South Vietnam said the death toll in a Việt Cộng shelling of a Cai Lậy schoolyard Sunday rose to 32 as nine more children died in a hospital in addition to the 23 killed instantly. Twenty-five Communists and four government soldiers were killed today as South Vietnamese forces repelled an attack on bivouacked troops 35 miles northwest of Saigon.
South Vietnamese forces have started the second phase of an operation to “consolidate sovereignty” over the disputed Spratly archipelago in the South China Sea, military sources said in Saigon today. The first phase of the operation was completed last month when South Vietnamese troops landed on the islands after the South Vietnamese had been defeated by China in a two‐day war over the Paracels, another chain of coral reefs to the north. They said the second phase of the operation was started Saturday when Saigon naval forces ferried frogmen and engineers with construction material and equipment to the five islands occupied by South Vietnamese forces in the 11-island chain. About 500 tons of building material and equipment was ferried to the islands for construction of combat bunkers, the sources said. They said tons of ammunition, fuel and food supplies had also been sent to the islands.
Imperial Japanese Army second lieutenant Hiroo Onoda formally surrendered after having continued to carry out his orders in World War II to fight in the Philippines for 29 years. Onoda was informed by his former commanding officer, Major Yoshimi Taniguchi, that the War had been over since 1945, and presented his battle sword to Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos.
The United Kingdom formally ended the state of emergency that had been proclaimed in November in response to the energy crisis. The state of emergency declared in Britain last November 13 because of growing economic problems was formally ended by the new Labor government of Prime Minister Wilson. A proclamation by Queen Elizabeth II, ending the emergency, followed the return to work of 260,000 coal miners and the start of the first five-day work week since the beginning of the year. At the same time, industry and labor leaders reported that the impact of the coal strike and the three-day work week had been much less serious than expected.
Twelve gunmen kidnapped Senator Billy Fox, Protestant member of the Irish Republic Senate, from the house of a friend in Tircooney, a County Monaghan town near the Northern Ireland border. Fox was visiting Richard Coulson when the men burst into the house and abducted him.
A father, his pregnant wife and 10 of their 13 children died in their blazing home in a Dublin, Ireland, suburb as they vainly tried to smash through double-glazed windows installed to keep out the winter cold, police reported. Neighbors rescued three other children, all of whom were in critical condition.
Leo Tindemans of the moderate Social Christian Party is expected to head Belgium’s next coalition government after elections in which his party again won the largest number of seats in the House of Representatives. A predicted big increase failed to materialize for the Dutch-speaking Flemish Party and the French-speaking Walloon Party. The three parties in the last coalition — Social Christians, Socialists and Liberals — ran ahead again.
Portugal’s armed forces have been placed on alert because of “internal disciplinary problems,” a spokesman in Lisbon said. The situation apparently stems from rumored disciplinary moves against Deputy Chief of Staff General Antonio de Spinola, who wrote in a book published last month that Portugal’s colonies should be treated on virtually equal terms with Portugal itself.
A representative from the Vatican’s Office for Public Affairs met with the standing committee of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, which has defended a controversial Basque bishop in Spain’s worst church-state crisis in 35 years. Meanwhile, a government source indicated that the feud may be cooled by a church statement that Bishop Antonio Anoveros meant no attack on national unity when he urged more freedom for Basques.
A film showing an illegal abortion was banned from West German television after protests by Catholic leaders. A group of 13 young doctors performed the abortion and filmed it to publicize their stand in favor of liberalizing laws on abortion, which is forbidden in West Germany.
There was a minor eruption on the west flank of Mount Etna in Sicily, which would last 18 days. This followed a similar minor eruptive phase in the first half of February, separated by 22 days of inactivity.
President Anwar el‐Sadat of Egypt conferred with the Oil Ministers of Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi on the prospects for relaxing export restrictions, including the embargo against the United States, at a meeting of nine Arab countries in Tripoli, Libya, tomorrow. Representatives of six of the nine countries that imposed the embargo against the United States and the Netherlands in October held consultations in Cairo. Their talks followed their unsuccessful attempt Sunday to reach a decision on easing the embargo at a meeting that Libya, Algeria and Syria refused to attend.
Iraq, in accordance with a four-year-old promise, granted its rebellious northern Kurdish minority limited self-rule. The declaration, granting the Kurds an autonomous legislature and executive and according them control over their judicial and budgetary systems, was read over national radio and television by Iraqi President Ahmed Hassan al Bakr. Iraq’s government gave a 15-day ultimatum to Mustafa Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iraq, to accept an offer of an autonomous Kurdish region or to face a renewal of the hostilities arising since the end of the First Iraqi–Kurdish War in 1970. The declaration that was issued provided that the Kurdish people would have an autonomous legislature and executive, with control over their judiciary system and their budgeting. In that the offer of autonomy fell short of what had been promised in 1970 to end the war, Barzani would let the deadline expire on March 26 and a second war would begin in April.
The Israeli air force tried to kill Syrian President Hafez Assad during a bombing raid on Damascus last October in which about 500 Syrians were killed, according to the Beirut newspaper Al Anwar. The paper said it got its information from a Syrian government leader but did not name him.
Emperor Haile Selassie said today that while the monarchy was a durable institution needed to hold Ethiopia together, its once overwhelming political power was not “eternal” and could be varied according to the “requirements and exigencies of the time.” The emperor’s remarks made in an audience granted to several newsmen who had submitted written questions seemed to indicate that he might not resist suggestions that might be made by a constitutional conference this year to establish some form of constitutional monarchy in Ethiopia. An army mutiny and urban civil unrest recently forced the 81‐year‐old African monarch to dismiss his appointed cabinet, to give costly raises and benefits to the armed forces and to some civilians and to agree to a constitutional conference. Students tried to keep agitation alive today by burning an effigy of the new Premier, Endalkachew Makonnen, and shouting for the fall of his cabinet, but they were dispersed by tear gas and a police charge.
Among the mysteries confounding analysts of Chinese affairs in recent days is what has happened to a radical leftist, magazine whose stridently] worded attacks on Confucius last fall set off the current ideological campaign sweeping China. In the last week, according to travelers arriving from China, the magazine Hsueh Hsi yu Pi Ping (Study and Criticism) has suddenly disappeared from bookshops in Peking and Canton and even in Shanghai, where it is published. Moreover, copies of the most recent issue available here show that it has been stripped of its title, inscribed in the handwriting of Chairman Mao Tse‐tung, a mark of the highest honor; without explanation someone else’s handwriting has been substituted. Presumably this demotion could not have been carried out without at least the Chairman’s consent.
It was in Hsueh Hsi yu Pi Ping that the first apparently allegorical attacks on Confucius began last September after the 10th Communist party Congress. The magazine also carried the earliest criticism of Western culture and cultural exchange with the West, some of which was reprinted in the official party newspaper, Jenmin Jih Pao. In the view of specialists here, the magazine is probably the instrument of the radical Shanghai group of party leaders, who include Wang Hungwen, a former labor official promoted last year to the No. 3 job in the party; Chang Chunchiao, a former journalist and now the party Secretary General, and Yao Wen‐yuan, a onetime literary critic whose essay in a Shanghai paper marked the start of the Cultural Revolution in 1965. The Shanghai leftists are closely allied with Chiang Ching, Chairman Mao’s wife, who is from Shanghai.
U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said today that the biggest foreign policy problem now confronting the United States was to get the cooperation of its allies. Referring to disagreements with France and other West European countries, Mr. Kissinger, told a meeting of wives of Congressmen at the State Department: “I would say that the biggest problem American foreign policy confronts right now is not to regulate competition with its enemies — we have a generation of experience with that and with ups and downs we are going to handle it — but how to bring our friends to a realization that there are greater common interests than simply self-assertiveness, and that the seeming victory they are striving for is going to prove hollow in an atmosphere of constant strife and endless competition.”
The White House again refused to turn over some of the evidence requested by the House committee which is preparing an impeachment resolution against the President. The committee wants 42 of the White House tapes. The House Judiciary Committee has asked the White House to provide, in addition to materials already given to the special Watergate prosecutor, 42 tape recordings of conversations between President Nixon and some of his key former aides. The requests were contained in a letter, dated February 25, from John Doar, the committee’s special counsel, to James D. St. Clair, the President’s special counsel.
President Nixon suggested in June, 1969, that members of his staff be given access to the tax returns of former Presidents so that he could find out what tax deductions his predecessors had taken, according to a White House memorandum written by John Ehrlichman, who was then the President’s counsel. Congressional investigators have the memorandum.
James St. Clair, President Nixon’s chief defense lawyer, defended him against suggestions that he violated the law when he failed to report to federal prosecutors as soon as he found out that hush money had been paid to the Watergate burglars. The President’s legal obligation when informed of a crime is simply “to see” that the judicial process is set in motion and carried out, Mr. St. Clair said in an interview. He also said that he did not believe that the House would vote to impeach the President.
Secretary of State Kissinger will be subpoenaed to testify for the defense in the Ellsberg break‐in trials of two former White House aides, Charles W. Colson and John D. Ehrlichman, sources close to the two men said.
The state of California dropped charges against John Ehrlichman, G. Gordon Liddy and David Young stemming from the Daniel Ellsberg break-in case. The announcement was made after a meeting between Los Angeles District Attorney Joseph Busch and special Watergate prosecutor Leon Jaworski.
Busch explained that he only dropped the state charges because the matter should be handled by the federal justice system. Ehrlichman is still charged with perjury in California, however. Liddy and Ehrlichman will be tried in the federal case regarding the break-in of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office; Young will be given immunity in exchange for his testimony against the others.
The trial of John Mitchell and Maurice Stans continued in New York. Today the prosecution read a memo addressed to Donald Nixon which was allegedly written by financier Robert Vesco. Prosecution witness Harry Sears was cross-examined beginning late in the afternoon. Attorney Peter Fleming came down hard on Sears.
The U.S. Senate passed today a $10.4‐billion comprehensive housing bill that would rewrite virtually all of the nation’s housing laws. By a vote of 76 to 11, the Senate sent the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 to the House, where supporters of the measure expect stiff opposition to some of the provisions.
The nation’s steel industry began closing down in the wake of the West Virginia coal strike. The United Mine Workers went to court in an effort to overthrow the state’s gasoline sales restrictions. U.S. Steel has been hard hit by the strike; layoffs have begun. Plant superintendent Charles Kay stated that the coal miners’ strike could result in 200,000 people being laid off in the steel industry. Inland Steel reported that the coal shortage is becoming critical. The coal miners’ strike will significantly affect the economy.
The Internal Revenue Service reportedly has received thousands of complaints of gasoline price gouging or discrimination.
Randolph A. Hearst said today that he would attempt to meet the latest demands of his daughter’s kidnappers and promised a detailed response within 24 to 48 hours. In a message to the newspaper executive on Saturday, kidnappers criticized the $2‐million free food program for the poor established by Mr. Hearst, saying that he was not supplying items of top quality. The group linked to the kidnapping also demanded a televised news conference for two of its members who have been arrested. Today, A. Ludlow Kramer, the head of People in Need, the organization set up to distribute the food, said that the program was being temporarily suspended and that it would not be re‐instituted until it was possible to fully comply with the demands of the kidnappers.
The Army has asked U.S. District Judge J. Robert Elliott in Columbus, Georgia, to reverse his decision granting bail to 1st. Lieutenant William L. Calley Jr., who was convicted in the Mỹ Lai massacre. The suit said Calley was “convicted of one of the most serious crimes in the annals of military justice” and that Elliott did not state proper justification for his release. Elliott released Calley on $1,000 unsecured bond on February 27. The judge said he would set a hearing but did not specify a date. Calley’s 20-year sentence in the 1968 killings of 22 civilians in South Vietnam is currently under review.
Arkansas Governor Dale L. Bumpers said he would challenge fellow Democrat J. William Fulbright for the Senate seat Fulbright has held since 1944. Bumpers, 48, said that “faith in the government is at an all-time low and people are pleading for leadership.” Fulbright, 68, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has announced he will seek another term.
Caspar W. Weinberger, secretary of health, education and welfare, proposed a plan for ending welfare and funneling cash to the poor through a negative income tax. Weinberger, speaking to the Economic Club of Detroit, said the income system could be used to credit “individuals and families who don’t have sufficient income to exceed the standard deduction and personal exemptions allowed them in the tax system with a cash supplement based upon those ‘unused’ exemptions and deductions.”
Two of three men still sought in the kidnapping last Wednesday of John Calzadilla, 8, of Dix Hills, New York, are related to the boy’s father, Michael, by a former marriage, the FBI said. Authorities said warrants were issued for Roberto Martinez, 37, of New York City, his brother, Jorge, 27, and Jose Antonio Hernandez, 20. Five others, all Cuban-born teenagers, have already been arrested. The FBI said Michael Calzadilla was once married to the Martinez brothers’ sister, Gladys.
A judge ruled that the Pennsylvania Crime Commission may continue distributing a report alleging widespread corruption in the Philadelphia Police Department. In denying a Fraternal Order of Police suit to stop it on grounds it would harm policemen’s reputations, Commonwealth Court Judge James S. Bowman said an injunction would be useless because the report had already been published. The 1,400-page study, culminating an 18-month investigation into alleged wrongdoing in the city’s police force, detailed specific acts of corruption involving illegal cash payments to police.
Take a compact city of 725,000. Shut down the public transportation system. Close treatment plants so that a million gallons of raw sewage a day pours into the bay and the ocean. Fill the streets with cars driven by people who have one eye on a lowering fuel tank gauge. Then at midday produce a cold, driving rain to beat against all this, and you have San Francisco as it existed this afternoon.
A municipal strike began Friday when about 6,600 city employes walked out because their demand for an 8 per cent salary increase had been met with an offer of 2 to 5 per cent raises. The strikers, who are members of the Service Employes International Union, included stenographers, hospital orderlies, nurses, and technical workers in such municipal operations as three sewage treatment plants. Garbage is collected by private companies here. The city could exist for an extended period without serious disruption in the absence of such workers. But the crunch came when sympathetic unionists refused to cross picket lines.
The first impact was the closing of the Municipal Railway, which not only moves hundreds of thousands of city residents but also the throngs of commuters who come into town through two bus terminals and a railway station. Also on Friday, the school system, which operates under the city school board, was struck by the American Federation of Teachers. The rival Classroom Teachers Association advised parents to keep their children at home. Schools were open today on a limited schedule, but only 15 per cent of children attended classes.
The Rhino Store gives people 5 cents to take home Danny Bonaduce’s Album.
With Hank Aaron needing only one home run to tie Babe Ruth’s career record (714), Atlanta plans to save the event for a home audience by benching him on the road. Commissioner Kuhn plans otherwise, ordering the Braves to start Aaron in at least 2 of the team’s 3 season-opening games in Cincinnati.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 888.45 (+10.40, +1.18%).
Born:
Bobby Abreu, Venezuelan MLB outfielder (All-Star, 2004, 2005; Houston Astros, Philadelphia Phillies, New York Yankees, Los Angeles Angels, Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Mets), in Turmero, Aragua, Venezuela.
Billy Granville, NFL linebacker (Cincinnati Bengals), in Trenton, New Jersey.
Adam Wakeman, British session and touring rock keyboardist, and songwriter (Black Sabbath; Rick Wakeman; Headspace), and television score composer, born in Windsor, England, United Kingdom.
Jon Dalton, American television personality – the infamous “Jonny Fairplay” from the 7th and 16th season of “Survivor,” in Danville, Virginia.
Jonathan Dunnett, English born windsurfer and adventurer; in London, England, United Kingdom.
Sven Šestak, Croatian stage and TV actor; in Koprivnica, SR Croatia, Yugoslavia.
History Diaries 