targets.
Mobs of Protestant demonstrators angered by the ambush death of a Protestant policeman attacked a police station, bombed a convent, burned vehicles and fired at a British army patrol in a wave of violence in Northern Ireland. Protestant feeling in the capital boiled over when Constable Michael Logue, 21, was shot to death in a police car after being summoned to the scene of a supposed robbery in West Belfast.
Britain goes to a three-day work week today — a fuel-saving measure that has raised fears of bankruptcies and unemployment in the millions for British industry. The Conservative government says Britain is facing its gravest economic crisis since World War II. It ordered the three-day week because a miners’ slowdown has sent coal supplies plummeting, compounding the fuel shortage caused by a 15% reduction in Middle East oil supplies.
Terrorist plotter “Carlos the Jackal” (Ilich Ramírez Sánchez) failed in his attempt to assassinate British businessman Joseph Sieff. Despite being shot in the face at point blank range, Sieff survived his injuries. A masked intruder burst into the home of British millionaire Joseph Edward Sieff, shot him and fled, London police reported. Sieff, president of the Marks and Spencer chain of retail stores and prominent Zionist, was taken to a nearby hospital for emergency surgery. Scotland Yard said it had ruled out robbery as a motive for the attack. It was later determined the shooter was “Carlos.”
Generalissimo Francisco Franco, addressing the nation for the first time since the assassination of Premier Luis Carrero Blanco, declared tonight that the attack had strengthened the country’s institutions and had united Spaniards. The 81‐year‐old chief of state, speaking over television and radio in his annual address at the end of the year, denounced the attack as directed “not only against the President of the Government but against Spanish society and against the peace and order of our fatherland.” But, he said, the attack had served only “to reinforce our ideals and to unite closely the Spanish people in their defense.” He expressed gratitude for the “serenity and confidence” with which the country had responded and noted that it had not been necessary to apply any exceptional measures provided in the law.
Greece issued a decree providing up to 10 years in prison for income tax evaders. The law also provides for fines ranging from $8,000 to $190,000 and confiscation of property. Premier Admantios Androutsopoulos, in his first policy statement three days after the November overthrow of President George Papadopoulos, had pledged tax reforms, including stiff penalties for cheaters.
On this day, negotiations took place between the crew and mission control after what has been described as the first strike in space, on the Skylab 4 space station. The workers had been set a punishing schedule, and mission commander Jerry Carr had argued that “We would never work 16 hours a day for 84 straight days on the ground, and we should not be expected to do it here in space.” Pilot William Pogue complained that they were so overworked “There is no way [they could] do a professional job,” and for their first month they had to work through their days off.
Carr eventually sent a wire stating: “We need more time to rest. We need a schedule that is not so packed.” Pogue said they wanted to have more time for “studying the stars, the Earth below, and ourselves.”. Ground control began describing the crew as “lethargic and negative.” In late December the crew reportedly lost radio contact with mission control for a period of time. Science pilot Edward Gibson described this as an accident, while Carr told the New York Times in an interview that they deliberately took time off: “We looked out the window, took showers, and did that sort of thing… We said, ‘We want time off to mess around and do anything we want’.” The astronauts eventually got the relaxed schedule they had demanded, and their productivity actually went up, actually exceeding that of the previous mission.
President Nixon signed into law seven pieces of legislation today and then watched the professional football playoff games on television. He also talked by telephone with Vice President Ford, who is vacationing in Colorado. Details of their conversation were not disclosed. Among the bills signed by Mr. Nixon were measures to do the following:
- Defer until July 1, 1975, the imposing of a Headstart fee schedule for families whose income exceeded the poverty level.
- Allow Federal prisoners to be released for up to 30 days because of either a death in the family, a need for medical services or for rehabilitation.
- Authorize the payment of educational assistance benefits to veterans during school closings based on an executive order or an emergency.
- Clear the way to build dam on the Snake River in south‐eastern Idaho to replace the American Falls Dam, which was built in 1929.
Another law names the lake to be created by the Buchanan Dam on the Chowchilla River in California for H.V. Eastman, secretary‐manager of the Chowchilla Water District for 20 years until his death in 1972.
Senator Howard H. Baker Jr., Republican of Tennessee, said today that President Nixon had thus far failed to remove public doubt about his role in Watergate. But, he said, “as of this moment, the odds would favor the President continuing his term.” Senator Baker, vice chairman of the Senate Watergate committee, was interviewed on the American Broadcasting Company television program “Issues and Answers.” He said Mr. Nixon’s efforts to restore public confidence in him had been damaged when the White House did not make full disclosure of all Watergate‐related information. “The situation is so bad and the level of concern and disquiet of the country so great that you cannot stand on narrow technicalities” as grounds for withholding information, Mr. Baker declared.
He said he had personal knowledge that at least some of the information that Mr. Nixon refused to disclose on grounds of national security would be “more helpful than hurtful” to the President. The Senator would not discuss the information beyond saying, “I believe the information that I possess has sufficient bearing on the conduct of affairs in the White House that it should be disclosed.” He said the information could, if made public, “justify some of the conduct that otherwise appeared unjustifiable.”
The Federal Energy Office made three announcements intended to demonstrate that the complex new rules for fuel allocations will be enforced. These were: The energy office is “looking into the inventory practices of refiners, importers, wholesalers and end users” of oil products to prevent “the possibility of fuel being stockpiled in excessive and unreasonable amounts.” A force of 1,000 agents of the Internal Revenue Service is being mobilized to enforce both the present regulations and those that will take effect in mid-January. More than 15,000 hardship cases, mainly involving propane and middle distillate oil products such as heating oil, have been settled and the oil allocation staff has risen to 900 from 370.
Methanol, or wood alcohol, is receiving serious scientific attention as a versatile energy source for this country. Proponents of methanol, which has two-thirds of the heat potential of gasoline, note that it can be stored, moved and used in existing equipment of a petroleum-fired economy, including electric power plants, home furnaces and automobiles.
A 30-year-old divorcee in Pittsburgh within three hours had an abortion, rested in a private clinic’s recovery room, paid the $150 fee and went home. A year ago the abortion would have been illegal in Pennsylvania and almost every other state, but today, almost a year after the Supreme Court ruled that abortions were legal, tens of thousands of operations are being undertaken by clinics and hospitals in virtually every part of the country. The Court decision has removed much of the social stigma associated with abortion.
U.S. officials have begun a new investigation of immigrants and naturalized American citizens suspected of being Nazi war criminals, according to Sol Marks, district director of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. A list of 38, including 25 naturalized U.S. citizens, was compiled from a larger list submitted by Jewish organizations, Marks told the New York Times. One of the most prominent figures under investigation, Marks told the newspaper, is Bishop Valerian D. Trifa of the Romanian Orthodox Episcopate of America in Grass Lake, Michigan.
A 20-year-old white girl was abducted at gunpoint in Daytona Beach, Florida, by a young black man who broke into a home, left three other girls tied up and said he did not like Southern “crackers.” The kidnapped girl, Kathy L. Morris, was forced to drive away in a friend’s car at 2 a.m. after the man had slapped and terrorized the women for about 90 minutes, police said. A statewide alert and widespread search failed to turn up any sign of Miss Morris or the stolen vehicle.
Space agency scientists studied a second batch of infrared photographs in an attempt to determine whether more bodies are hidden in a wooded area near Titusville, Florida, where the remains of four women were discovered. An infrared sensor aboard a Kennedy Space Center plane is sensitive to temperature changes and could detect the heat given off by decomposing bodies. The bodies of a 14-year-old girl; a cocktail waitress, 22; a Titusville girl, 18, and a 17-year-old girl from Mims have been found.
Five children and a serviceman who attempted to rescue them died when fire swept through a frame home in Keystone, West Virginia. Killed in the blaze were Marine Rodney C. Bobbit, 19, and the five children of Mrs. Jeanette Woody, 30, who escaped with burns of the face and hands: Nathaniel, 11; Christine, 8; Sandra, 7; Helen, 4, and Angela, 2 months.
Heavy snow swept across the nation’s midsection accompanied by a wave of cold air. Heavy snow warnings were in effect from Kansas to Indiana as a winter storm moved out of the Rockies. Elsewhere, showers and thunderstorms occurred in a band from South Carolina to Louisiana. Generally fair skies prevailed over the East and from California to Texas.
Two avalanches thundered down a mountainside into the ski resort of Alta, Utah, injuring one person and damaging 35 vehicles. One avalanche slammed into Alta Lodge, injuring William Cargill, 30. The other filled a photo studio with snow. The community has been snowbound because of heavy, wet snow endangering roads leading through canyons to the resort. All ski areas in the region were closed because of the slide danger.
On the eve of a new administration in New York City, some top members of Mayor Lindsay’s cabinet have warned that the impact of federal policies on the city is equal to, and possibly greater than, that of City Hall. The officials cited the tenfold increase in federal funds to New York City in the last decade — to $1.7‐billion annually — as well as the effect of federal policies in areas as diverse as mortgage rates, tax incentives and highway construction.
The Minnesota Vikings and the Miami Dolphins won the NFC and AFC championships, respectively, by the same score, putting both into Super Bowl VIII, scheduled for January 13, 1974, in Houston. Minnesota beat Dallas, 27 to 10, and Miami defeated Oakland, 27 to 10.
AFC Championship Game:
With the machine‐like efficiency that has become routine, the Miami Dolphins wiped out the Oakland Raiders, 27—10, today in the American Conference championship game. Miami threw only six passes during the game, completing just 3 for 34 yards, but gained 266 rushing yards (more than Oakland’s total yards for the game) on 53 carries. Fullback Larry Csonka led the Dolphins to a victory with 117 rushing yards and an AFC playoff record 3 rushing touchdowns. Miami scored on an opening 64-yard drive when quarterback Bob Griese’s 27-yard run set up Csonka’s 11-yard rushing touchdown. Csonka scored again late in the second quarter at the end of a 63-yard drive that took more than 8 minutes off the clock, finishing it with a 2-yard touchdown run to make the score 14—0 with 14 seconds left in the half. Oakland managed to get on the board in the third quarter with a 21-yard George Blanda field goal, but this was quickly countered with a 42-yard Garo Yepremian field goal set up by Charlie Leigh’s 53-yard kickoff return. Oakland then drove 78 yards and scored on Ken Stabler’s 25-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Mike Siani, cutting the lead to 17—10. In the fourth quarter, after Griese’s 17-yard run on a QB draw set up Yepremian’s 26-yard field goal, the Raiders were faced with fourth down and inches on the Dolphins 42 and were forced to “go for it”. But running back Marv Hubbard fumbled the ball while trying to get through the line. The ball bounced into the hands of Stabler, who was tackled for a loss by defensive back Dick Anderson, and the Dolphins used their running game to take time off the clock and set up Csonka’s third touchdown to clinch the game.
Oakland Raiders 10, Miami Dolphins 27
NFC Championship Game:
“Our whole philosophy with these playoff games,” said Fran Tarkenton, “is not to try to keep from losing them, but to win them. I’ve seen an awful lot of these games, on television, and usually teams go into them tight with the idea not losing, rather than winning. So we attacked.” Tarkenton and the other 37 Minnesota Vikings executed the philosophy and crushed the Dallas Cowboys today in Texas Stadium. The Vikings forced 4 interceptions and recovered 2 fumbles in the second half while also holding Dallas to 152 total yards en route to a 27—10 victory over the Cowboys. With the loss of running back Calvin Hill and defensive tackle Bob Lilly to injuries, Dallas’ offense could not get anything going. Minnesota jumped to a 10—0 lead by halftime with a Fred Cox field goal and an 86-yard drive that ended with a 5-yard rushing touchdown by Chuck Foreman. The touchdown drive included Fran Tarkenton’s completions to tight end Stu Voigt for gains of 16 and 7 yards, a 2-yard run by Foreman on 4th down and 1, and a 12-yard scramble by Tarkenton himself. What followed would be an amazingly sloppy second half in which both teams combined for 10 turnovers. Three minutes into the third quarter, Dallas quarterback Roger Staubach threw an interception to Minnesota cornerback Bobby Bryant on the Vikings 2-yard line. But the Cowboys defense forced a punt and Golden Richards returned it 63 yards for a touchdown, cutting the score to 10—7. Tarkenton quickly struck back, throwing a 54-yard touchdown pass to John Gilliam, who managed to outrun single coverage by Cowboys future Hall of Fame defensive back Mel Renfro. Dallas responded with Toni Fritsch’s 17-yard field goal which cut the lead to 17—10.
Then a wave of turnovers began. On the ensuing possession, Dallas got a huge opportunity to score when Charlie Waters forced a fumble from Foreman that safety Cliff Harris recovered on the Minnesota 37. However, the Vikings took the ball right back when Staubach threw a pass that was deflected into the arms of linebacker Jeff Siemon. An even better scoring chance awaited the Cowboys at the end of the Vikings’ next drive, as Tarkenton threw an interception to Waters on the Minnesota 24. But Dallas fared no better this time, losing the ball again when Jim Marshall knocked it out of Staubach’s hand as he wound up for a pass, and defensive lineman Gary Larsen recovered it. The offensive futility continued with Minnesota, as their next drive ended with a fumbled handoff exchange between Tarkenton and Foreman that Dallas lineman Larry Cole recovered on the Vikings 47-yard line. A few plays later, Dallas faced 3rd and 3 with 9 minutes left in the fourth quarter. Staubach attempted a pass to Bob Hayes near the right sideline, but Bryant intercepted the pass and raced 63 yards for a touchdown that put the Vikings up 24—10. Then on Dallas’ next drive, Staubach tried to connect with Drew Pearson, but a devastating hit by Nate Wright caused the ball to bounce off his hands and into the arms of Jeff Wright, who returned the ball 13 yards to set up Cox’s 34-yard game clinching field goal. Both teams combined for a net total of just 163 passing yards. Tarkenton completed only 10 of 21 passes for 133 yards and a touchdown with one interception, while also rushing for 16 yards. Staubach had one of the worst postseason performances of his career, completing just 10 of 21 passes for 89 yards and throwing 4 interceptions, though he did rush for 30 yards. Foreman was the top offensive performer of the day with 76 rushing yards and 4 receptions for 28, while fullback Oscar Reed added 18 carries for 75 yards and an 8-yard catch.
Minnesota Vikings 27, Dallas Cowboys 10
Born:
Jason Behr, American film and TV actor (“Roswell”), in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Don Reid, NBA power forward (Detroit Pistons, Washington Wizards, Orlando Magic), in Washington, District of Columbia.
Ralph Milliard, Curaçaoan MLB second baseman (Florida Marlins, New York Mets), in Willemstad, Curaçao.
Jon Theodore, American drummer (The Mars Volta, 2001-06; Queens of the Stone Age, 2013-present), in Baltimore, Maryland
Died:
Chief Marshal Konstantin Vershinin, 73, commander-in-chief of the Soviet Air Force 1946-1949 and 1957-1969.
History Diaries 