Anti-government insurgents shelled Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital, again just as the United States Embassy was holding a ceremony to announce its aid for those who were wounded or made homeless in the shelling last Monday. An early estimate after yesterday’s shelling put casualties at 8 dead and 50 wounded. The shells Monday killed nearly 200 people and wounded at least that many. The clandestine radio of the Communist-led insurgents, which has been making propaganda broadcasts since the campaign of terror-shelling began last December, called once again “on all brother countrymen in Phnom Penh to quickly evacuate the city to avoid accidents that may be caused by our attacks.”
All but two members of the South Vietnamese Cabinet resigned today at the request of President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu. President Thiệu, according to the Government press agency, accepted the resignations of 22 Cabinet members and asked the Premier, Trần Thiện Khiêm, to form a new government. The other Cabinet member who did not resign is Deputy Premier Nguyễn Lưu Viên, Saigon’s chief civilian negotiator at the political conferences set up under the Indochina peace agreement at La Celle‐St.‐Cloud, France. Though the resignations were unexpected, sources close to the Government said that the Cabinet reshuffling to come would probably not reflect a change in any of President Thiệu’s major policies.
The Egyptian and Saudi Arabian Foreign Ministers arrived in Washington for talks with Secretary of State Kissinger, presumably about the Arab oil embargo against the United States and possible Israeli-Syrian negotiations. The two ministers were sent to Washington following a two-day meeting in Algeria, which ended Thursday, of the leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Algeria. Mr., Kissinger conferred in Key Biscayne, Florida, with President Nixon before flying back to Washington for the meeting with the Arab Foreign Ministers, Ismail Fahmy of Egypt and Omar Sakkaf of Saudi Arabia.
Leaders of the Palestinian cornmando movement assembled today in Damascus, the Syrian capital, to discuss possible steps leading to the formation of a Palestinian state in territories now occupied by Israel. The new state would comprise lands of Palestine not taken over by Israel in 1948 — the West Bank of the Jordan River, which was annexed by Jordan after the creation of Israel; the Gaza Strip, which was put under Egyptian administration, and El Hamma, a southern extension of the Golan Heights that is under Syrian administration. Corridors through Israel would link the three areas. The group that convened in Damascus to review the issue — and related participation in the Geneva peace conference — is the central council of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The council is a body of the national council, a sort of Palestinian parliament in exile. The ultimate decisions on a Palestinian state must be made by the national council, which is expected to convene soon.
French‐Soviet relations were visibly warmer today as visiting Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko said that “he was very satisfied” with his talks with President Pompidou. Mr. Gromyko, who leaves for Italy Monday morning, did not mention strains within the European Common Market and between Europe and the United States after the Washington conference of major oil‐consuming nations earlier this week. But he made clear that Moscow approved French policy and said that the two nations had “reaffirmed their will for further development of relations and cooperation as two great powers.” At the Washington conference, France was the only nation among the 13 participants that refused to agree to plans for common Western policies to meet the energy crisis. There had been a chill in French‐Soviet relations since last year, when France charged Moscow and Washington with seeking a world “condominium.” There had been hints that the Russians might postpone President Pompidou’s planned visit to the Soviet Union later this month.
Premier Aleksei N. Kosygin today Pub licly reaffirmed the Kremlin’s commitment to let the family of Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyr leave the Soviet Union but left some doubt about whether his archives could be sent abroad. Mr. Kosygin made his re marks in response to an in quiry by Stig Frederickson correspondent for the Scandinavian News Agency, when the Soviet Premier went to the railroad station here to greet President Urho Kekkonen of Finland. The Scandinavian reporter asked what would happen to the Solzhenitsyn family now that the writer had been exiled. “But we have already published a statement about them saying that they can leave when they find it necessary,” Mr. Kosygin replied. He did not, however, clarify whether this included the author’s mother‐in‐law, Yekaterina Svetlova, and his wife’s young son by a former marriage, as well as Mrs. Solzhenitsyn and the couple’s three sons.
Between the six great conical cooling towers of the Agecroft Power Station in Farnworth, England, and the silent shafts and conveyor belts of the Agecroft Colliery across the road, six miners, heavily bundled up, stand picket duty around a fire. In the overcast, with the factory haze of Manchester hanging over the southern skyline, it could be an old newspaper shot of the nineteenthirties, down to the miners’ cloth caps and gray faces. All the symbols of the general election that will take place in 12 days are here the coal strike, the power crisis, the confrontation between the Government and the unions over how the burden of fighting inflation is to be distributed. “We’ve got to win this one,” said Tom Boardman, who works in the mine’s maintenance department and supports six children on $66 a week “We won’t go back to work if there’s no money. Whoever wins the election, whoever is in power, we need the money.”
All cities in China, except Peking, are apparently closed to foreigners while the national campaign against the late Marshal Lin Piao and the philosopher Confucius is in full swing. In isolated and exceptional cases, a few businessmen with urgent reasons for travel have received authorization to go to certain provincial centers. Members of the diplomatic and journalistic community in Peking have for more than a week been refused permission to travel except for transit through Canton on the way to Hong Kong. As a result, it is not known here what course the “people’s war” against “Lin Piao, Confucius and their like,” begun February 2, has taken in the provinces.
Premier Fidel Castro, conceding that the 12‐year economic blocade imposed by the United States has hurt Cuba, says he isn’t “in any hurry” to improve relations with Washington. “We can wait 10 years, 20 years,” Mr. Castro said in an interview in the Mexican Magazine Siempre published yesterday.
Secretary of State Kissinger is reportedly ready to approve special licenses for the sale to Cuba of 42,000 Ford, General Motors and Chrysler cars and trucks produced in Argentina by wholly owned subsidiaries of the companies.
An air force helicopter has rescued three members of a scientific expedition from an 800‐feet deep crater In the Venezuelan jungle, according to a newspaper report today. The three are David Nott, 45 years old, a British mountaineer; Dr. Charles Brewer Carias, the expedition leader, and an official of the Venezuelan Natural Science Society, and his brother Jimmy. They were isolated in the pit or four days, the daily newspaper, Ultimas Noticias, reported. When they came out they were suffering from nothing more severe than slight dehydration and said they intended to go down again in search of prehistoric specimens and materials, the paper said.
France has ceded 23 acres to Italy in an amicable settlement of a 26‐year‐old border dispute. The land, part of the ski resort of Claviere, in the Alps, went to France in a 1947 border realignment. As a result, some children lived in one country and went to school in the other, and many of their fathers had to cross the border to go to work.
Faced with rising protests and threatened station shutdowns, the Federal Energy Office authorized a penny per gallon price increase for retail dealers whose gasoline allocations have been reduced by 15% or more. The increase, effective March 1, is expected to apply to about half of the 225,000 retail dealers across the country and will be in addition to the end-of-the-month price adjustment normally allowed under price controls to compensate dealers for their cost fluctuations during the month.
Directly or indirectly, the nation’s energy shortage is prompting serious new studies of suburban transportation systems and a rash of operating transit experiments in a variety of the country’s little known but populous suburban communities. Suburbanites are studying, for the first time, new systems of transportation, reconsidering old ones and exploring expansion of existing transit. A growing number of towns have under way new transit operations.
Energy officials of the Nixon administration have joined with Washington lobbyists for the coal mining and electric utility industries in an attempt to thwart House passage of a bill imposing the first federal environmental restrictions on strip mining. The secret maneuvering, involving the industry lobbyists and officials of the Interior and Treasury Departments and the Federal Energy Office, was disclosed last week when a “confidential” coal industry memorandum came into the hands of environmentalist groups that are supporting the strong measure pending in the House.
Public approval of President Nixon’s performance in office rose two points to 28 per cent at the beginning of February after falling to a low of 26 percent in late January, according to the latest Gallup Poll. At the same time, the percentage of the public that disapproves of the President’s conduct in office decreased five points to 59 percent. This is the lowest disapproval rating in more than two months. The survey also showed that those polled who held no opinion rose three points to 13 percent. The breakdown of the survey results showed that Mr. Nixon’s greatest support remains with the same groups he had in the past. He received majority approval from only one major population group, the Republican party, at 59 percent. Only 16 percent of the Democrats and 28 percent of the independents surveyed approved of his handling of his job, acccording to the poll.
Governor George G. Wallace of Alabama said today that the energy crisis had been caused by a failure of leadership. “This nation currently faces an energy crisis, but more than that, in my opinion, it faces a crisis of leadership,” Mr. Wallace said in prepared remarks for an audience of 1,500 at a North Carolina Democratic fundraising rally. He said that visible efforts to combat the energy situation thus far have been conservation measures requiring sacrifices by the people. “The leadership of this nation must be able to foresee problems such as this and bring about some solutions before a crisis is drastically on us,” he said. “I say that the only way that we will really solve the energy problem and other great problems which confront us is to return to the imaginative leadership provided by the Democratic party.”
Another tape recording of Patricia Hearst’s voice was delivered to her parents today. From the kidnapping victim’s remarks, the tape was apparently made last Wednesday. She said she was alive and well. She said she was being treated as a prisoner of war. She warned her father that she might be killed if an attempt were made to rescue her by force. She described herself as political prisoner and said that her abductors were “really mad” about suggestions that she was held for extortion purposes. In a demand received last Tuesday, Mr. Hearst was told to provide $70 worth of free food over the next four weeks for persons receiving specific sorts of welfare in this state. It turned out that more than four million people would have been eligible for the food allotment. The tape delivered today indicated that the kidnappers had retreated from that demand to explain that what they wanted was an example showing that Mr. Hearst was ready to negotiate in good faith for his daughter’s release.
Congress and the executive branch are becoming increasingly concerned about the rise in the Defense Department’s civilian payroll, which has grown to nearly $15‐billion a year. With a substantial reduction in military strength, civilian and military manpower costs account for about 56 percent of the defense budget. Congress is expected to try to impose for the first time this year a ceiling on civilian employment in the Pentagon as it has been doing for several years on military manpower strength. The White House’s Office of Management and Budget is trying a somewhat different approach by ordering the services to study the feasibility of hiring private contractors to do some of the support functions on military bases now performed by civilian employees.
At a supermarket in Somerset, Massachusetts, three men robbed an armored truck belonging to International Protective Service, Inc., of Providence, Rhode Island, of at least $200,000 in cash.
United States District Court here has been asked for a 90‐day continuance in the Federal conspiracy trial of W. A. Boyle, the former United Mine Workers president. Special prosecutor Richard A. Sprague, in papers filed yesterday, asked that the trial be set back from the scheduled February 25 date to permit Pennsylvania to proceed with its murder trial of Mr. Boyle.
Federal District Judge L. Clure Morton has given Warden James Rose of the Tennessee State Prison 20 days to respond to James Earl Ray’s charges that he has been denied access to the prison’s law library. Judge Morton issued the order in a suit filed by the convicted killer of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Baltimore’s teachers and the city government are entering their third week of dispute, still far apart in salary negotiations. Governor Marvin Mandel reluctantly interceded this week to try to work out a compromise between the Public School Teachers Association’s demand for a 14 percent pay increase this year and next, and the city’s insistence that the money is not available. The intervention was fruitless. Eighty‐four percent of the city’s 8,600 teachers, and 90 percent of the 186,000 students have remained out of school during the two weeks. Makeshift classes are being held and the school buildings remain open, however.
During an international 500-mile (800 km) snowmobile race in Michigan, 36-year-old American racer Bill Bowen was thrown from his vehicle and struck by two other snowmobiles, dying of his injuries later in the day.
Born:
Mahershala Ali (born Mahershalalhashbaz Gilmore), American actor (Moonlight, Green Book), winner of two Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor and one Emmy Award; in Oakland, California.
Jamie Davies, English racing driver, winner of the 2003 24 Hours of Le Mans; in Yeovil, Somerset, England, United Kingdom.
Tomasz Kucharski, Polish rower with two Olympic gold medals (2000 and 2004); in Gorzów Wielkopolski, Poland.
Mark Mowers, NHL centre (Nashville Predators, Detroit Red Wings, Boston Bruins, Anaheim Ducks); in Decatur, Georgia.
Kathy McCormack, ice hockey forward (Canada, Olympic silver 1998), in Blackville, New Brunswick, Canada.
Jevon Langford, NFL defensive end (Cincinnati Bengals), in Washington, District of Columbia.
Luis Figueroa, Puerto Rican second baseman, pinch hitter, and shortstop (Pittsburgh Pirates, Toronto Blue Jays, San Francisco Giants), in Bayamon, Puerto Rico.
Died:
John Garand, 86, Canadian-born American firearms designer who invented the M1 Garand semi-automatic rifle.
Anita Bush, 90, African American stage and silent film actress and playwright, known as “The Little Mother of Colored Drama”
Alfred Mazure, 59, Dutch comics artist known for creating the popular detective comic Dick Bos.
Paul Struye, 77, Belgian politician and journalist, President of the Belgian Senate 1950 to 1954 and 1958 to 1973
Frederick V. Waugh, 75, American agricultural economist known for the Frisch–Waugh–Lovell theorem.
Enayet Karim, 48, Foreign Secretary of Bangladesh, died four days after suffering a heart attack in his office.
History Diaries 