Secretary of State Kissinger arrived in Tel Aviv in order to begin the second round of his Middle East shuttle diplomacy with expectations that Syria and Israel would soon curb their military activity on the Golan Heights. He is seeking to conclude a troop separation agreement between the two countries. Then, under conditions of heavy security, he was driven to Jerusalem for talks with Premier Golda Meir and other Israeli officials.
Seven children were killed and 29 others were wounded when a barrage of mortar shells tore through án elementary school during classes in the Mekong Delta settlement of Song Phú, local school officials reported. Three adults also were reported injured when eight shells hit the school, 68 miles southwest of Saigon. The Saigon command blamed the Việt Cộng for the attack, and said the shells were from an 88mm mortar, used only by the Communists.
Cambodian insurgents kept up the shelling of besieged Longvek camp today, forcing Government troops to give up more ground, the Cambodian command said. The shelling caused heavy casualties among 25,000 refugees inside the camp. “The Longvek situation does not look good; I think it will fall,” a European diplomat said. The garrison 25 miles north of Phnom Penh has been under siege for five weeks. The refugees and 4,000 soldiers were surrounded and becoming critically short of food and water, although United States and Cambodian Planes were parachuting supplies to the camp. Government sources said that they did not think the former vehicle repair station and recruit training facility could be reinforced or evacuated. Phsar Oudong, the 17th century royal capital 23 miles north of the capital, fell March 18. Since then, rebels have overrun a beachhead on the Tonle Sap River and Government forces abandoned the town of Sala Lek Pram, five miles north of Phsar Oudong. Crowds fleeing from the advancing insurgents swarmed into Longvek.
In other fighting, clashes were reported yesterday, around the town of Prey Veng 28 miles east of Phnom Penh, the military command reported. The government sent about 1,000 troops to the area to counter a reported rebel build-up. In Kampot, 85 miles from Phnom Penh, government troops continued to expand their perimeter around the town, the command said. Intelligence reports said rebel forces, after a two-month siege of Kampot, were withdrawing to the west and attacking Veal Renh on Route 4. Meanwhile, on Cambodia’s eastern border with South Vietnam large numbers of North Vietnamese forces were reported on the move in their base areas, Cambodian intelligence sources said.
A South Korean reporter was arrested and four other newsmen were questioned by police for their coverage of an $18.5 million national bank loan scandal. The arrested reporter was identified as Lee Won Dal of the influential Seoul newspaper Joongang Ilbo. He had written that a former national assemblyman was likely to be arrested in connection with the scandal.
Socialist lawmaker Madhu Dandavate told India’s lower house of Parliament that George Fernandes, jailed leader of rail workers, has asked Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to intervene to avert a nationwide rail strike scheduled Wednesday. No settlement appeared imminent in the dispute that threatens to halt food shipments and upset the nation’s already shaky economy.
Portugal’s military junta, struggling against a growing trend toward economic and political anarchy, warned that “mini revolutions” by workers could hinder economic development. The coup that overthrew the dictatorship that had been entrenched for almost half a century has led to a clear breakdown of authority as hundreds of thousands of Portuguese have rushed to assert their suddenly won freedoms. Both the junta and the business community are showing signs of alarm at losing political and economic control.
A final opinion poll published in France on the eve of the presidential election gave a strong lead to Francois Mitterrand, the candidate of the Socialist-Communist alliance. With the poll giving him 45 percent of the vote, Mr. Mitterrand did not appear to have enough to avoid a runoff contest with Finance Minister Valery Giscard d’Estaing, the candidate of the Independent Republicans. Mr. Giscard, with 30 percent, slipped back a point from last week’s poll, but he kept his overwhelming lead over the third major candidate, Jacques Chaban-Delmas, a Gaullist.
The United States and the Soviet Union have been discussing a new treaty that would limit the underground testing of nuclear weapons, according to State Department spokesman Paul Hare. Sources outside the department said the talks had begun because of a growing fear that atomic weapons might spread to other countries if the two superpowers don’t scale down their testing.
Thousands of police, using helicopters, motorboats and dogs, swept through northern Italy in a surprise anticrime dragnet and arrested 502 persons. Police searched hundreds of homes and stopped thousands of people, authorities said. Seized were 970 stolen motor vehicles, $1.5 million in stolen goods, about 400 pounds of explosives and 700 guns, pistols and hand grenades.
The Greek government announced the arrest of 36 persons, mostly students, and accused them of being members of Communist organizations. A communique said another 14 persons were being sought. Those arrested included three women.
The Vatican said that reports that Pope Paul VI was seriously ill were completely false. The denial was the second in two days from the Vatican. The Pontiff, 76, who suffers from a chronic arthritic condition, was bedridden with influenza in March and suffered a relapse. On doctors’ advice, he canceled several Holy Week appearances last month.
Three gunmen kidnapped the head of the Paris branch of the Bank of Bilbao, Angel Bernardo Balthazar Suarez, French police reported. There was speculation that Spanish or Basque extremists could be behind the kidnapping. Bilbao is in the heart of Spanish Basque country, where there is a militant movement for autonomy.
Nineteen paintings, valued at $19.2 million, that were stolen from the home of Sir Alfred Beit near Dublin eight days ago were recovered undamaged by the Irish police in a cottage outside Glamdore, a fishing port and resort 50 miles from Cork.
An all-female Japanese team reached the top of the Himalayan mountain Manaslu in Nepal, becoming the first women to climb an 8,000 m (26,000 ft) peak.
Five men died in an explosion at a dynamite factory in Burbach, North Rhine-Westphalia in West Germany. The employees of Dynamit-Novel AG in Burbach-Wuergendorf had been inside a concrete shelter and were operating a machine used for mixing gunpowder.
The New Mangalore Port, now the seventh largest in India, was opened in the Karnataka state.
The White House, stepping up its campaign to discredit John Dean, made public a 32-page memorandum charging the President’s former counsel with “misstatements” in his testimony before the Senate Watergate committee. The memorandum, which had been circulated privately, maintains that transcripts of White House conversations released last week demonstrate that Mr. Dean did not tell the Senate committee the truth last year about several of his talks with Mr. Nixon.
President Nixon’s televised appeal on Watergate last Monday night left 42 percent of the people who watched it or read about it with a less favorable opinion of the President, and only 17 percent with a more favorable opinion, the Gallup poll reported. A telephone survey of nearly 700 adults found that those interviewed believed by a narrow 44 percent to 41 percent margin, there is now enough evidence against the President to vote impeachment and thus produce a trial in the Senate.
William Randolph Hearst Jr. says„ that the transcripts of Presidential conversations released this week “add up to as damning a document as it is possible to imagine short of an actual indictment.” The editor of the Hearst newspapers said the conversations reveal President Nixon as a man “with a moral blind spot” and make his impeachment inevitable. Mr. Hearst, formerly an ardent supporter of the President, made the comments in an editorial in his Sunday column for Hearst‐owned newspapers in seven cities. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer carried the column on the front page of its early Sunday edition, published last night. “The gang talking on the tapes, even the censored version, comes through in just that way — a gang of racketeers talking over strategy in a jam‐up situation,” Mr. Hearst wrote. He said the transcripts “reveal a man totally absorbed in the cheapest and sleaziest kind of conniving to preserve appearance and almost totally unconcerned with ethics.”
In Spokane, Washington, President Nixon opened Expo ’74, a world’s fair dedicated to the environment, with an appeal for international cooperation to achieve world peace and “a fresh new environment” for all nations. There were a few boos mixed with cheers when the President made his appearance before more than 50,000 persons, but in general he was warmly, if not tumultuously, received in Spokane, a conservative, usually Republican and pro-Nixon city.
President Nixon decided against any further reduction of Lieutenant William Calley’s 10-year sentence for the massacre of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai. The Army released a memorandum from Mr. Nixon in which he said that he had decided “that no further action by me in this case is necessary or appropriate.” At the same time, the Secretary of the Army ordered Lieutenant Calley dismissed from the Army.
The nation’s economy is in recession but should pick up by the third or fourth quarter of 1974, according to 7 out of 10 business economists surveyed by the National Association of Business Economists. A big majority of the 374 polled said also that inflation would be the nation’s No. 1 economic problem over the next five years, with a large number predicting annual inflation rates of 4% to 6%. A compilation of individual forecasts put the possible unemployment rate as high as 6%.
Ceremonies on the Kent State University commons drew 5,000 persons to mark the May 4, 1970, shooting deaths of four students there during an anti-war demonstration. One of the speakers was Dean Kahler, one of nine students wounded by Ohio national guardsmen in the incident. He charged that “the federal grand jury in Cleveland indicted only the triggermen” and urged that charges be filed against former Ohio Governor James A. Rhodes, President Nixon and other officials. Eight former Ohio national guardsmen have been indicted in the shootings. Speakers at a later rally included Daniel Ellsberg, Julian Bond, and Jane Fonda.
A former fundraiser for Senator Edward J. Gurney (R-Florida) collected $150,000 in secret contributions for up to 10 months after Gurney said he had ordered the activity stopped, the Miami Herald says it has learned. The newspaper quoted unidentified sources as saying the contributions were from builders seeking influence with the Federal Housing Administration. The report said the contributions continued although fundraiser Larry Williams, 29, of Orlando, had warned Gurney of possible violations of the law. Gurney refused to comment on the Herald story.
Publishers of the Washington Post and Star said an alleged slowdown by printers — without a contract since September 30 — had reached “intolerable proportions.” Saturday’s first edition of the Post came off the presses three hours late, and management said some news and advertising had had to be curtailed. In a telegram to the Columbia Typographical Union No. 101, the publishers told the union to take steps “to ensure that employees properly perform the duties… required of them.” Printers have bitterly opposed the planned introduction of automated typesetting equipment.
The Council of Presidents of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod decided in St. Louis to give pastoral assignments to all seminary graduates, including those attending Semimex, a so-called seminary-in-exile. Members of the graduating class of Seminex will be issued diplomas in theology by logy by Concordia Seminary. Seminex students attended Concordia until January, when they and many faculty members walked out and started the new school as a protest against the ouster of Dr. John Tietjen as seminary president by Dr. J.A.O. Preus, synod president. The compromise agreement provides that if the Concordia faculty challenges the right of any Seminex student to receive a diploma, the issue will be turned over to a special committee.
In an effort to improve its weather forecasting accuracy, the National Weather Service is about to launch its first stationary weather satellites. They will take pictures both day and night, of clouds over the United States.
The satellites will be linked to two new giant computers that will assimilate the data and it is hoped, predict whether it will rain or shine in Los Angeles, Peoria, New York and everywhere else.
With these innovations, the service will be able to process six times as much information at it does now for its weather forecasts. It will also have enough satellite pictures to make movies of weather patterns over the United States as they form and move.
In Manhattan, a crowd of 1,000 rallied on Christopher Street to urge the New York City Council to pass a bill recognizing equal rights for gay and lesbian people.
Cannonade, ridden by jockey Ángel Cordero Jr., won the 1974 Kentucky Derby, the 100th running of the event, at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky.
The Scottish Cup, Scotland’s knockout tournament of soccer football, was won by Celtic F.C. of Glasgow, 3 to 0 over Dundee United F.C. before 75,959 spectators at Glasgow’s Hampden Park. During the regular season of the Scottish Football League, Celtic had finished in first place (23 wins, 7 draws, 4 losses) and Dundee in fifth place (16-7-11).
The Twins trade pitcher Dick Woodson to the Yankees for Mike Pazik. Woodson’s #13 Twins uniform will go unclaimed.
Born:
Miguel Cairo, Venezuelan MLB second baseman, third baseman, and first baseman (Toronto Blue Jays, Chicago Cubs, Tampa Bay Devil Rays, St. Louis Blues, New York Yankees, New York Mets, Seattle Mariners, Philadelphia Phillies, Cincinnati Reds), in Anaco, Venezuela.
Jamie Reader, NFL fullback (Philadelphia Eagles), in Washington, District of Columbia.
Died:
Maurice Ewing, 77, American geophysicist and oceanographer, discoverer of the SOFAR channel (deep sound channel) within the ocean.
History Diaries 