The command of the United Nations Emergency Force in the Sinai has had no information so far to bear out an Israeli allegation that Egypt moved artillery across the Suez Canal in violation of the agreement on the separation of forces, informed diplomatic sources said today. Lieutenant General Ensio Siilasvuo of Finland, the commander of the United Nations force, today informed the Egyptian Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Mohammed Abdel Ghany el‐Gamasy, of the Israeli protest. Lieutenant General David Elazar, the Israeli Chief of Staff, raised the complaint with General Siilasvuo at a meeting in Jerusalem on Thursday. The United Nations spokesman, Rudolf Stajduhar, declined to comment on the Israeli complaint at a regular news briefing today. But he answered “yes” when asked, whether “at the moment the Israelis made the complaint, U.N. information was that the disengagement agreement was being meticulously observed by both sides.”
U.S. Rear Admiral Brian McCauley, who headed mine-clearing operations in Haiphong Harbor, arrived in Cairo to meet with Egyptian officials on a similar U.S.-assisted effort in the Suez Canal.
In the Golan Heights, Syria and Israel battled for the 12th day. Syrian and Israeli tanks and artillery clashed on the Golan Heights for the 12th day today, a Syrian spokesman said. He said that the clashes had begun in the northern sector and were continuing about four hours later. They had spread to the central sector, he added. An Israeli Army spokesman said today that a woman villager had been killed and two soldiers injured in artillery exchanges along the Golan Heights cease‐fire line.
Soviet Defense Minister Andrei Grechko began a five-day visit to Iraq. Although announcements have carefully avoided linking Grechko’s visit with Iraq’s attempt to suppress a Kurdish rebellion, Arab news analysts noted that Grechko will be in Iraq Tuesday, the deadline for Kurdish acceptance of an Iraqi ultimatum on autonomy for the minority. The Soviet Union has close ties with both Iraqis and Kurds.
China charged that the crew of an armed Soviet reconnaissance helicopter had been on a spying mission when it was captured recently in Habahe County in the northern reaches of strategic Sinkiang Province, about 150 miles southwest of the juncture of the Soviet, Chinese and Mongolian borders. A formal diplomatic protest made in Peking to the Soviet Ambassador dismissed as “a bunch of lies” a Soviet report last week that the helicopter had been flying to pick up a sick soldier when it was blown off course in a storm and forced to make an emergency landing in Chinese territory. Peking’s note of protest charged that Soviet aircraft had committed 61 intrusions so far this year in Sinkiang Province.
The Saigon government responded skeptically to the new Việt Cộng six-point peace plan, but carefully avoided outright rejection of the idea of speeding up an effective Vietnamese settlement. Saigon’s delegation to the Vietnam talks in Paris called on the Việt Cộng to set up working groups for detailed negotiations on four points: restoration of democratic liberties, establishment of a National Council of National Reconciliation and Concord, national elections and the future of armed forces on both sides. These were mentioned in the Việt Cộng proposal made Friday. Two more points, a new cease-fire order and exchange of prisoners, should be handled by the joint Military Commission in Vietnam, the Saigon delegation said.
The U.S. Senate swiftly pushed through legislation to authorize the Pentagon to pay travel expenses for relatives attending funerals of American prisoners of war and troops missing in action whose bodies have been recovered in Southeast Asia. The legislation now awaits House action. President Nixon had earlier ordered the Pentagon to explore all possible avenues of help for a California widow and her 12-year-old son to attend the burial of her POW husband.
A renewed sense of rivalry and frustration with the United States now colors the Soviet policy of detente, so warmly proclaimed when President Nixon visited Moscow 22 months ago. On such key issues as trade, strategic arms negotiations and European security, the Soviet leadership acts as if it felt that Washington has not come through with the kind of accommodation that was promised, either explicitly or implicitly, in Mr. Nixon’s talks with Leonid Brezhnev in 1972 and 1973.
Secretary of State Kissinger left on a trip to Moscow concerned about signs of a chill in Soviet-American relations but hopeful of progress toward another accord on strategic arms and of big-power cooperation in Middle East diplomacy. His latest trip to Moscow “comes at a very important time,” Mr. Kissinger said last week, because of recent indications that strains were developing in Soviet-American affairs. On his way to Moscow, he is to stop in Bonn for talks on European and East-West problems.
Britain’s new government gained substantial concessions from its eight Common Market partners during a three-day meeting in Brussels at which agreement was reached on farm support prices for the coming season. At the meeting, the nine agricultural ministers agreed to increase their farm support prices by an average of 8.5 percent, but special exceptions were made to protect British consumers of beef, pork and butter from price increases. Immense satisfaction was expressed over the compromise package among diplomats who had feared that there would be a major dispute between Britain and the others.
By “ignoring the persecution of Jews in the Soviet Union… (U.S. Secretary of State Henry A.) Kissinger and President Nixon’s Administration must assume partial responsibility” for crimes committed against Jews in the Soviet Union, according to a statement signed by six Jews from Novosibirsk. They asked why action against a person wanting to emigrate to Israel should be considered too much of an internal affair of the Soviet Union to be criticized. Their statements’ release coincided with Kissinger’s visit to Moscow.
European Common Market ministers averted a possible crisis with Britain by approving an 82% increase in commodity prices to be paid to farmers in the nine market nations during the 1974-75 season, but they made exceptions on some products, such as beef, pork and butter, to help keep prices in line in Britain, where inflation is a severe problem.
The police in Rome announced today the arrest of a man suspected of being one of the masterminds in the kidnapping of J. Paul Getty 3rd. Girolamo Piromalli, 58 years old, was picked up in an early morning raid on his home in Gioia Tauro, in Calabria in southern Italy, where the youth was believed to have been held for most of his five months in captivity, the police said. The 17‐year‐old grandson of the American oil billionaire was freed in December after his abductors cut off his right ear and mailed it to a Rome newspaper.
About 10 American youths streaked across St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City, bringing the nude fad to the center of Roman Catholicism. Police said they arrested three of them after firing warning shots. Two of them are being held for obscene acts in public and resisting arrest and the third for resisting arrest.
A Canadian labor leader blamed U.S. construction unions for a rampage by workers who last week damaged a $6 billion hydroelectric power project. About 850 employees of the James Bay Energy Corp. were removed by air from the area in northern Quebec. The workers were plunged into 30 below zero cold and darkness when some of them destroyed generators and burned bunkhouses, a post office, a bank, a tavern and other buildings. No one was hurt.
The U.S. Coast Guard said a Mexican gunboat guarding the 12-mile fishing boundary against 25 American shrimp boats had seized two and forced them into harbor at Isla Mujeres off the Yucatan peninsula. A third American shrimp boat equipped with a powerful radio was trailing the gunboat and shrimpers reportedly “to testify on their behalf as to the position and activity of the vessels.”
A former general secretary of President Juan Domingo Perón’s Justicialist Movement survived a combined bomb and bullet, attempt on his life in Buenos Aires today. He is Juan Manuel Abal Medina, 28 years old, who organized Perónist youth groups during the closing years of military rule which preceded the Perónists’ election victory of last March. The police said gunmen in a car opened fire on him as he arrived at his home early today. He was hit in the arm and, as he dashed towards his apartment building, a bomb exploded in the doorway. A tree shielded him from the blast
Brigadier General Charles Arube of the Ugandan Army began a rebellion at the Malire Barracks in Kampala, in an attempt to overthrow the government of dictator Idi Amin. Arube, and Lieutenant Colonel Elly Aseni, sought as well to rid the Ugandan armed forces of foreign mercenary officers. Although Arube’s rebels were able to kill the 30 guards inside the presidential palace and to trap General Amin, the group hesitated at entering the command post to arrest Amin. General Arube entered the palace alone and was shot to death by General Amin.
President Nixon, in a radio broadcast from Camp David, asked for public support for administration education proposals now before Congress, ranging from anti-busing legislation to programs that would broaden local controls over schools and finance loans and grants for postsecondary education. He referred to a House debate scheduled this week on what he said was “a bill that represents a step in the right direction toward more community and state control over their elementary and secondary schools.”
The White House reacted angrily to reports that it was prepared to turn over 42 additional Watergate tapes to the House Judiciary Committee, which is considering presidential impeachment. In a statement, Ron Ziegler, the presidential press secretary, accused the committee of having violated its own rules of confidentiality and said, “This lack of regard for the responsible handling of the materials provided to the committee cannot help but influence the White House attitude with respect to providing additional materials in the future.”
Congressional staff experts who are investigating President Nixon’s taxes have reportedly become convinced that the deed establishing the President’s right to a $576,000 tax deduction never existed, despite the assertion of his lawyers to the contrary. Sources said that the investigators believe they have sufficient documentary evidence to refute the argument made by Mr. Nixon and his lawyers that the deduction was legal, even in the absence of the deed. That argument rests on a contention that Mr. Nixon’s pre-presidential papers were delivered to the National Archives before a change in the tax laws that disallowed big deductions for gifts of personal papers.
Vice President Ford, speaking to Republican fundraisers in Millburn and Atlantic City, New Jersey, said that the party could be in serious trouble across the country if it succumbed to pessimism as a result of the Watergate scandal. But he ridiculed predictions of huge losses in this year’s congressional elections, calling predictions or losses of 50 to 100 seats “nonsense.”
When 1975 automobile models go on display next fall, prospective buyers will find few surprises, even though the industry has been undergoing a radical transformation because of the energy crisis. There will be more of the smaller cars to choose from, buyers may no longer have to wait to get a small car and there will be some improvement in fuel economy for most models. But buyers will look in vain for major changes in economy or technology.
Researchers are using a normally lethal dose of a drug to combat otherwise untreatable cancers of the lung and pancreas. Dr. Issac Djerassi of Mercy Catholic Medical Center at Darby, Pennsylvania, told science writers at a seminar at St. Augustine, Florida, that the treatment appeared to extend the lives of patients who otherwise could not be saved. The treatment involves the use of the drug methotrexate in doses so large they normally would be lethal. An antidote is given within hours to counteract the methotrexate. The antidote revives normal cells after cancerous ones have been damaged by the methotrexate.
Prompted by an air crash that killed 346 persons outside Paris on March 3, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered air lines to make safety changes in DC-10 jumbo jets. The order covers changes in the cargo door latching device and the warning light system. The cause of the Paris crash has not been determined but authorities believe a cargo door may have flown off, resulting in damage to rudder controls.
The official price of gold — $42.22 an ounce — is far below the private market price and should be abolished, the Congressional Economic Committee said. The House-Senate committee also proposed in its annual report on the state of the economy that the U.S. dollar continue to be floated and that the International Monetary Fund allow all nations to float currencies at will. Domestically, the predominantly Democratic panel urged a $10 billion tax cut to fight an economic slump.
An airborne arsonist is being sought by Florida forestry officials. They planned to send helicopters in search of a light plane believed to be dropping incendiary devices in the area of a fire that has burned 36,000 acres of the Big Cypress Swamp. Officials said a small airplane had been seen on at least two occasions dropping flares in the vicinity of the blaze, which has spread quickly under dry conditions. The fire has been contained along a water conservation canal about 45 miles west of Miami.
New York City and state officials are planning to revive the controversial effort to get the federal government to designate the entire corridor of Manhattan’s western shore, from the Battery to the George Washington Bridge, as an interstate highway route. Vehement community protests greeted two previous attempts to obtain the designation, which would permit 90 percent federal financing of studies on what to do about the dilapidated route of the West Side Highway and, north of 72nd Street, the Henry Hudson Parkway.
Eight people were killed and six critically injured in a fire that began after a man threw a gasoline can and lighted fuse into a crowded bar in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Ernest James Burton Jr. walked to a police station and turned himself in, 23 minutes after starting the fire. Burton had attacked the Caboose Bar after being ejected earlier in the day.
A January-style snowstorm and some of the coldest post-winter temperatures on record punished the nation’s midlands on the third day of spring. There was up to 6 inches of snow on the ground from Kansas through Illinois, and record wintry temperatures were common. The worst was a morning low of 24 below zero at International Falls, Minnesota. Snow was falling in a band from Colorado through the central and lower plains into the Ohio Valley.
The clearest photographs ever taken of the tiny planet Mercury began coming back to earth today from the Mariner 10 space probe.
“The Wall of Sound”, the largest concert sound system up to that time, made its debut at the Grateful Dead’s concert at the Cow Palace, near San Francisco. Designed by the band’s sound engineer, Owsley Stanley, the Wall of Sound was composed of 604 total speakers with a combined 26,400 watts of power.
The New York Yankees purchase outfielder Elliot Maddox from the Rangers for $60,000. Maddox proved to be a great defensive outfielder as well as hitting .303 in 1974.
The Chicago Cubs send outfielder Jim Hickman to the St. Louis Cardinals for pitcher Scipio Spinks.
AIAW Women’s Basketball Tournament, Immaculata beat Mississippi College 68-53 in Manhattan, Kansas.
The North Carolina State Wolfpack scored an upset over the heavily favored UCLA Bruins college basketball team in the semifinal of the NCAA tournament, and earned a trip to the national final. Prior to the loss, UCLA had won 38 tournament games in a row and seven consecutive national championships. After trailing by 11 points in the second half, N.C. State tied the score 65 to 65 in regular time, sending the game into overtime, then tied it again 67–67 to go into a second extra period. Trailing 74–67, N.C. State scored 13 points in the next three and a half minutes to win, 80 to 77, ending the Bruins’ reign as champions.
Born:
Scott Galyon, NFL linebacker (New York Giants, Miami Dolphins), in Seymour, Tennessee.
Eric Washington, NBA shooting guard (Denver Nuggets), in Pearl, Mississippi.
Randall Park, American comedian, writer, and actor (“Fresh Off the Boat”), born in Los Angeles, California
Jaume Collet-Serra, Spanish-born American film director and producer known for Non-Stop; in Sant Iscle de Vallalta, Province of Barcelona, Spain.
Died:
Edward Molyneux, 82, British fashion designer.
History Diaries 