Communist forces unleashed a 300-round mortar barrage on the South Vietnam provincial capital of Tam Kỳ, 340 miles northeast of Saigon, killing a civilian and wounding four persons. The town had been under attack for three days. In Cambodia, rebels wounded five government soldiers in continued shelling of a surrounded government outpost at Long Vek, 21 miles northwest of Phnom Penh.
The White House announced its deep disappointment over Senate rejection of a $266 million increase in military aid to South Vietnam, saying it feared the action could cause a loss of faith among U.S. allies. Gerald L. Warren, the President’s deputy press secretary, said the extra funds were needed to balance out North Viet infiltration since the 1973 cease-fire.
Senate investigators said they had found a $490 million item in the proposed defense budget that appeared to be a secret fund to channel unauthorized military aid to South Vietnam. Foreign Relations Committee investigators said the funds were earmarked for “war reserve materials,” but the budget did not indicate the money was intended for war reserve equipment and munitions for South Vietnam, Thailand and Korea -and apparently could be divided any way the Pentagon might wish. Senator J. William Fulbright (D-Arkansas), committee chairman, accused the Pentagon of hiding the money.
West Germany’s President Gustav Heinemann accepted the resignation, made the day before, of Chancellor Willy Brandt and temporarily appointed Vice Chancellor Walter Scheel as head of government until Brandt’s Sozialdemokratische Partei could select a new leader who would serve as Chancellor. An election was scheduled for May 16 on whether to approve Finance Minister Helmut Schmidt, Brandt’s choice, as successor.
In a national atmosphere of shock over the unexpected resignation of Chancellor Willy Brandt Monday night, the governing Social Democratic party of West Germany named Finance Minister Helmut Schmidt to succeed him. Mr. Brandt’s decision appeared to be final, but for the time being, he said, he will not resign as head of the party.
German serial killer Volker Eckert committed the first of at least six murders of teenage girls and young women, but may have killed as many as 19. Eckert, only 14 years old, strangled a classmate, Silvia Unterdörfel, at her home in Plauen.
The standing of Finance Minister Valery Giscard d’Estaing in the French presidential race, to be decided in a runoff with Socialist Francois Mitterrand May 19, received an important boost from former candidate Jean Royer. Royer asked the 810,000 voters who supported him to back Giscard d’Estaing, and although this was only 3.17% of the total vote his backing was considered vital in the runoff, which observers feel could be decided by less than a 1% margin.
Two Roman Catholic men were killed and four were injured today by gunmen who fired machine guns at a but on a construction site in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Witnesses said the men, wearing masks, left their automobile and fired two long bursts into the but in northern Belfast where a group of plumbers were taking a lunch hour break. Similar random killings occurred in the same area in January, when two electric workers were shot dead, and in February, when an automobile in which two young factory workers were riding was wrecked by machine‐gun fire.
Near Coalisland, County Tyrone, early today, a middle-aged Roman Catholic and his wife were shot to death in an ambush near their farm home. They were attacked in their automobile and their 17‐year‐old daughter, injured in the leg, crawled 300 yards for help. The dead man was James Devlin, formerly a well‐known Gaelic football player. He had no known political connections. Today’s killings brought the total in Northern Ireland since last Thursday to 10. Nine of the dead were Catholics and one a Protestant woman member of the part‐time Ulster Defense Regiment.
The Irish Republican Army’s bombing campaign continued with incendiary devices starting a blaze early today that destroyed Belfast’s century‐old Smithfield Market. The covered market area was less than 100 yards from the British Army’s headquarters in the city center. Scores of shops were gutted and damage was estimated at $1‐million. In another section of the city the army defused a half‐ton car bomb, the biggest planted yet in Ulster’s five years of violence.
A strike involving 1.2 million engineering workers threatened today to shut down a major part of British industry just as the nation’s economy was recovering from the three‐day work week. The Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers ordered a nationwide stoppage this afternoon. Tonight, it appeared unlikely that many of Britain’s newspapers would be published Wednesday. Production also was halted in parts of the automobile industry. The strike was expected to cause shutdowns tomorrow of power stations, steel mills, fabricating shops, railroad maintenance yards and other sectors of British industry. It was uncertain how quickly the strike would spread or how long it would last. The union’s executive council ordered the stoppage immediately and said it would continue on a day‐to‐day basis until further notice. The strike will test the ability of the Wilson administration to maintain peaceful relations with the labor movement and to keep the economy on an even keel.
Si Frumkin and Zev Yaroslavsky, two leaders of the Southern California Council for Soviet Jews, said Voice of America radio broadcasting to the Soviet Union has become so “bland and innocuous no one bothers to listen to it.” Speaking on their return from the Soviet Union, where they met Jewish activists in Moscow, they said the Russian Jews wanted to alert Americans “to make sure the Voice of America does not become strictly an organ of the President and his foreign policy.”
Jozsef Cardinal Mindszenty, who was removed as Roman Catholic primate of Hungary last February amid Vatican efforts to improve relations with Communist governments, yesterday decried East‐West efforts at détente. “I have no hope that any concessions can be had in return from the atheist, Godless and inhumane governments,” he told a news conference here. As for the Vatican efforts, he said: “Instead of terming it the policy of the church, I would term it rather that of the Vatican.”
Secretary of State Kissinger received guarded Soviet support in Cyprus for his efforts to achieve a troop separation agreement between Israel and Syria. He then returned to Jerusalem and was given new Israeli proposals for the troop separation on the Golan Heights.
A nationwide Indian railway strike began this morning, threatening food deliveries, industrial production and power supplies. Thousands of railway workers in such cities as Bombay, New Delhi, Calcutta and Madras walked off their jobs at dawn, following a breakdown of Government efforts to resume talks. “The strike will be total,” said a railway union spokesmen this morning. The dispute, marked by furious allegations by unions and the management, has stirred tension and uncertainty within a flagon in economic crisis. The Railway Minister, Lalit Narayan Mishra, said that a strike would “shatter the economy.” The restless mood in New Delhi was underscored in a message from prison by George Fernandes, a 44‐year‐old Socialist party leader and organizer of the strike. Mr. Fernandes, who is one of the more than 1,000 union leaders and railway workers recently arrested, said: “The time for action has come. For railwaymen it is now do or die.” The strike is the most severe threat that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s Government has faced. All police leaves have been canceled. The army and local security forces are standing by, to man communications services.
The Soviet Union pledged $600 million in credits to help Argentina double her power-generating capacity by the end of 1977. The Soviet aid, still not officially announced, was disclosed privately by senior Argentine officials on an economic mission to Moscow. It was seen as a bid to gain a political foothold in Argentina.
Both of Canada’s principal opposition parties introduced motions of no-confidence in the minority Liberal party government of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau because of its budget policies. Their action was generally expected to topple the Trudeau government.
At least 15 Haitians drowned in the treacherous waters of Nassau harbor when their 50-foot sloop struck a reef as they attempted to enter the Bahamas illegally. Thirty-two others made it ashore to Paradise Island and were taken into custody, police sources said. Police continued to search for bodies in the choppy waters known locally as The Narrows.
The military governor of Chile’s Colchagua state has commuted the death sentences of five leftists convicted of trying to organize armed guerrilla groups to establish a Communist dictatorship during the regime of Salvador Allende. Two of the condemned were 20-year-old university students, two were militant leaders of peasant groups and the fifth headed Marxist President Allende’s land reform program in Colchagua.
James St. Clair, President Nixon’s chief attorney, announced that the President had decided not to turn over further Watergate tapes to the House Judiciary Committee or to special prosecutor Leon Jaworski. The surprise announcement, at a late afternoon news conference, was made soon after the President’s aides had indicated Mr. Nixon might once again back down in the face of pressure to provide more material.
Fred Buzhardt, who is also an attorney for President Nixon, invoked executive privilege and the attorney-client privilege before the Senate Watergate committee but averted an all-out confrontation by answering a series of questions about a $100,000 campaign contribution from Howard Hughes. He reversed, to a degree at least, the stand taken last week by General Alexander Haig, the White House chief of staff, who flatly refused to answer any of the committee’s questions about the contribution.
Congressional investigations of the relations between the Nixon administration and the Internal Revenue Service have shifted their focus to the question of the possibly illegal use of tax returns as a source of politically valuable information for the White House.
President Nixon said record high interest rates were unpleasant but necessary anti-inflation tools and then met with economic advisers on other moves to curb inflation. An annual inflation rate of 14% during the first quarter of this year, coupled with a slowdown of business activity, has caused considerable White House concern. No details of the meeting were released but one of those attending, Herbert Stein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, later told a symposium on worldwide inflation that the American public must share the blame because it has been unwilling to accept the inflation alternatives of higher unemployment, tax increases and other remedies.
The U.S. Army has begun a preliminary investigation into alleged mishandling of funds by an advertising agency that holds a $35 million contract for enticing new military volunteers into the service. Officials said representatives would be reviewing the records of N.W. Ayer & Son, a Philadelphia agency that writes the magazine, newspaper and billboard ads.
The House rejected an attempt to pull the American system of weights and measures into the 19th century by again defeating legislation that would adapt the metric system — a bill stalled in Congress for over 100 years. Failure to pass the metric conversion bill, by a vote of 240 to 153, occurred the day before the Department of Agriculture will start using the global metric standard of measurements in its crop reports. Legislation designed to ease the United States into the metric system was rejected — and possibly killed — by the House. The measure foundered on the question of who would pay for the conversion rather than the metric system’s merits. The Science and Astronautics Committee’s bill would let conversion costs “lie where they fall.” But labor sought an amendment to provide federal aid for such costs as the changeover of tools and instruments. Since the bill was brought up on a procedure that barred amendments, opponents voted it down. “The bill is dead,” said Rep. Olin E. Teague (D-Texas), the committee chairman, “unless it comes over from the Senate.” A metric bill is now in a Senate committee. Two years ago, the Senate voted out a conversion bill but it could not get past the House.
The League of Women Voters agreed to end its long-standing of barring full membership to men. The vote, by a margin of better than 2 to 1, came after a long and often bitter debate over whether women have enough self-confidence to work equally with men. Delegates to the convention of the League of Women Voters voted to allow men to become members, favoring the measure by a vote of 935 to 433, more than the two-thirds majority required by the League’s bylaws.
A federal appeals court in San Francisco rejected a Washington state challenge and held that the Puyallup Indian Reservation still exists. The reservation was created by the Treaty of Medicine Creek on December 26, 1954. Washington also had contested the right of the tribe to fish without state interference on the part of the Puyallup River flowing within the reservation. The appellate court vacated a decision by U.S. District Judge William Goodwin of Tacoma and sent the case back to his court.
The House Ways and Means Committee decided tentatively to require political parties and campaign committees to pay income taxes for the first time. They would pay no taxes on contributions, but would pay on investment income, capital gains and income from non-related businesses. Under present laws and rules, parties and committees do not even have to file a tax return. The committee also voted to close a major loophole by requiring contributors to pay capital gains taxes on gifts to parties of appreciated property, such as stock that increased in value between the time it was purchased and the time it was donated.
The Federal Trade Commission filed a second series of complaints against the nation’s major hearing aid manufacturers, this time citing them with deceptive advertising. The FTC alleged in proposed complaints against six hearing aid makers that they have falsely represented that their devices employ a new concept and will benefit wearers regardless of the type of hearing loss. The companies named were Beltone Electronics of Chicago, Dahlberg Electronics of Golden Valley, Minnesota, Radioear Corp. of Cannonsburg, Pennsylvania, Seeburg Industries of New York, Sonotone Corp. of Elmsford, New York, and Textron, Inc. of Providence, Rhode Island.
John Glenn, a former astronaut, defeated Senator Howard Metzenbaum for the Democratic nomination to the Senate seat vacated by William Saxbe, a Republican who is now the Attorney General. Glenn scored a stunning victory yesterday over Senator Howard M. Metzenbaum in the Ohio state primary for the Democratic nominations for the United States Senate. Mr. Metzenbaum conceded just after midnight.
Governor George C. Wallace, seeking to enhance his national political image with black votes easily swept past four opponents in the Alabama Democratic primary today and was nominated to run for a record third term. Renomination by Democrats at this point is probably tantamount to re‐election in November, since no significant Republican opposition looms on Mr. Wallace’s horizon. Thus, the 54‐year‐bld Governor is virtually guaranteed a major political base to work from, should he decide to run for national office in 1976. Mr. Wallace has said all along that his health was good enough to permit such an effort, despite the lingering paralysis from the attempt on his life during his campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1972. But he reiterated at a victory rally tonight that he had not made up his mind to run again in 1976.
About three weeks ago, the San Francisco police set a trap for members of the self‐styled Symbionese Liberation Army in the belief that two of Mayor Joseph L. Alioto’s grandchildren were being stalked as kidnapping victims, confidential sources said today. The trap was never sprung. It was set when the Mayor’s daughter, the mother of the children, identified Emily Harris, a member of the group, as the woman who had behaved suspiciously around the Mayor’s grandchildren. A spokesman for the mayor confirmed the outlines of the report. Members of the “army” have been sought in the kidnapping, of Patricia Hearst on February 4 and the holdup of a bank here on April 15, which was a day or so before the events related here. Miss Hearst appeared to take part in the bank holdup.
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry awarded to Robert Lowell for “Dolphin.”
At Riverfront Stadium, the Cincinnati Reds’ Fred Norman strikes out 13 St. Louis Cardinals, but loses, 1–0. The Birds score their only run in the 9th on Norman’s throwing error.
At Tiger Stadium, the White Sox’ Ed Herrmann clubs an 11th inning solo homer of Detroit starter Lerrin LaGrow to break up a scoreless battle with Wilbur Wood. Wood allows 2 hits in the win, while LaGrow allows 5.
Jim Wynn is 4-for-4, with three homers, to pace the Los Angeles Dodgers to an out-of-town win over the San Diego Padres. The Toy Cannon drives in 5 runs. He’ll have another 4 hits tomorrow, including a homer.
The Astros’ Tom Griffin one-hits the Pittsburgh Pirates, 2–1, outdueling Dock Ellis for the victory. Milt May triples home Bob Watson with the winning run.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 847.15 (+2.27, +0.27%).
Born:
Lawrence Johnson, American pole vaulter, 2001 world indoor champion, in Norfolk, Virginia.
Izell Reese, NFL safety (Dallas Cowboys, Denver Broncos, Buffalo Bills), in Dothan, Alabama.
Breckin Meyer, American TV and voice and film actor (“Robot Chicken”), in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Died:
Fred Kelly, 82, U.S. Olympian and 1912 gold medalist in the 110-meter hurdles.
Hans van Werveke, 76, Belgian historian (Diocese Terwaan).
History Diaries 