Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has been banished from the Soviet Union. Solzhenitsyn was arrested yesterday and then deported. After a hearing, a Soviet court revoked the citizenship of dissident writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, ordered him to be removed permanently from the USSR, and placed him on an Aeroflot flight to West Germany. Solzhenitsyn, wearing only the clothes he had put on when he was arrested, arrived in Frankfurt, where friends picked him up and drove him to the home of Heinrich Böll in Langenbroich.
A representative of the KGB announced that Solzhenitsyn’s wife and children would be allowed to join him “when they deem it necessary.” The day after Solzhenitsyn’s expulsion, an order from the Soviet Ministry of Culture directed any public or school library with his novel “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” to remove the book from its shelves, along with any item containing one of his four published short stories. It is feared that Andrei Sakharov, the Russian physicist, may be dealt with in the same fashion as Solzhenitsyn.
Deputy White House press secretary Gerald Warren made no comment regarding Solzhenitsyn’s deportation. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger stated that the Russian author is welcome to live in the United States, adding that he sympathizes with the fight for freedom of thought.
The world’s major oil-consuming nations agreed to work toward a meeting with oil producers; France was the only dissenting country. French foreign minister Michel Jobert insisted that France did not disrupt the conference. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger believes the meeting achieved its main goals, and the U.S. doesn’t consider that a break in its relations with France has developed.
The leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria and Syria are meeting in Algiers to review the oil embargo. That summit caused an abrupt cancellation of another conference of Arab nations which had been scheduled in Beirut to discuss the lifting of the oil embargo.
Using vastly increased oil revenues and the bargaining power of their oil reserves, Middle East oil countries are making great strides toward industrialization and taking a greater share of world trade. They are demanding — and getting — deals for enormous refineries, natural gas processing plants and petrochemical industries, in addition to deals for arms, textiles, steel, paper and other industrial plants.
The Golan Heights remained quiet for the second day, but Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Davan warned of further fighting with Syria unless a troop separation agreement is reached soon. Meanwhile, Israeli forces began the final stage of their withdrawal from the west bank of the Suez Canal.
Israeli police arrested 12 persons, including two members of the Jewish Defense League, in connection with the fire-bombing of three Christian institutions in Jerusalem. The Israeli national radio said the 12 were arrested simultaneously after a two-day investigation. The JDL released a statement commending “the brave people who set alight three missionary centers in Jerusalem.”
Worried over possible reprisals by Israeli, Lebanese officials are raising anxious demands that an end be put, “once and for all,” to Palestinian commando shooting and raiding across the southern border into Israel. Voices have been raised in Parliament for a “disengagement” of Palestinians from the border zone and formal nullification of a 1969 accord that granted Palestinian commandos a base area on the slopes of the strategically situated Mount Hermon. In recent days, two Israelis have been killed in commando action near the Lebanese border and another was wounded. Yesterday, an Israeli town, Metulla, came under rocket and small‐arms fire from across Lebanon’s border. Israeli artillery fired into Lebanon in retaliation. The Lebanese fear a destructive Israeli incursion, in a pattern established over recent years, if the commando attacks are not halted.
Five bombs exploded in Northern Ireland, although only one person was reported injured. One blast on a Belfast street would probably have killed six Catholics who work nearby if it had gone off 10 minutes later. A car bomb in Londonderry wrecked the front of a supermarket and damaged a bank. An explosion injured a British soldier on patrol in the border village of Forkhill, County Armagh. A bomb in a duffel bag left on the doorstep of a clothing store in Newcastle extensively damaged the store. In Ballymena, another bomb damaged a pub and nearby buildings. Meanwhile, the Ulster Freedom Fighters, a Protestant group, threatened to kill 12 Catholics to avenge 12 persons killed in a bus bombing February 4 in England.
West German union leaders representing about 2 million striking public service workers reached agreement with the government on a wage deal calling for an 11% basic salary increase with a minimum raise in monthly pay of $61. The agreement ended a series of localized strikes that had shut down commuter, transport and other services in most cities. The federal government had sought to keep the settlement lower, fearing inflationary effects. Only postal union leaders had not approved the package, but they were expected to. Union members will vote on the pact later this month.
To his supporters, President Park Chung Hee of South Korea is a strong, determined leader. They say, as Premier Kim Jong Pil put it, that he is “the only one who can promise us — the people and the nation — a bright future.” To the President’s critics, most of whom are unwilling to be quoted for fear of being sent to prison, Mr. Park has become a desperate man — “a paranoid dictator,” said one — who distrusts his own people. But both his friends and his enemies agree that President Park is swiftly heading into a crisis, the outcome of which will determine whether he can remain in power. The confrontation is widely expected to begin here in March or April, after the university students have returned from their winter vacation. The students are the cutting edge of the anti‐Park movement and are allied with a large element of the Christian clergy, especially the Protestants whose Christianity is derived largely from that, of New England missionaries here a century ago.
Several policemen and military and administrative officials in the Saigon area have been dismissed because of connections with gambling, the Saigon radio said today. The radio quoted Premier Trần Thiện Khiêm’s office as having said that the men — it did not give a number — had been dismissed after a major police operation to clear gambling dens in Saigon and nearby Cholon. The radio said that the dismissals were part of a police drive to “clean up society.” It said that 500 people had been arrested for gambling activities, which are illegal in South Vietnam.
The United States and Japan have confirmed President Nixon’s intention to visit Japan before the end of this year, Japanese Foreign Minister Masayoshi Ohira said in Washington. At a meeting between Ohira and Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, the two agreed to start working out suitable dates for the Nixon visit, U.S. sources said.
The left-wing Perónist organization, Perónism de Base, denied police accusations that dissident leader Carlos Alberto Caride was involved in an alleged plot to assassinate the presidents of Argentina and Uruguay as they drove through Buenos Aires. The left-wing group said Caride was “an old and proved Perónist” and other leftist sources said the accusations were part of a campaign by rightist Perónist groups to discredit the radical sectors of the official party.
A black Army colonel who was denied an advisory position in Chile because of his race is now overseeing the assignment of other officers to similar overseas posts, the Pentagon said. Colonel Travis M. Gafford had been selected for the Chilean post when the U.S. military mission advised Washington last November that he was unacceptable because of Chile’s racial policies and a white officer was sent. Later the Chilean Embassy in Washington denied it was even aware of Gafford’s pending assignment.
Randolph Hearst responded to the demands made by his daughter Patty’s kidnappers. Hearst expressed happiness over his daughter’s apparent safety, but said that the demands cannot be met, though he hopes that his counteroffer to the kidnappers will be acceptable. Hearst met with Reverend Cecil Williams of San Francisco’s Glide Memorial Methodist Church to discuss the kidnappers’ demands for $70 worth of food to be given to each needy person in the state of California. Hearst reassured his daughter of his intentions to work something out.
The FBI agent in charge of the Hearst kidnapping case said Wednesday he had “never seen anything good come out of compromising with a bunch of hoods.” Charles Bates, special FBI agent in charge of the bureau’s San Francisco office, said he doubted that granting the demands of the kidnappers of Patricia Hearst would gain her freedom. “I think the chances are good that one demand would follow another forever, Bates told a group of broadcast news directors. “I’m not talking about the Hearst case, I’m talking generally, but I’ve never seen anything good come out of compromising with a bunch of hoods,” Bates said.
Federal energy czar William Simon said he was upset over budget director Roy Ash’s reference to a “short term” energy shortage. Simon rejected Ash’s statement.
President Nixon breezed through his annual physical check-up and then flew to Florida as his doctor pronounced him in “excellent condition,” with neither emotional nor physical signs of the strain the President has been under for the last year.
The administration asked Congress for a billion-dollar contingency program to extend unemployment benefits to workers laid off in areas of high and persistent unemployment. The proposal would add 13 weeks of coverage to workers who have exhausted their regular benefits.
Alabama Governor George C. Wallace will not get federal financing if he seeks the Presidency in 1976 as an independent or third-party candidate, the General Accounting Office said. In a summary of the new presidential election campaign fund act, the GAO said financing would be limited in 1976 to the Democratic and Republican candidates. The summary pointed out that to become eligible for financing, a candidate has to get at least 5% of the total vote in the previous election. Wallace was shot in an assassination attempt after winning several Democratic primaries in 1972. No independent or third party candidate polled 5% of the vote in that year.
The Small Business Administration fired two former regional directors accused by the agency’s head of covering up corruption. The agency, however, did not specify any of the charges against Russell Hamilton Jr., former head of the Philadelphia office, and Thomas F. Regan, former district director in Richmond, Virginia, “so as not to prejudice any appeals that might be made.” The two men can appeal to SBA Administrator Thomas S. Kleppe and the Civil Service Commission.
Robert J. Traynor, formerly chief justice of California, has resigned as chairman of the National News Council, effective April 1, to accept a visiting professorship of legal science at England’s Cambridge University. He will be replaced by Stanley H. Fuld, formerly chief judge of the state of New York. The NNC is an independent organization founded last year to investigate complaints about the media and to examine any infringements of the free press.
Coleman A. Young, Detroit’s first black mayor, announced sweeping changes in the police department, including plans for making the force at least 50% black in the next three years. The city population currently is about evenly divided between black and white and about 15% of the 6,000-man force is black. The mayor also said at least 50 storefront police “mini-stations,” run in part by civilians, would be set up in neighborhoods. These would be in addition to the city’s regular 13 precincts. There will be an immediate increase, too, in the number of uniformed policemen on the street.
A man whose mother said he needed psychiatric help walked into downtown Clarksville, Tenn., and shot and wounded six persons before he was shot and killed by police. Howard Gentry, 42, was identified as the gunman. Authorities said he was first spotted by officers walking toward the center of town armed with a shotgun and a .38-caliber pistol. Three policemen were among the wounded. Gentry’s mother, Bertha Theuf, said she had tried to get help for her son in the past. “I went to the police and they came out once when he was acting funny, but nobody would do anything,” she said.
The National Women’s Political Caucus announced the opening of a nationwide “Win With Women” electoral campaign, “We expect to see three times as many women running for public office at the national and state level as ever before,” Liz Carpenter told a news conference in Washington. Mrs. Carpenter, former White House press aide during the Lyndon B. Johnson Administration, said more than 3,000 women would be seeking office at state and national levels this year, about triple the 1,028 in 1972, when 488 women won their races.
The latest Soviet campaign to explore the planet Mars with four unmanned spacecraft suffered a setback this week when the first of two craft apparently designed for an orbital mission failed to go into orbit. The second succeeded. The craft that soared past the planet Sunday, according to an announcement by the official Soviet news agency, Tass, was Mars 4, launched last July. Its braking rocket was not fired, a Tass announcement said yesterday, “because of the faulty functioning of one of the onboard systems.” As Mars 4 passed some 1,300 miles from the planet, it took pictures with a “phototelevision” device that Western observers speculate closely resembles the relatively simple system aboard the Mars 2 and 3 craft that approached the planet late in 1971.
The Mars 5 craft, according to Tass, approached the planet Tuesday. Its braking rocket fired successfully, and placed the scientific probe on a 25‐hour‐long pathway between 35 degrees north and south of the Martian equator between 1,000 and 18,500 miles above the surface. Two other craft, called Mars 6 and 7 are to approach Mars early next month.
Jill Williams’ musical “Rainbow Jones” opens & closes at Music Box Theater, NYC, after 1 performance.
Professional boxer George Foreman (25) divorces Adrienne Calhoun after almost 3 years of marriage.
Speedster James “Cool Papa” Bell is named for Hall of Fame honors by the Special Committee on the Negro Leagues.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 806.87 (+0.24, +0.03%).
Born:
Robbie Williams, English pop music singer with 14 No. 1 best-selling albums, known for the songs “Angels” and “Millennium”; in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, England, United Kingdom.
Howie Clark, MLB outfielder, third baseman, and first baseman (Baltimore Orioles, Toronto Blue Jays, Minnesota Twins), in San Diego, California.
Sylvain Cloutier, Canadian NHL centre (Chicago Blackhawks), in Mont-Laurier, Quebec, Canada.
Steven Rinella, American hunting outdoorsman and TV personality best known for his weekly show “MeatEater” on the Sportsman Channel; in Twin Lake, Michigan.
Died:
Dan Golenpaul, 73, American radio producer, creator of the Information Please radio quiz show and editor of the Information Please Almanac.
Sir Leslie Munro KCMG KCVO, 72, New Zealand diplomat, President of the United Nations General Assembly 1957 to 1958
Ustad Amir Khan, 61, Hindustani classical singer and founder of the Hindustani gharana organization, was killed in a car accident.
[Ed: Heath is lucky some of his activities with children were not known until after his death, or an election would have been the least of his worries…]
History Diaries 