In Canada, the government of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau lost a vote of no confidence in the House of Commons, 137 to 123. Trudeau announced that he would ask for new elections for July 8. Governor-General Jules Leger dissolved the House the next day and scheduled elections. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s government was toppled when the Canadian House of Commons rejected his budget, leaving the administration without funds for its economic program. The 137 to 123 vote against the government paved the way for new parliamentary elections this summer.
Secretary of State Kissinger said he had made “some progress” in his efforts to arrange a troop separation between Israel and Syria. However, Mr. Kissinger, who spent the day shuttling between the two countries, said the two sides were still far apart. At the end of a long and tiring day, officials in the Kissinger party said that a process had begun of narrowing the gap between Syria and Israel. Mr. Kissinger detected for the first time some “psychological movement” toward an agreement, they added. But the Secretary of State and his top aides insisted that the gulf between the two was still quite wide, and that an agreement was far off. They said that he was uncertain whether he could work out disengagement accord during the present Middle East tour.
Mr. Kissinger told Israeli officials last night, however, that he was willing to shuttle as long as necessary. He told his aides that he was prepared to, extend his trip into the middle of next week if progress continued. This was regarded by his associates as an optimistic sign, since he earlier had indicated he would return to Washington by Monday. Late tonight, after having been briefed by Mr. Kissinger on his Damascus talks, Israeli officials authorized their spokesman to say that they were in agreement that “some progress” had been made but that the two sides were not yet near an agreement. Tomorrow, Mr. Kissinger will give the Israelis and the Syrians a chance to consider each other’s latest proposals, while he flies to Saudi Arabia for talks with King Faisal.
Syria’s military spokesman asserted today that artillery fire was inflicting losses on Israeli forces along the Golan Heights. Continuing fighting on Mount Hermon, which rises over the battle lines, spread to other parts of the front this morning, the spokesman said. Daily shooting on the Golan Heights is in its ninth week.
After Secretary of State Kissinger completed more than five hours of talks with President Hafez al‐Assad today, official sources said: that a meeting of Arab chiefs of state might be necessary at an early date. Adel Halim Khaddam, Syrian Foreign Minister, met today with Mahmoud Riad, secretary general of the Arab League, and was said to have discussed the calling of a meeting of Arab leaders.
The White House would oppose a pending Senate move to condition aid to Egypt on a barring of warships from the Suez Canal once the waterway is reopened. This opposition was laid out by Michael Sterner, State Department official, who said the United States plans to spend about $30 million over the next year on helping clear the canal. Sterner said the Administration opposed any such Senate action because Egypt adheres to the Constantinople Convention of 1888 which opens the canal to all ships, making it difficult to follow a U.S.-imposed limit.
Willy Brandt of West Germany said he resigned as Chancellor partly because “there were indications my private life would be drawn into speculation” about the discovery of an East German spy on his staff. Mr. Brandt’s televised speech, which gave no details, followed published reports that the spy had unspecified information on Mr. Brandt’s private life that would be devastating to him if exposed.
The Soviet leadership expressed its solidarity with East Germany today in the wake of the espionage case that toppled Chancellor Willy Brandt. But there were signs that Moscow was not entirely happy with East Germany over the affair. Pravda and other Soviet newspapers gave conspicuous front‐page display to a message from the Soviet leadership to the last German leadership on the 29th anniversary, of the victory over the Nazis in World War II and published other articles that appeared to be aimed at showing that East German-West German relations were not affected by Mr. Brandt’s resignation. But the annual victory anniversary message was notably less warm than a year ago, when the Russians and East Germans were working closely, with Mr. Brandt’s acquiescence, to promote diplomatic recognition of East Germany and the conclusion of a European security conference.
Pope Paul VI appealed to the kidnapers of Mario Sossi, assistant prosecutor of Genoa, to set him free, offering to act as an intermediary with the Italian government. His appeal, in response to a plea by Sossi’s wife, said he would ask clemency for the kidnappers if they accepted his offer. The kidnappers, who identified themselves as the Red Brigades, demanded the release of eight men jailed for terrorist activities in return for Sossi’s release.
A Catalan anarchist group claimed responsibility for the kidnapping in Paris of a Spanish banker and said the group would release him in exchange for two jailed colleagues. Angel Baltasar Suarez, head of the Paris branch of the Bank of Bilbao, was kidnaped from his Paris home last week. The two jailed anarchists were said to be Jose Oriol Sole and Jose Luis Pons Llobet, both accused of belonging to the outlawed Iberian Liberation Movement.
A nationwide strike by one of Britain’s largest unions was settled when an anonymous donor paid $156,000 in fines and damages that had been levied against the union after a smaller strike last year. The strike by 1.2 million members of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers had been called after a labor court had seized their union’s assets for failure to pay the levies. There was immediate speculation that the government had arranged the anonymous payment to avoid the political impact of a potentially devastating strike.
The 50-mph speed limit in Britain is lifted. During the 1973 oil crisis a temporary maximum national speed limit of 50 mph (80 km/h) was introduced on all roads, including motorways to reduce fuel consumption. The 70 mph (112 km/h) limit was restored on motorways on March 29, 1974 and on all other roads on 8 May 1974.
A national railway strike in India caused major disruptions in both passenger and rail service, but did not effectively cripple the transport system, which is regarded as crucial to the national economy. Bombay, India’s major commercial center, was deeply affected, with offices, banks and factories half empty because of disruptions in commuter service. The strike would last until May 27. With 700,000 of Indian Railways’ 1,400,000 workers halting their labor, the strike was the largest recorded industrial action in world history.
The Soviet Union today asserted its right to send ships into the Indian Ocean and accused China of purposely misrepresenting the Soviet naval presence in an effort to whip up anti‐Soviet sentiment in the region. In a commentary the official Soviet press agency, Tass, charged that Peking was “playing into the hands of imperialist circles in the West” by raising similar concerns about Moscow’s intentions in the Indian Ocean. The Soviet charge, the latest broadside leveled against Peking on foreign policy, coincides with an increasingly emotional campaign for the return of a Soviet helicopter and crew held by the Chinese for nearly two months. In defending the Soviet presence in the Indian Ocean, the Tass commentary, which appeared in the government newspaper, Izvestia, asserted that “the Soviet Union is a great maritime power and the Indian Ocean is the natural way over which our ships can travel the year round between our western and eastern ports.”
A sharp earthquake rocked central Japan. Police said 70 homes collapsed in an area about 50 miles southwest of Tokyo, killing at least one woman. The victim died, police reported, when her home was destroyed in the port of Shimoda. An undetermined number of persons suffered injuries in other parts of Shizuoka prefecture. An unofficial report said that a boulder, jarred from a hillside, struck a bus. The tremor registered 5 on the Japanese scale of 7 and rocked large buildings in Tokyo, causing a brief halt in high-speed Tokyo-Okayama trains.
The U.S. government has allowed Japan to set up a temporary satellite tracking station on the Kwajalein Atoll in the South Pacific, the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo reported. A spokesman said the permit stipulates that the station must be used for peaceful purposes. Kwajalein, in the Marshall Islands, is administered by the United States and is a launch site for U.S. anti-ballistic missiles.
Argentine Economics Minister Jose Gelbard and a 135-man delegation of businessmen and parliamentary leaders ended a five-day visit to the Soviet Union. Argentine sources said Moscow granted a $600 million loan for the purchase of Soviet equipment for construction and equipping of hydroelectric plants and agreed to purchase 100,000 tons each of Argentine meat and rice. The delegation also will visit Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
Four persons were shot and killed in the Dominican Republic during a clash between the military and a group of protesters demanding that President Joaquin Balaguer release 200 political prisoners jailed since 1965. Among the dead in the demonstrations at San Francisco de Macoris in the northern part of the country were a 6-year-old and a soldier. The protests come during preparations for presidential elections next Thursday.
The Senate Judiciary Committee reportedly voted unanimously to begin full-scale hearings into the Justice Department’s failure to penetrate the Watergate cover-up in the summer and fall of 1972. Senate sources said that the committee, which met in closed session, agreed to summon Assistant Attorney General Henry Petersen, who was personally selected by President Nixon to take over the Watergate inquiry last spring, to hearings tentatively set to begin next week.
The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee has proposed issuing a series of subpoenas for tapes and other White House material if President Nixon continues to withhold evidence from the impeachment inquiry. Under a plan outlined privately by Representative Peter Rodino to Democratic committee members, the subpoenas would be issued in the course of the hearings as gaps appeared in evidence.
Now that six states with a total of 100 House seats have held primaries without a single upset of an incumbent Representative, politicians have begun to dismiss the notion that incumbents will automatically suffer from a Watergate backlash by voters disenchanted with established Washington figures.
The lone exception to the pattern has been in a Senate race, Ohio’s Democratic primary, where the victor, John Glenn, stressed Watergate immorality and President Nixon’s tax problems in his primary campaign against Senator Howard Metzenbaum.
The Labor Department took action to bar direct worker exposure to vinyl chloride, a cancer-causing chemical used primarily in the manufacture of plastic products. The department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration proposed a permanent standard that would sharply reduce to “no detectable level” the allowable worker exposure. Based largely on the recommendations of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, the standard also would provide for periodic medical tests and specify plant monitoring procedures, work practices and protective measures. The action followed proposals by other agencies to ban use of the chemical in most household aerosol sprays, of drugs, cosmetics and pesticides.
Financier Robert L. Vesco, a fugitive since his indictment a year ago with former Nixon Cabinet officers John N. Mitchell and Maurice H. Stans, was cited in a $60 million complaint filed in Manhattan federal court. Three Canadian-based mutual funds charged that Vesco, another man and a bank, looted the funds and used the money for their own purposes. The complaint was filed by Fund of Funds, Ltd., FOF Proprietary Fund, Ltd., and Investors Overseas Services Growth Fund, Ltd., all of Toronto. The other defendants were the Bank of New York and Norman LeBlanc, a Canadian and former IOS officer.
A federal judge in Miami refused to dismiss a $10 million libel suit against the Washington Post filed by C. G. (Bebe) Rebozo, close friend of President Nixon. The suit charges that the Post libeled him in an October 25, 1973, story concerning IBM stock certificates that had been deposited as security for a loan at Rebozo’s Key Biscayne Bank. The paper said an insurance investigator had testified he had told Rebozo the stock was stolen but that days later some of the shares still were sold. Rebozo said the investigator could not have told him on October 22, 1968, that the stock was stolen because its theft from a brokerage house was not known until six weeks later.
A federal grand jury in Atlanta indicted state Sen. Leroy R. Johnson, one of the South’s most powerful black politicians, on four counts of evading $44,339.92 in federal income taxes. Johnson, the first black elected to the Georgia Legislature in modern times, also was indicted on a fifth charge of attempting to cover up the alleged evasion by submitting a false affidavit to the Internal Revenue Service, Johnson denied the charges.
William J. Turnblazer, the key prosecution witness in the murder trial in Pittsburgh of former United Mine Workers President W. A. (Tony) Boyle, was sentenced to 15 years in a federal prison. Turnblazer pleaded guilty last September 6 to federal conspiracy charges in the deaths of union insurgent Joseph A. Yablonski, and his wife and daughter. Turnblazer testified last month at Boyle’s murder trial that Boyle ordered Yablonski killed. Boyle was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder.
The decapitated body of an 11-year-old boy was found in a wooded area near where his brother was sexually mutilated and murdered last year. Officers said Kenneth Elliott, son of Mr. and Mrs. Martin Elliott of Houston, also had been sexually mutilated. The body was found within a mile of his home. The body of his brother, Ronald, 12, was found November 20 after a four-day search. No arrests have been made in the case.
[Ed: A 15-year-old, Lawrence Strempel, would soon be arrested and charged with both murders. Strempel was caught when he tried to ask a friend to hide the pocket knife for him. Instead of disposing of it like he “promised” to him, the friend went to the police instead. Despite the horrific nature of his crimes, Strempel was given a rather lenient sentence due to his age. Much to the dismay of the Elliot family, he was essentially sent to some reform program, where he was ordered to stay until he turned 18.]
The Ford Motor Company, citing higher costs, announced price increases averaging $163 on its 1974 cars and trucks, and the Director of the Cost of Living Council promptly protested the move, saying it violated a company commitment not to raise prices during the model year.
Elie Wiesel’s play “Zalmen, or The Madness of God” premiered at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C.
FC Magdenburg of East Germany win 14th European Cup Winner’s Cup against AC Milan of Italy 2–0 in Rotterdam.
Doug Rader’s three-run homer in the 12th lifts the Houston Astros over Pittsburgh, 8–6. Rookie Dave Parker, substituting for an ejected Richie Zisk, had slammed a solo homer in the top of the inning to give the Pirates a lead before Rader’s blast off Jim Sadowski settles the issue.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 850.99 (+3.84, +0.45%).
Born:
Korey Stringer, NFL tackle (Pro Bowl, 2000; Minnesota Vikings), in Warren, Ohio (d. 2001, from complications brought on by heat stroke during the Vikings’ training camp).
Calvin Branch, NFL defensive back (Oakland Raiders), in Lexington, Kentucky.
Keisha Anderson, WNBA guard (Washington Mystics, Charlotte Sting), in Racine, Wisconsin.
Marge Kõrkjas, Estonian Paralympic swimmer, 1996 gold medalist; in Rakvere, Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Union.
Jon Tickle, English TV presenter (Brainiac), born in Norwich, England, United Kingdom.
Died:
Robert Cutler, 78, the first official U.S. National Security Advisor, serving U.S. President Eisenhower 1953 to 1955 and 1957 to 1958
Graham Bond, 36, English rock musician, was killed after being run over on the railway tracks near the Finsbury Park station in North London, after falling or jumping in front of a train bound for the London Underground. According to a news report after he was identified, he “was found beneath a train at Finsbury Park, London, near the Rainbow Theatre.”
H. Roe Bartle, 72, former Mayor of Kansas City, Missouri, died of complications of diabetes.
History Diaries 