Willy Brandt, the Chancellor of West Germany, presented his resignation to President Gustav Heinemann after his personal assistant, Günter Guillaume, had been discovered to be a spy for East Germany. Chancellor Willy Brandt of West Germany, taking responsibility for “negligence” that allowed an East German Communist spy to become a member of his staff, took the unexpected step of tendering his resignation to President Gustav Heinemann. He asked that Foreign Minister Walter Scheel be named to fill his place until Parliament elects a successor, A spokesman for Dr. Heinemann said that the President had accepted Mr. Brandt’s letter of resignation without insisting that he remain in office. This means that Mr. Scheel will automatically become Chancellor tomorrow.
Portugal’s General Francisco Costa da Gomes offered a cease-fire in its ongoing war against independence movements in the African colonies of Angola, Mozambique and Portuguese Guinea, conditioned on the rebels’ acceptance of a plan of democracy and protection of the white European residents of the colonies. Portugal’s ruling military junta appealed for a cease-fire in her African territories. General Francisco da Costa Gomes, a member of the junta and chief of the joint defense staff, promised that guerrilla forces opposing Portugal would be able to participate in free political activity leading to a referendum on the territories’ future. The general spoke at a news conference in Lisbon shortly after his return from Angola, the largest and richest of the three Portuguese possessions. He had asked the rebels there yesterday to lay down their arms end today he said that Portugal was asking for a cease‐fire in Mozambique and Portuguese Guinea as well. General Costa Gomes thus indicated clearly that Portugal was not now prepared to hand over the territories to the rebels. He played down the influence of the insurgents, saying it did not extend over much territory, and emphasized the process of free debate, which he said the junta was trying to establish in Portuguese life.
The Partido Social Democrata (PSD) was founded in Portugal by Francisco Sá Carneiro, Francisco Pinto Balsemão and Joaquim Magalhães Mota, liberal members of the Assembleia Nacional. From 1934 to 1974, the only legal political party had been the União Nacional and elections were limited to the top 130 finishers in voting for a list of party candidates. Originally called the Partido Popular Democrático, the PSD was formed two weeks after democracy was restored in Portugal after the Carnation Revolution.
A prosecutor told the Old Bailey Court in London that Allison Thompson of Santa Barbara, California, flew to London with guns and ammunition last December 29 in a plot to kidnap a high-ranking French government official as hostage for 30 Moroccan political prisoners. The charges opened the case against the 18-year-old Miss Thompson, who pleaded innocent along with a Moroccan and a Pakistani to the conspiracy charges.
Soviet dissident Pyotr G. Grigorenko, a former army general, recently has suffered three heart attacks but authorities have ignored appeals for his release from a mental hospital, his wife said. Zinaida Grigorenko told Western newsmen that three doctors at the hospital near Moscow recommended that he be freed. Grigorenko, 67, once the leader of Moscow’s dissident community, has been in mental hospitals since his arrest in 1969 although medical commissions twice last year found him sane.
The Soviet Union and Britain signed their first 10-year agreement on economic, scientific, technical and industrial cooperation. The agreement, signed in London, is similar to the long-term trade pacts Britain signed last year with Poland and East Germany. Britain last year exported about $233 million worth of goods to the Soviet Union and imported about $894 million worth from the Russians.
Cabin crews of British Airways’ overseas division went on strike and the airline canceled all transatlantic and other long-distance flights. About 3,000 male and female stewards voted overwhelmingly to stop work in a bid for higher pay and shorter working hours.
The U.S. State Department said it was disappointed in the Greek government’s decision to deport two Palestinian terrorists convicted in the massacre of several people last August at the Athens airport. A department spokesman said, “We continue to believe that the most effective way to counter terrorists is the apprehension and punishment of the perpetrators.”
In Iceland, the coalition government of Prime Minister Ólafur Jóhannesson collapsed. Jóhannesson did not resign immediately, but elections were scheduled for June 30 for the Althing, Iceland’s parliament.
Johannes Vermeer’s painting The Guitar Player, stolen from London on February 23, was recovered by Scotland Yard after a caller said that it could be found in the cemetery adjacent to the St Bartholomew-the-Great church at Smithfield, London. The painting, more than 300 years old, was relatively undamaged except for some dampness.
The United States and the Soviet Union announced unexpectedly that Secretary of State Kissinger would fly from Israel tomorrow to confer in Cyprus with the Soviet Foreign Minister, Andrei Gromyko, who has been in Syria, on the Middle East and overall Soviet-American relations.
The U.S. Senate, voting 43 to 38, rejected an administration request for $266 million in additional military aid for South Vietnam. Senator Edward Kennedy led the Democratic-sponsored attack, which resulted in a serious setback to the administration’s foreign policy.
Communist Vietnamese forces overran a 40‐man militia post guarding a hamlet on the South China Sea Coast, 340 miles north of Saigon, and took over the hamlet after short fight, the Saigon military command said today. The hamlet of about 1,200 inhabitants is seven miles south of Tam Kỳ, provincial capital, the command said. It said the attack started yesterday afternoon and radio contact lost soon afterward.
The Việt Cộng denied today that their forces shelled school in the Mekong Delta Saturday. They contended that the school was in the heart of a government‐controlled area, far from any Communist units. The shelling, which the government charged was caused by eight Chinese‐made 82‐mm. rockets killed eight children and wounded 31. It was the second school in the last two months to come under attack. The Việt Cộng statement was not given directly to newsmen, but was issued through an intermediary. Newsmen’s direct access to the Communists has been cut off by the South Vietnamese Government, which has discontinued telephone service to the delegation and put an end to the Việt Cộng’s weekly news conferences. In their statement the Communist representatives contended that the government was using the incident at the school as an excuse to deepen the isolation of the delegation, which is housed in an armed camp within Tân Sơn Nhứt Air Base at the edge of Saigon.
Cambodian Government troops recaptured an isolated army training center yesterday at Peam Lovek, 21 miles northwest of Phnom Penh, in a sharp clash with Communist forces, the Cambodian command said today.
Insurgents in southern Thailand have forced the closure of numerous tin mines and many more are facing total shutdown unless they pay huge sums of protection money, the president of the Thai Mining Assn., Vija Sethabutr, told the Bangkok Post. Thailand last year exported 21,350 tons of tin, bringing in $83 million in foreign exchange.
Brazil’s justice minister has ordered the deportation of Ronald Biggs, one of the bandits in Britain’s $7 million train robbery of 1963. The order said the action was taken in place of extradition because Britain and Brazil have no extradition treaty. Biggs, who was taken into custody February 2, was given 30 days to arrange his departure. He was jailed in England in 1964 but escaped in 1965. He is the last of nine robbers to be sought.
Jamaican soldiers set a taxiing plane afire with a fusillade of bullets and seriously wounded its American pilot, suspected of trying to smuggle marijuana from the island. Karl W. Hawkins, 32 of Columbia, South Carolina, and a young woman companion, Sandra Vann, also of Columbia, were pulled from the twin-engine plane after the aborted takeoff early Sunday morning. U.S. authorities were told that “a large amount of money” and a loaded pistol were recovered from Hawkins.
The Senate Watergate committee asked a federal appeals court to order President Nixon to turn over tapes of which transcripts were prepared, citing deletions and inaudible passages in the edited versions. The committee motion cited two conversations. It said on September 15, 1972, both White House counsel J. Fred Buzhardt and former White House counsel John W. Dean III said Dean told Mr. Nixon about an Internal Revenue Service investigation, but the edited transcript does not show this. And there were numerous deletions from edited transcripts of a February 28, 1973, tape, it said. The Senate panel pointed out that special prosecutor Leon Jaworski and the House Judiciary Committee have received the tape of this conversation.
President Nixon backed down from his opposition to the Watergate special prosecutor’s subpoena for tapes and records of 64 White House conversations. He indicated through his lawyers he was willing to reach an “accommodation” with the prosecution. And, also through his lawyers, he won a five-day delay in the legal proceedings over the subpoena that had been shaping up as another major battle in the courts.
Members of the House Judiciary Committee warned that they would be forced to serve a second subpoena on President Nixon if he refused to comply with an April 19 request for tape recordings of 141 more White House conversations sought for the impeachment inquiry. The determination of both Republicans and Democrats on the committee to pursue the request append to be directly related to their study of the edited tape transcripts released by the White House last week.
Herbert Kalmbach, former campaign fundraiser and personal lawyer for President Nixon, has testified of a midnight meeting at which he said a top dairy cooperative official was told that milk prices would be increased and that the White House wanted confirmation of a $2 million campaign pledge, sources said.
The Lehigh Valley Cooperative Farmers of Allentown, Pennsylvania, which represents about 950 milk producers in eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland, was fined $5,000 in Federal District Court. in Washington after pleading guilty to allegations that it illegally gave $50,000 to President Nixon’s re-election campaign.
Exposures of questionable contributions to President Nixon’s re-election campaign and of his relatively small income-tax payments won Pulitzer Prizes for national reporting in the 58th annual announcement of the awards.
Detective Robert Leuci, the police-corruption witness being fought over by federal and state prosecutors, set off the battle by providing new information linking organized crime figures to narcotics cases, United States Attorney Paul Curran disclosed today. This strengthened indications that Mr. Leuci was involved in current investigations dating from the so-called French Connection case.
Ted Bundy victim Roberta Parks disappears from OSU, Corvallis, Oregon. Roberta Kathleen Parks left her dormitory at Oregon State University in Corvallis, 85 miles (135 km) south of Portland, to have coffee with friends at the Memorial Union, but never arrived. A friend, Cherrell Smith, who spotted Parks coming out of her room shortly before 11 PM, learned the latter was about to grab her usual late dinner at the cafeteria. Her skull was excavated with the others on Taylor Mountain, far away from her Oregon dorm. Bundy confessed to her murder before his execution.
Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, one of the nation’s most powerful big city political leaders, was taken to a hospital suffering from a blood condition that causes fatigue, officials said. His condition was not believed to be serious and he was reported to be resting comfortably. Daley was in his City Hall office when he complained he did not feel well. A hospital spokesman said the ailment was diagnosed as hypoglycemia, a deficiency of sugar in the blood. Daley, 71, recently celebrated the start of his 20th year as mayor. He was expected by most observers to seek an unprecedented sixth term in 1975. For more than two decades Daley has been the major political figure in Illinois and rarely challenged as leader of the state’s Democratic Party.
The Veterans Administration is preparing new procedures to expedite payment of educational benefits to veterans, said Senator Charles McC. Mathias Jr. (R-Maryland), the senior minority member of the appropriations subcommittee dealing with veterans’ affairs. Mathias said the new plans would include assignment of a full-time VA representative to every college where at least 500 veterans were enrolled, and visiting agents for campuses with smaller numbers of veterans.
A federal judge took under advisement a ruling on whether William L. Calley Jr., now a civilian, should remain free on bond. But Judge J. Robert Elliott indicated strongly that he would continue it, saying that he found ample legal precedence for such action. Elliott also named June 24 as a date for a hearing in Columbus, Georgia, on the merits of Calley’s petition, which challenged his conviction for murders of 22 Vietnamese civilians at Mỹ Lai. Calley, 30, was given a dishonorable discharge from the Army last Saturday, soon after President Nixon decided to uphold his twice-reduced sentence to 10 years imprisonment.
A shouting confrontation erupted in Atlanta between ousted Police Chief John Inman and Clinton Chafin, the acting chief appointed by Mayor Maynard Jackson. “I am in control of the police chief’s office,” declared Chafin, who added that Inman was suspended. Inman was fired by Mayor Jackson after he filed suit to block Jackson’s efforts to name a director of the police, fire and civil defense departments. The new director would supervise the police chief. Inman’s dismissal, Jackson said, was effective May 24.
Actress Maggie Smith (39) divorces actor Robert Stephens (42) after 6 years of marriage.
American composer Roger Sessions receives special Pulitzer Prize for his life’s work in music.
World Team Tennis (WTT), a new format in tennis with players on franchised teams in North American cities, played its very first match, debuting before a crowd of 10,611 people inside the Philadelphia Spectrum indoor arena, as the Philadelphia Freedoms, featuring league founder Billie Jean King, defeated the Pittsburgh Triangles, 31 to 25.
Oakland A’s pitcher Paul Lindblad makes an errant throw in the first inning of a 6–3 loss to Baltimore. This ends Lindblad’s Major League-record streak of 385 consecutive errorless games, dating back to August 27, 1966. Lee Smith will later top Lindblad’s mark in the National League.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 844.88 (-1.02, -0.12%).
Born:
Birkir Hólm Guðnason, Icelandic business executive, CEO of Icelandair, the flag carrier airline in Iceland, from 2008–2017, in Akureyri, Iceland.
Died:
Vera Gilbride Davis, 79, described as the Grand Dame of Delaware Politics.
Walter C. Lowdermilk, 85, American soil conservationist who worked internationally on reclamation of farm lands in Belgium and in Israel to alleviate famine.
Robert Maestri, 74, former Mayor of New Orleans and campaign manager for Huey Long.
Ángel Sagaz Zubelzu, 61, Ambassador of Spain to the United States, died of bladder cancer.
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