Israeli planes attacked Syrian military targets around Mount Hermon today, military sources said. But, apart from some intermittent shelling, the rest of the Golan Heights front was quiet. A Syrian MIG‐21 jet tried to penetrate Israeli airspace but turned tail when an Israeli warplane was sent to intercept, the sources said. They added that all Israeli aircraft returned safely from their missions around Mount Hermon, which has been the center of bitter ground and air fighting for more than a week. The 9,200‐foot mountain, its bleak peaks capped with snow, commands a dominant position over the front, providing views deep into Syria, Lebanon and Israel. Before the strikes, Israeli planes could be seen flying high‐level patrols above the summit, where Israeli soldiers remained on watch over the occasional exchanges of artillery fire. The troops took advantage of a lull following the intensive bombardments of Friday to clean up their positions and equipment and eat their first hot meals in days.
A Syrian military spokesman said that fighting on the Golan Heights, which went on throughout last night in the strategic Mount Hermon sector, extended this morning to other sectors. The spokesman said today that artillery and tank fighting was continuing this afternoon in various sectors of the front. “Our artillery is concentrating its fire on enemy positions and engineering equipment in three areas,” he said. Syria claimed her troops inflicted heavy losses on the Israelis in yesterday’s fighting, including a number of soldiers, killed or wounded, the destruction of several tanks and other vehicles and a direct hit on an observation post on Mount Hermon.
The Central Committee of Israel’s dominant Labor party cleared the way for the selection of a candidate to succeed Premier Golda Meir, who resigned April 11. After four hours of raucous debate, the committee defeated proposals for immediate new elections and voted by a 2-to-1 margin to authorize a candidate to attempt to form a new coalition government.
Taisir al-Arouri, a Palestinian professor of mathematics at Birzeit University on the West Bank, was arrested by Israeli police. He would be detained, without any charges brought against him, for the night on 21 April 1974 and released on January 18, 1978, after Amnesty International’s bringing of his case to worldwide attention.
Egypt decided to cease relying on the Soviet Union for all her modern arms because Moscow had used the supply of weapons and ammunition as an “instrument of policy leverage,” seeking to influence Egyptian actions. The Soviet policy was unacceptable, President Anwar Sadat said in an interview at his home in Cairo.
The Soviet press gave hints yesterday of Moscow’s irritation with Egypt by criticizing United States participation in clearing of Suez Canal and by stressing Soviet support of Syria.
Egyptian policemen investigating an armed attack on a military technical academy here before dawn Thursday have uncovered an underground organization of religious fanatics whose aim it was to overthrow the moderate governments of Egypt and several other Arab countries, the Government-controlled press reported in Cairo today. The newspapers, echoing earlier official statements, made it plain that Egypt holds both Libya and Iraq responsible for the attack in which 11 persons were killed and 27 wounded, according to the government. Tonight, the state prosecutor’s office clamped a news blackout on the affair, which means that the government-controlled newspapers will carry no further stories on the subject.
Senator Edward Kennedy tried out American-style public opinion polling on an audience at Moscow State University and drew some hostility when he asked for a show of hands on whether the Soviet Union should be spending more or less on defense. All but a few in the audience declined to indicate an opinion until Mr. Kennedy and a Russian translator rephrased the question. Then the hall almost unanimously raised their hands in favor of the present level of defense spending.
Iraqi President Ahmed Hassan Bakr made a fresh bid to overcome the Kurdish rebellion by appointing a well-known Kurd as a vice president. He is Taha Moheiddin Maarouf, who twice held ministerial posts and until recently was Iraq’s ambassador to Rome. He is said to side strongly with Bakr in his struggle with the powerful Kurdish leader Mulla Mustafa Barzani. Bakr had granted autonomy to the Kurds in the north but their insistence on undivided control of the region has sparked clashes between the two sides.
Norway’s four left-wing parties, including the Communists, decided to dissolve themselves and form a new Radical Party that will challenge Prime Minister Trygve Bratteli’s Social Democratic Party at the next general elections. The move was believed to be the first case of any West European Communist Party deciding to discontinue its activities and join other groupings to the left. The action ending the Socialist People’s Party, the Independent Laborites and Independent Socialists as well as the Communists is to be completed in 1976.
Four top military officers were among 734 Pakistani prisoners of war repatriated to Pakistan by India. With this group, 84,320 Pakistani POWs held in India since the 1971 Indo-Pakistani war have been released.
Two South Vietnamese Government infantry battalions trying to relieve a surrounded ranger base near the Cambodian border were stopped yesterday by strong Communist resistance, military sources said today. A 1,000‐man column of the 25th Infantry Division, making the second attempt in a week to relieve the Đức Huệ ranger camp, 35 miles northwest of Saigon, ran into a heavy artillery barrage followed by ground attacks, the sources said. The Saigon command reported 39 men wounded and 20 missing. Communist losses were not reported.
Prospects are good for the farm crop of the People’s Republic of China this season, according to a publication of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. A good crop could mean a sharp cutback in China’s imports of grains and other products from the United States, it said.
The returns in Colombia’s first free presidential election in more than two decades gave the Liberal candidate, Alfonso López Michelsen, a 60-year-old law professor, a victory. The election marked the end of the constitutional pact under which Liberals and Conservatives had alternated the presidency since 1958. In the first multiparty elections since 1958 in the South American nation of Colombia, Liberal Party candidate Alfonso López Michelsen, whose father Alfonso López Pumarejo had been president twice (1934 — 1938 and 1942 — 1946), won 56% of the vote. Each of the three major candidates had had a father who had been a president, with the Conservative Party’s Álvaro Gómez Hurtado (son of Laureano Gómez, president 1950 — 1953) receiving 31% of the vote, and María Eugenia Rojas Correa (daughter of Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, president 1953 — 1957) of ANAPO receiving less than 10%.
A powerful bomb damaged offices of the leftist newspaper El Mundo in Buenos Aires, injuring a watchman, federal police said. Earlier, another bomb exploded outside the shop where El Mundo was printed. Argentine President Juan D. Perón had closed the newspaper in mid-March, claiming it was a mouthpiece for a subversive group. But a local court ruled last week that the newspaper could again be printed, although the government appealed the ruling.
Argentine parliamentary sources in Buenos Aires say a full investigation is being demanded into charges that a U.S. diplomat is a Central Intelligence Agency man. Alfred Laun, director of the U.S. Information Service in Cordoba, was kidnaped 10 days ago by Marxist guerrillas who removed powerful radio equipment from his home. Laun was later released and is being treated in Panama for a bullet wound in the stomach.
General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, president of Chile’s military government, claims there are 14,000 leftist extremists just across Chile’s border planning terrorist attacks. Pinochet did not say in what country the extremists allegedly were gathering, but articles in Santiago said he was referring to Argentina.
Spring thaws and ice jams sent rampaging rivers over sandbagged banks and dikes in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, forcing continued evacuations and causing widespread damage. No casualties were reported, although the floods have been termed the area’s worst in over half a century. In Manitoba, an airlift began to evacuate more than 700 Indians from the Fisher Branch Reservation and the Peguis Reservation, both flooded by the Fisher River.
Economic instability and increasing pressure from Democratic leaders for a tax cut will add to the problems President Nixon will face when Congress returns from the Easter recess on Tuesday. Following reports of the highest rate of inflation since 1951 and a decline in the gross national product, Senator Hubert Humphrey joined other influential Senate Democrats in proposing a tax reduction.
For millions of Americans, the ending of more than 32 months of wage and price controls next week is expected to bring another spasm of price increases that will further erode their already shrunken paychecks. Although controls already have been lifted from much of the economy in anticipation of the program’s probable conclusion on April 30, a number of items are still under government control.
Groundwork is being laid for realistic testing of the hypothesis that substantial amounts of energy can be derived, at low cost and with no pollution, from temperature differences within the oceans. Two conceptual designs for oceanic power plants are in preparation on an academic level, and the National Science Foundation, which is financing these studies, is offering $1.8 million for further development.
A few embarrassed encounters with former aides of President Nixon, averted glances from long-time friends and no offers of work have marked the days of Donald Segretti, one of the first Nixon aides indicted in the Watergate case, since his release from a federal prison on March 25. The 32-year-old lawyer was named as one of 50 “undercover Nixon operatives” employed by the White House and the Committee for the Re-election of the President to spy on and disrupt the primary campaigns of Democratic presidential candidates.
A “growing barrage” of challenges to First Amendment guarantees of press freedom and “ever-lengthening tentacles of government encroachment” on business were decried by the American Newspaper Publishers Association, whose annual meeting began in New York City. An association report on labor conditions said that the end of wage controls would make the newspaper industry’s cost struggle “much more difficult in 1974,” but that an “increasing flood of new technology” should help despite “a rush of conflicting jurisdictional claims” by unions.
In the county jails of New Jersey, difficult prisoners are stripped naked and thrust into pitch-black cells, others are shackled or isolated and given only milk and tea, according to the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. In a suit filed last week, the union said, among other things, that the jails were overcrowded and vermin-ridden, that medical care was “grossly inadequate,” and that many of the jails resembled “little fiefdoms” presided over by warlord-like wardens or sheriffs.
More than 14,000 tons of garbage now cover Cleveland’s sidewalks and lawns as a week-long strike of truck drivers continued. The garbage was a potential health hazard as temperatures climbed near the 80-degree mark. City representatives and striking Teamsters and 12 other unions whose contracts were being renegotiated were scheduled to resume talks today before Judge John J. McMahon, who already has fined the Teamsters $12,000 for not obeying a back-to-work order he issued last week. The Teamsters have lowered their original demand for a 60-cent hourly raise to 45 cents and would accept some layoffs, but the other unions have refused.
John C. Sawhill, newly appointed administrator of the Federal Energy Office, said he expected the price of gasoline at the pump to increase 3 to 5 cents a gallon when price controls were removed. His office, he told a meeting of the National Oil Jobbers Council in Orlando, Florida, would announce plans to remove the controls “in the next few weeks. We’ve got to let prices continue to provide incentives and ration demands,” he said.
Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wisconsin) accused the Navy of “hiding at least $2.8 billion” that would boost the cost of the new Trident submarine and related missile development to at least $15.2 billion. The Navy denied cost hiding. It said the biggest item — $1.53 billion for fitting Trident missiles onto existing Poseidon submarines — had been charged against the Poseidon rather than the Trident program. Navy efforts to speed Trident submarine construction have been rejected by the House on advice that the option to go to some less expensive program should be kept open.
Winnebago County, Wisconsin, authorities said they had issued murder warrants against two Michigan prison escapees in connection with the death of a 33-year-old mother of five. Charlene Beaudin of Marquette, Michigan, was shot to death near Oshkosh as she tried to flee from two men who had forced her and a young man to drive about 200 miles from upper Michigan. The youth, William R. Klingenmaier, 21, of Carney, Michigan, managed to escape when Mrs. Beaudin was shot. Named in the warrants were Gordon L. Stokenaucer, 26, of Lansing, and Joseph A. Molonare, 29, of Jackson, Michigan. They had escaped Saturday from a prison farm at Marquette, about 1½ miles from the restaurant where Mrs. Beaudin worked.
Three black mayors from different states have endorsed a black Democrat, Tennessee state Rep. Harold Ford, 29, of Memphis, who is seeking the 8th Congressional District seat held by Republican Dan Kuykendall of Memphis. Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley said in Memphis that he had come to the city to support Ford because city problems required solutions from Washington. He was joined by Mayors Jay Cooper of Prichard, Alabama, and David Hume of Hayti Heights, Missouri. They spoke at a banquet attended by 2,000 persons
An F4 tornado trekked for 26 miles northwest of Fondu Lac, Wisconsin. Numerous farmsteads were impacted before the vortex arrived in the city of Oshkosh. Over 400 homes were damaged or destroyed, several of which were leveled in a “near-F5” fashion per Grazulis.
28th Tony Awards: “The River Niger” (play) & “Raisin” (musical) win.
Neil Simon’s play “The Sunshine Boys” directed by Alan Arkin, closes at Lunt-Fontanne Theater, NYC, after for 538 performances and 2 Tony Award wins.
“That Championship Season,” the Tony Award-winning play by Jason Miller, closed on Broadway after exactly 700 performances. It began its run at the Booth Theatre on September 14, 1972.
“Julie and Dick in Covent Garden”, a music and comedy special starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke, with Carl Reiner, premieres on ABC-TV
Professional soccer football competition in Austria was reorganized with the founding of Österreichische Fussball-Bundesliga, composed of the top 10 clubs in the former Bundesliga in the First Division, and a 10-team second division. Each team played each of the nine others four times for a 36-match season, with the two with the worst record to be relegated to the second division and the top two of the second division being promoted.
Dave Concepcion hits a grand slam as the Reds score 7 runs in the bottom of the 1st on their way to a 10-1 victory over the Padres in the 1st of two. Tony Perez adds a pair of doubles and a homer for the Reds. San Diego rebounds for a 7-2 win in game 2.
Born:
Oleksiy Zhuravko, Ukrainian member of parliament from 2006 to 2012, who later became a Russian citizen and politician and joined in Russia’s 2022 war against Ukraine; in Zhovti Vody, Ukrainian SSR (killed in missile attack, 2022)
Michael Leonhart, American jazz and session trumpeter (Steely Dan; Yoko Ono; Rufus Wainwright), born in New York, New York.
Jennifer Blanc [born Jennifer Tara; now Jennifer Blanc-Biehn], American actress (“The Victim”, “Dark Angel”), in New York, New York.
Brice Hunter, NFL wide receiver (Tampa Bay Buccaneers), in Coconut Creek, Florida (d. 2004, shot and murdered in Chicago).
Cliff Brumbaugh, MLB right fielder (Texas Rangers, Colorado Rockies), in Wilmington, Delaware.
Craig Joiner, Scottish rugby union player with 25 caps for the Scotland national team; in Glasgow.
Died:
Charles “Chic” Harley, 79, College football (Ohio State) and NFL (Chicago Staleys) wingback and halfback.
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