Widespread fighting was reported in Cambodia. Government forces pressed to within half a mile of the rebel-held town of Phsar Oudong in a two-pronged assault. Insurgent forces were reported to have maintained their shelling of the beleaguered coastal city of Kampot, south of Phnom Penh, and also shelled the isolated provincial capital of Kompong Cham, 45 miles northeast of Phnom Penh. Four civilians were wounded in the shelling, the command said. Fighting was reported at a government position on the other side of the Mekong River from Kompong Cham.
The command reported that at Phsar Oudong, 24 miles northwest of Phnom Penh, government troops were closing in from the east and the north. The insurgents had counterattacked and shelled government positions in the outskirts, the command said.
The Burmese Government said yesterday that 90 persons were killed and more than 160 wounded in fighting last week between government forces and rebels in southeast Burma. The fighting was reported at three towns just across the Thai border, about 250 miles northwest of Bangkok. A government communique charged that the rebels, “based in a country on the other side,” presumably Thailand, made an attack on Myawaddy, Thingan Nyi Nagung, and Mepale on March 17 that continued until March 22.
South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu granted amnesty to 420 prisoners on the fourth anniversary of his land-to-the-tiller program and told farmers that in four or five years prosperity for the country will be in sight. Calling on people to tighten their belts to develop the country’s resources, he assessed the agrarian reform as a success with 3.25 million acres of land distributed to 800,000 families in three years.
Finding no major narcotics problem among U.S. forces now stationed in Asia, a report to the House Foreign Affairs Committee nevertheless warned of a potential for widespread drug abuse among servicemen in Thailand and Okinawa. Written by a study group which toured Southeast Asia last year, the report said that drugs of all kinds are readily available and inexpensive for any of the 38,000 U.S. servicemen stationed in Thailand.
Leonid Brezhnev and Secretary of State Kissinger, meeting for a second day in the Kremlin, concentrated on approaches to a settlement in the Middle East. Their spokesmen reported that during two long sessions, in the morning and evening, they had also dealt with the issues of force reductions in central Europe, and held preliminary talks on a European security conference.
A Russian technology expert warned that most trade deals with the United States, including a huge natural gas project, could fall through unless Congress grants the Soviet Union increased trade credits and tariff cuts. Dzherman Gvishiani said continued congressional opposition to granting most-favored-nation status to the Soviet Union could force the Russians to turn to Western Europe for money and know-how.
Britain’s new cabinet announced a broad range of tax increases, substantial food subsidies and other fiscal measures in a dramatic effort to resolve the country’s economic difficulties and bolster international confidence. Personal income and corporate tax rates were raised, but the cost of some basic necessities was reduced. The government also announced that Britain’s deficit in visible trade had risen to a record of $1.01 billion in February.
Three terrorist bombs went off at Claro Barracks, headquarters of an army bomb disposal regiment in Yorkshire in Northern England. The blasts were believed to be the work of the Provisional Irish Republican Army. A woman canteen manager, slightly injured, was the only casualty. In Londonderry, bombs damaged a plastics factory and a store.
The Nixon administration has notified Western European countries that it is no longer interested in obtaining any redefinition in writing of their relationships with the United States. It suggested that they propose a system of consultations. A high administration official said that Secretary of State Kissinger told Chancellor Willy Brandt of West Germany and Foreign Minister Walter Scheel Sunday that it was a matter of indifference to the United States whether any declarations were completed in this “year of Europe.” West Germany was notified because it is the current chairman of the Common Market Council.
French Premier Pierre Messmer said he has ordered security forces on the French island of Corsica in the Mediterranean to put down any terrorist attempts by Corsican nationalists to force independence. A bomb damaged the main government building at Bastia while Messmer was visiting there and a policeman threw a tear-gas grenade in the direction of his car. Messmer said there would be “a pitiless repression” of such attacks.
Britain has asked Brazilian authorities to extradite Great Train Robbery fugitive Ronald Biggs, the Foreign Office announced in London. Biggs, a participant in the 1963 theft of $7.26 million in used banknotes, was living in Brazil under a false name and at present is under detention in Brazil. So far, no reply to the extradition request has been received, the Foreign Office said.
The Rumanian Communist Party names Manea Mănescu as the new prime minister and party leader Nicolae Ceaușescu president of the State Council. Ion Gheorghe Maurer retired today as Premier of Rumania and was replaced by Mănescu, a Deputy Premier, the official Rumanian news agency, Agerpres, reported. Mr. Maurer, 71 years old, had served as Premier for 13 years. The change was announced at the end of a two‐day session of the Rumanian Communist party’s Central Committee at which Nicolae Ceaușescu, the party leader, gave the main address. Several other changes were made in top government posts and the party committee approved a constitutional change enabling Mr. Ceaușescu, who is President of the State Council, to become officially the President of the country.
Mr. Mănescu, the new Premier, is 57 and has held a variety of senior economic posts in the Rumanian Government. He is a member of the Communist party’s powerful Politburo. Mr. Maurer, a veteran Communist from a middle‐class background who was trained as a lawyer, has been closely concerned with Rumania’s independent foreign policy since the nineteen‐fifties. Agerpres said that Mr. Ceausescu had read to the Central Committee a letter from Mr. Maurer asking that he be released from the Premiership on grounds of age and health.
The Iraqi Government announced tonight that it had issued decrees placing into effect the plan for self‐rule that it proclaimed March 11 for the Kurdish minority in the mountainous northern region of the country. The announcement was made in a broadcast by President Ahmed Hassan al‐Bakr at the end of the 15 days that the government had given the Kurds in which to accept the plan. But the President said in a later broadcast over the Baghdad radio that no understanding with the Kurdish leaders had been reached so far. The obstacle, according to the radio, was the Kurdish demand for control over Kirkuk, a major oil center. The President said a Kurdish delegation had told the Iraqi Government that it would accept the terms of self‐rule if the autonomous government in Kurdistan would be allowed to be responsible for Kirkuk. “This is a logic that cannot he accepted,” Mr. Bakr said. The government delegation reportedly had proposed joint administration for the Kirkuk area.
Reports reaching Istanbul from the Iraqi‐Turkish border, according to The Associated Press, said that the Kurdish leader had accepted the Iraqi proposals and that he had ordered the Kurdish rebels to stop fighting government troops. A Reuters report from eastern Turkey also quoted a Kurdish language broadcast of the Baghdad radio as saying the Kurds had agreed to the self‐rule plan. The autonomy plan announced by the government called for the election of a legislative council and executive council for the Kurdish region. It emphasized, however, that “the region is an integral part of Iraq and its people are an integral part of the Iraqi people.” Some months earlier, the Kurdish Democratic party, headed by General Mustafa al‐Barzani, had demanded a major voice in all Baghdad legislation pertaining to the Kurdish area. This was rejected by the government as being tantamount to allowing the region to secede.
A group of peasant women in Chamoli district, Uttarakhand, India, surrounded individual trees to prevent loggers from felling them, giving rise to the Chipko movement and the practice of tree hugging as a means of environmental protection.
The General Accounting Office asked Congress to consider reorganizing the U.S. Information Agency to clear up “continuing controversy” over the type of information the agency distributes overseas. The GAO said the executive branch and Congress must agree on aims if the USIA is to function effectively.
The defense in the Mitchell-Stans trial used Watergate tapes in an attempt to impugn the testimony of John Dean. The effort resulted in an all-day struggle, as fierce in its way as a prizefight, between the witness and defense lawyers. It was the first time that any of the Watergate tapes had been used in a trial. Mr. Dean will be on the stand again today.
Lawyers for the House Judiciary Committee received a briefcase of evidence relating to President Nixon’s role in the Watergate scandal. Counsel for the House impeachment inquiry spent more than two hours privately with Federal District Judge John Sirica checking each item of the material, which has been described as “evidence” that “deals with the President of the United States.”
A report on political spending by Associated Milk Producers, Inc., prepared at the request of its own officers, indicates general irregularities involving both Republicans and Democrats over a long period. The most pervasive irregularity disclosed in the report was the concealment of political contributions by funneling the donations through lawyers and other professionals retained by the milk group.
The House voted to prohibit federal courts from ordering long-distance busing of children as a means of ending school segregation. The House also agreed to cut federal aid to poor children in New York state by about $30 million in the next school year. About $23 million of the cut would be applied to New York City.
Donald Alexander, the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, said that the number of tax returns his agency would audit this year would be “materially greater” than in recent years. The audits are being increased, he said, because IRS will have more people to do the job, not because the agency expects a wave of tax cheating. He estimated that 300,000 more audits would be made this year than last year, in which a total of 1,780,000 was made.
Thomas Kean, the Assembly Republican minority leader in New Jersey, announced his candidacy for the congressional nomination in the state’s Fifth District with what constituted an attack on the Nixon administration. He seeks the seat of Peter Frelinghuysen, the G.O.P. incumbent, who has announced his retirement.
Representative Hugh Carey of Brooklyn, and a leader of the New York delegation in the House, announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for Governor, charging that Governor Wilson was “tied irrevocably by financial obligation and political ambition to Nelson Rockefeller and Richard Nixon.”
New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison was found innocent of income tax evasion by a federal jury. Garrison, the controversial prosecutor who gained national attention with his probe of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, had been accused of failing to report $60,000 in income for the years 1965-1967 — part of it allegedly from bribes. Last year, Garrison was acquitted of bribery charges. The verdict came five days before Garrison leaves office after 12 years. He was defeated in December shortly after the first trial.
Senate and House conferees agreed on a bill raising the minimum wage from $1.60 to $2.30 an hour. For most workers the minimum would increase to $2 this year and in two steps to $2.30 by 1976. Covered agricultural workers would go to $1.60 in 1974 and reach $2.30 in 1978. The minimum for the first time would apply to 7 million federal, state and local employees and 2 million domestic service workers and some chain store employees. One exception would permit the hiring of full-time students for not more than 20 hours a week at $1.60 an hour.
Rejecting White House-backed amendments that would have weakened the measure, the House Government Operations Committee approved a bill to establish a consumer protection agency to represent consumer interests before other federal agencies. Defeated amendments would have limited the proposed agency’s ability to seek judicial review of another agency’s decisions and would have restricted its information-gathering powers. In 1971, a consumer agency bill was approved by the House but was filibustered to death in the Senate.
A federal judge in Pittsburgh upheld the legality of an unprecedented no-strike agreement between the Big 10 steel makers and the United Steelworkers Union. U.S. District Judge Hubert I. Teitelbaum denied the contention of 35 dissident steel workers that the Experimental Negotiating Agreement illegally deprived them of their right to strike. The agreement, signed in March, 1973, provides guidelines for negotiating a new contract that rule out a nationwide strike but allow strikes at individual plants.
The Small Business Administration has delivered a report to Congress that shows serious problems in nearly one-fourth of its offices. It shows problems ranging from high rates of bad loans to bank bail-outs to what it called serious conflicts of interest. The report was a 94-page section deleted from a city-by-city audit made public last week. The auditors had listed these 13 cities as having “immediate serious problems:” Cincinnati, Detroit, Helena, Montana, Jacksonville, Florida, Madison, Wisconsin, Marquette, Wisconsin, Milwaukee, New Orleans, Oklahoma City, San Antonio, San Diego, St. Louis and the District of Columbia.
The body of a young woman who was found raped and strangled near the Stanford campus in California on Sunday was identified as 21-year-old Janet Ann Taylor, a Cañada College student. She was last seen on campus grounds attempting to hitchhike back to her home in La Honda, and her body was discovered on the following day in a roadside ditch near Sand Hill Road, near Manzanita Way. Janet Taylor was the daughter of Chuck Taylor, a famous coach and retired football player who, at the time of his daughter’s death, held an administrative position with the Stanford University soccer team. American serial killer John Getreu was finally identified by DNA evidence and arrested in 2018 for another murder, then also linked to Taylor’s death the following year. He was convicted of three murders and suspected of several more. He died in prison in 2023.
A proposal for producing the first vaccine to prevent a human cancer is being discussed with the federal government by scientists at Emory University in Atlanta, it was disclosed at a seminar in St. Augustine, Florida, sponsored by the American Cancer Society. Dr. Andre J. Nahmias said the vaccine would be designed to prevent cancer of the cervix by protecting against infection by herpes virus, a close relative to the virus causing cold sores or fever blisters. Details for developing the vaccine are being discussed with the National Institutes of Health, Nahmias said.
The Boston Red Sox release two future Hall of Famers. Designated hitter Orlando Cepeda and shortstop Luis Aparicio are both given their unconditional releases. Aparicio, who elects to retire, finishes his career with 2,677 hits and 506 stolen bases and will enter the Hall of Fame in 1984. The sore-kneed Cepeda will eventually with the Kansas City Royals, where he will complete his major league career in 1974. Cepeda will win election to the Hall of Fame in 1999.
In a much-anticipated boxing bout, challenger Ken Norton faced defending WBA and WBC champion George Foreman at the Poliedro de Caracas in Venezuela, with broadcast of the fight seen worldwide on closed-circuit television to paid customers. Norton, who had a record of 30 wins and 2 losses, went up against Foreman, who was unbeaten after 39 professional bouts. The fight itself was anticlimactic, with Norton being knocked down three times in the second round before referee Jimmy Rondeau called the fight and awarded Foreman a win by technical knockout (TKO).
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 883.68 (+2.66, +0.30%).
Born:
Mike Peca, Canadian NHL center (Vancouver Canucks, Buffalo Sabres, New York Islanders, Edmonton Oilers, Toronto Maple Leafs, Columbus Blue Jackets), in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Pete Swanson, NFL guard (St. Louis Rams), in Hollister, California.
Irina Spirlea, Romanian tennis star (1996 Amelia Island), in Bucharest, Romania.
Philippe Quint, Soviet-born American classical violinist; in Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union.
Died:
Edward Condon, 72, American nuclear physicist (pioneer in quantum mechanics, involved in Manhattan Project).
[Ed: But not for much longer.]
[You people have forgotten something. “The issue is never the issue; the issue is always the Revolution.” The SLA has no intention of letting their moment in the media glare end. And things are about to get decidedly surreal…]
[Ed: If all you know of Foreman is his later cheesy TV commercials, though they did make him a bit of money, you don’t know George Foreman. At his peak, Foreman was one bad hombre. Norton ran into a buzzsaw this night.]
History Diaries 