The biggest rebel artillery barrage to hit Phnom Penh since the Cambodian war began killed at least 35 persons last night and wounded more than 80, police sources said. The shells struck within a quarter‐mile of the presidential palace. Reports were still coming in this morning from outlying police stations, and many of those wounded in the shelling died during the night, the sources said. Insurgents fired about 46 105-mm. artillery shells into the southern part of the Cambodian capital, only a few miles from, where the Government says rebel forces are massing. Most of the barrage struck a populated area around the Tuol Tum Pung market place. Some families were celebrating the Chinese lunar new year when the shelling began at about 8:30 P.M. At least one of the shells, reportedly struck a home, and four children inside were said to have been either killed or injured.
U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright (D-Arkansas) sharply criticized Hanoi for its refusal to account for American servicemen missing in Vietnam. Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said, “The North Vietnamese are in an indefensible position in refusing to facilitate the accounting which we desire.” Fulbright’s statement to the Senate came as a prelude to a hearing he has scheduled Monday at which State and Defense Department experts will testify on the POW-MIA issue.
The United States has privately asked China to provide information on the whereabouts of a missing American and to release some 100 South Vietnamese taken prisoner during last weekend’s battle in the Paracel Islands, Administration officials said today. The contact with the Chinese occurred in Washington and has so far been unpublicized by the State Department, in an effort to avoid any inflaming of the situation caused by the Chinese attack on the islands some 200 miles east of Da Nang and about 150 miles south of the Chinese island of Hainan, officials said. In response to a question at his daily news briefing, George S. Vest, the department spokesman, would say only, “We are looking at the Paracel episode urgently and taking every step appropriately useful. Since fighting broke out between the South Vietnamese and the Chinese last week over control of the Paracels, the United States has tried to avoid taking sides.
Two Arab terrorists were sentenced to death after having pleaded guilty to murdering five persons and wounding 55 in a grenade attack at the Athens airport last summer. The sentences were imposed after a one-day trial in the Athens criminal court before four judges and three jurors. Despite the death sentences, many in Athens believe the terrorists will be pardoned.
Two Arab oil‐producing countries, Libya and Iraq, are openly opposing the efforts of Egypt’s President, Anwar el-Sadat, to bring about an end to the Arab oil embargo imposed against the United States. Both countries have also warned against the United States-sponsored conference on the energy crisis scheduled for Washington on February 11. Mr. Sadat returned to Cairo yesterday from a six‐day tour of Arab countries during which he praised what he called the positive change in Washington’s Middle East policy and urged the Arabs to reciprocate with positive gestures toward the United States. The purpose of the tour was to explain the implications of the Egyptian-Israeli agreement on separation of forces on the Suez front negotiated with the aid of Secretary of State Kissinger.
Rejecting a last-minute appeal from Prime Minister Heath, leaders of Britain’s miners’ union ordered a strike vote that could lead to a shutdown of the nation’s coal mines. The major setback to efforts to settle the wage dispute came as the government reported the largest monthly increase in unemployment since 1945.
Four members of the Irish Republican Army hijacked a helicopter and used it to drop two milk churns packed with explosives onto Strabane Police Station in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. One milk churn landed in a garden and failed to explode; the other landed in the River Mourne.
A Zurich court upheld a two-year prison sentence imposed last March on Mrs. Edith Irving, 38, for her part in the Howard Hughes autobiography hoax. The blonde, Swiss-born wife of American writer Clifford Irving was found guilty of using a false passport in the name of Helga R. Hughes to deposit checks made out to “H. R. Hughes” by a U.S. publishing house for a bogus autobiography written by her husband. Irving, sentenced to 2½ years in prison, has been transferred from federal confinement to a light-security prison in New York City.
West German Chancellor Willy Brandt accused forces in East Germany of undermining his good neighbor policy of relaxing tensions between the two states. He cited money restrictions imposed on West Germans crossing the border and attempts to prevent Bonn from strengthening its ties with West Berlin. Brandt made the remarks in a state of the nation address.
Twenty‐three teenage boys were killed in a Catholic school dormitory fire here last night that police sources say may have been caused by youth smoking in bed. The fire began in a third floor dormitory at the Sacred Heart School, which is operated by the Roman Catholic Franciscan order in this small coal mining town in northeastern Belgium. The police said that most of the victims had been overcome by smoke and had failed to waken before the flames reached them. About 40 boys escaped from the burning dormitory. A priest said that smoking was forbidden in all dormitories, but one student said, “We knew some did smoke secretly, as in every dormitory of every school.”
Turkish army helicopters dropped food and medical supplies to a tiny mountain hamlet devastated by an avalanche which killed at least 16 persons and seriously injured eight. More than 24 hours after the avalanche struck Daggecen in the Manzur Mountains, rescuers were still digging for victims. Deep snow has covered most of eastern Turkey.
Soldiers and police placed the riot-torn Indian Gujarat state capital of Ahmedabad under an around-the-clock curfew as scattered violence continued to claim new victims. Riots in the state have taken at least 25 lives in the past two weeks. The rioters want the government’s ration shops to stock more food at lower costs. A major part of the dissatisfaction results from central government regulations banning the states from buying food from other states. The ban was imposed last year when the central government took over control of the wholesale wheat trade.
Three students died in clashes between radical student factions in Tokyo and Yokohama, police said. Two, killed in Tokyo, were members of Kakumaru, a revolutionary Marxist group. They were attacked by members of the Chukakuha, a middle-ground group. The third victim, a member of Chukakuha, was killed in a dining room at Yokohama National University.
About 8,000 bank and insurance company clerks struck for 24 hours in Bolivia, continuing a wave of similar walkouts by more than 100,000 miners, industrial and white collar workers, laborers, flour mill and bakery workers and bus drivers. The action protests the military government’s doubling of the cost of basic foods to discourage smuggling to neighboring countries where higher prices are paid. Six demonstrators have been injured and 48 persons arrested — including the leader of the Christian Democratic Party — since the protests began Monday. The unions are demanding higher pay to meet the new prices.
A Togolese Air Force Douglas C-47 Skytrain carrying Étienne Eyadéma, the President of Togo, crashed near the village of Lama-Kara. Eyadéma falsely claimed that he was the sole survivor of the crash as a means to enhance his reputation. He subsequently changed his first name to “Gnassingbé” to commemorate the date of the crash.
Cyclone Wanda crossed into Australia’s state of Queensland, Australia, bringing heavy rains and flooding of Brisbane, 16 deaths, 300 injuries and nearly AUD$980 million in damage.
Egil Krogh, chief of the White House “plumbers” unit, exonerated President Nixon of any involvement regarding the break-in of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office. Krogh received a six-month prison sentence. Krogh had authorized the September 1971 burglary of the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in Los Angeles.
Krogh said that John Dean misunderstood his explanation of the origin of the orders for the plumbers unit. Krogh didn’t directly accuse John Ehrlichman of being involved, but he didn’t exonerate him either. Krogh refused to comment on the possibility of the President being impeached. The White House was buoyant over Krogh’s statement.
Defense Secretary James Schlesinger discussed the investigation into leaks of top-secret information from the National Security Council to the Pentagon. Schlesinger backed up Admiral Thomas Moorer and stated that no spy ring existed in his opinion. Schlesinger admitted that “improprieties” existed but no illegalities. Schlesinger had no kind words for the White House plumbers unit.
Senator Mike Mansfield criticized Defense Secretary Schlesinger for injecting his personal views into sensitive foreign affairs.
Peter Rodino, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said that information from the special Watergate prosecutor’s office may be forthcoming. Rodino believes that Leon Jaworski will find a way to cooperate with the committee’s need for information. Three possible avenues are open to the committee to obtain the necessary information for its impeachment probe. They include legislation, a request to Judge John Sirica or subpoenas.
Nearly four years ago, President Nixon made some statements during the impeachment inquiry of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas that haunt him now. The President made a commitment in those statements to comply fully with any impeachment investigation by the House. Press secretary Ron Ziegler refused to answer questions regarding the President’s thoughts on impeachment now that he is the one under investigation.
Responding angrily to charges by Senator Henry Jackson and members of his subcommittee investigating the energy shortage, the oil industry sharply criticized the conduct of this week’s hearings and defended itself against a range of accusations leveled by the Senators. One of the seven industry executives who testified at the hearings said the sessions had been run like “a criminal trial” with the executives given no chance to “face our accusers.”
General Motors announced plans to lay off 75,000 hourly workers, 50,000 of them in Michigan, at 14 plants by March.
President Nixon will sign “in the very near future” an executive order lifting curbs on wheat imports, the White House said. The U.S. Tariff Commission has sent Mr. Nixon a report and that would be the basis of the President’s action, a spokesman said. The commission recommended that Mr. Nixon suspend wheat import quotas until June 30 to take up the slack in dwindling U.S. wheat reserves. It said such action would not affect adversely government wheat programs. The Agriculture Department said the total wheat inventory on January 1 was 934 million bushels, down 33% from a year earlier and the lowest for the date since 1952.
Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield of Montana accused Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger of unwarranted saber rattling and advised him to leave foreign policy statements to others. In his annual “State of the Union” message to fellow Democrats, Mansfield expressed “the gravest concern” over Schlesinger’s remarks in a January 7 interview in which he said the Arab nations were running the risk of encouraging the use of force against them by continuing the oil embargo. Schlesinger also said that if the North Vietnamese started a major offensive against South Vietnam, it was “highly likely that President Nixon would ask Congress for authority to help South Vietnam with U.S. tactical air power.”
Charges that the Speaker of the New York Assembly and other Republican political figures engaged in election fraud against Democrats were thrown out of a New York City court. Justice Burton Roberts ruled that the law under which Speaker Perry Duryea was indicted was too broad. But he urged the Legislature to “get on the ball to pass legislation to prevent misrepresentation and fraud.” A grand jury had charged that Republicans covertly aided the campaigns of Liberal Party candidates in a dozen districts in the 1972 election. Votes won by Liberals normally are at the expense of Democrats.
Consumer food costs are rising again and when figures for January are in, they probably will average above the record set last summer, according to new figures from the Agriculture Department. In December, a retail market basket of U.S. farm-produced food was at an annual rate of $1,650, officials said. That was up $16 from November and edged within $3 of the record rate set last August. Officials conceded that sharp beef price increases in January probably would push the indicator even higher. The figures are based on what economists say it costs to feed a theoretical household of 3.2 persons for a year.
At least eight persons were killed when a fire raced through a low-income apartment house in Liberty, New York, officials said. Victims screamed for help from windows as firemen were hindered by high-tension lines from putting up ladders. Four of the dead were from one family and three from another. Seven persons were rescued and five were hospitalized. Officials began a search of the three-story building for two persons listed as missing. The blaze, of undetermined origin, destroyed the building, which contained four apartments on the third floor, a furniture store on the second and a clothing store at street level.
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, opened the 1974 British Commonwealth Games, known as “The Friendly Games”, in Christchurch, New Zealand with athletes from 38 nations. The Games, which would be accompanied by the introduction of color television broadcasting to New Zealand, were telecast by the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation (NZBC) and would continue until February 2.
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Born:
Ed Helms, American TV and film actor and comedian (“The Office”, “Rutherford Falls”) in Atlanta, Georgia.
Melissa Tkautz, Australian TV actress and pop music singer, known for “E Street”; in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Sarah Ruhl, American playwright and MacArthur Grant recipient known for “Eurydice and The Clean House”, in Wilmette, Illinois.
Tim Biakabutuka, Zairean/D.R. Congolese NFL running back (Carolina Panthers), in Kinshasa, Zaire.
Cyril Despres, French-born Andorran rally motorcyclist and 5-time winner of the time winner of the Paris—Dakar Rally; in Nemours, Seine-et-Marne département, France.
Michaël Gillon, Belgian exoplanet astronomer and astrophysicist; in Liège, Belgium.
Died:
Major General Sir Hubert Rance, 75, British colonial administrator, the last Governor of British Burma (1946-1948), later the Governor of Trinidad and Tobago 1950-1955
Joe Savoldi, 65, Italian-born Office of Strategic Services agent, American football fullback, and professional wrestler.
Andrew Dewar Gibb, 85, leader of the Scottish National Party, 1936-1940, independence advocate, barrister and prolific legal author.
Cornelius O’Callaghan, 51, incumbent Irish Senator.
Major General Albert C. Smith, 79, Commander of the 14th Armored Division of the U.S. Army during World War II, later Chief of the Office of Military History.
History Diaries 