Northern Ireland’s coalition government of moderate Protestants and Roman Catholics collapsed, brought down by the action of Protestant extremists whose general strike crippled the economy and gained wide public support. Another period of direct British rule is expected. The short-lived Northern Ireland Executive, the 11-member bipartisan government of Northern Ireland since January 1, collapsed along with the Northern Ireland Assembly as Chief Executive Brian Faulkner resigned. Faulkner’s departure came 13 days after a general strike of union members had been called to put an end to the Sunningdale Agreement of December 9, that allowed Irish nationalists to join in sharing power with the Unionists who favored maintaining Northern Ireland as a part of the United Kingdom. The Executive had been composed of six members of Faulkner’s Ulster Unionist Party and four members of the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP).
As he had promised during his campaign, President Valery Giscard d’Estaing of France chose younger, technically qualified men for his cabinet. Only three were holdovers from the previous government, including Jacques Chirac, who was named Premier on Monday. The 12 others were new faces, and included Jean Sauvagnargues, a specialist in German affairs, who is the new Foreign Minister. He was Ambassador to West Germany, and his appointment was taken as a deliberate gesture to emphasize the new direction French policy has taken toward cooperation with Bonn.
While about 3,000 people held a rally in Brescia, an industrial town in northern Italy, a time bomb exploded in a rubbish bin, killing eight persons and injuring 102. The rally was being held to protest a recent wave of extreme right-wing terrorist actions in the Brescia area. The bomb was planted by the Ordine Nuovo right-wing terrorist group. In 2015, a Court of appeal in Milan issued a final life sentence to Ordine Nuovo members Carlo Maria Maggi and Maurizio Tramonte for ordering the bombing, closing one of the longest-running cases on terrorism during Italy’s ‘years of lead’.
Lisbon went without bread and buses as bakers and drivers struck for higher pay against a background of mounting concern over extreme Left-wing disruption. Portugal’s latest strikes were coupled with stoppages at Lisbon’s main post office and a walkout by toll collectors on Lisbon’s River Tagus bridge. They coincided with a warning from the military that the armed forces would not let the situation get out of hand.
Secretary of State Kissinger unexpectedly flew to Damascus tonight in an attempt to resolve what were called “the very, very few problems” holding up a Syrian-Israeli troop separation agreement on the Golan Heights. After conferring with President Hafez al-Assad of Syria, he went to Jerusalem for an early morning meeting with Premier Golda Meir and other Israeli officials. The Israeli cabinet was expected to decide later whether to accept the proposal.
Israel named a new cabinet, composed of Ministers who are younger and who are expected to be generally more dovish in foreign policy matters than the outgoing government of Premier Golda Meir. Formation of the cabinet was announced by Premier-designate Yitzhak Rabin, who chose Yigal Allon as Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister, and Shimon Peres as Minister of Defense.
Two American institutions in Beirut were bombed by unidentified assailants. Two explosions went off on the campus of the American University of Beirut. No injuries were reported. Another explosion injured three Lebanese citizens at the John F. Kennedy American Cultural Center, three blocks from the university.
The Security Council today approved 14‐0 an agreement between Iran and Iraq to end their border dispute and negotiate a comprehensive peace settlement. The accord was worked out by Louis Weckmann‐Muñoz of Mexico, who acted as special representative of Secretary General Waldheim. China did not participate in the vote. The agreement calls for strict observance of the March 7, 1974, cease‐fire agreement, prompt and simultaneous withdrawal of troops along the entire border and an early resumption of comprehensive peace talks without preconditions.
A‐24‐year‐old American missionary nurse was abducted from a village hospital in the northern Ethiopian province of Eritrea Monday, apparently to give medical assistance to a guerrilla group that has been battling the Ethiopian Government for the last decade. According to the State Department, Mrs. Deborah Dortzbaeh of Freehold, New Jersey, was kidnapped by four armed men who shot and killed a middle-aged Dutch missionary nurse before escaping with Mrs. Dortzbach in a helicopter.
South Vietnam forces retook Long Nguyên, one of three Communist-held villages in the Bến Cát District, Binh Duong Province, 25 miles north of Saigon, with a surprise armor assault across a rickety bridge ordered personally by President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu. Heavy fighting broke out almost immediately. Meanwhile, Saigon accused North Vietnam, the Việt Cộng, Hungary, and Poland of trying to sabotage international peace-keeping in Indochina, charging the latter two with blocking requests for investigations of ceasefire violations. In Cambodia, government officials fought new outbreaks of cholera with mass inoculations.
Canada is pressing “very actively” for international action to prevent any further spread of the capability to manufacture nuclear weapons, a spokesman for the Ministry of External Affairs said today. The statement followed news conference held here by Foreign Minister Aziz Ahmed of Pakistan, who suggested international deliberations on “some way to prevent India from going ahead” with further development of nuclear explosions. Aroused by the recent Indian underground nuclear test, Canada has suspended her aid to India’s nuclear‐energy program. The Pakistani, who came to Ottawa this week after discussions with President Nixon on the Indian blast, urged that Canada end, not just suspend, her nuclear aid.
Government censors have moved against the independent Brazilian press with renewed vigor after a brief relaxation of controls. The country’s leading weekly newsmagazine, Veja, was put under direct Government censorship two weeks ago after five weeks of relative freedom and censors deleted even the words of Paulo Evaristo Cardinal Arns, Archbishop of Sao Paulo, in the opposition press. The crackdown is generally thought to have been brought on by a growing political and economic malaise in the country and there is widespread talk of a quarrel between the more liberal members of the regime and the hard‐liners.
About 200,000 Argentine schoolteachers walked out of their classrooms on a 48-hour strike — their second in a week — to back demands for a 33% wage hike to a minimum. of $200 a month. The strike was the latest in a series by workers increasingly dissatisfied with government wage policies. The Education Ministry indicated it would not intervene but said sanctions would be taken against the strikers. The teachers threatened a 78-hour strike next week if their demands are not met.
Prime Minister Ian D. Smith of Rhodesia flew to Pretoria today for urgent talks with the South African Prime Minister, John Vorster, reportedly on the new situation in southern Africa since the military coup in Portugal. Accompanied by senior Cabinet officials, Mr. Smith left here secretly. The Information Department has so far refused to confirm his departure, but government sources confirmed that Mr. Smith would spend about a day in Pretoria.
South Africa’s government has acknowledged for the first time publicly that the word “black” is more acceptable to Africans as an ethnic reference than the traditional term “Bantu,” used in official statements and documents. The acknowledgment came from Minister of Labor Marais Viljoen, who said in a speech: “I make more use of the word ‘black’ because I think it is more descriptive and it is a word that is accepted by black people.”
South Africa has reopened a top poetry prize to black authors after more than 80 of the country’s best-known writers boycotted the award to protest a ruling that only whites could compete. One white poet accused the government of introducing apartheid into a sphere which transcended politics and another said the ruling would have infuriated the late Roy Campbell, the poet for whom the prize was named. Campbell’s poems demonstrated a profound sympathy with blacks.
The Supreme Court announced that James St. Clair, President Nixon’s lawyer, had agreed to respond within the next two days to the request by Leon Jaworski, the Watergate special prosecutor, for an immediate ruling by the Court on his right to obtain more White House tape recordings. Mr. St. Clair is expected to oppose Mr. Jaworski’s attempt to bypass the United States Court of Appeals.
A stiffly phrased letter to President Nixon is being drafted by the House Judiciary Committee, to warn him that his refusal to honor impeachment inquiry subpoenas would force it to conclude that he is withholding incriminating evidence.
Reading the transcripts of President Nixon’s Watergate conversations has been “a profoundly disturbing and disappointing experience” to the Rev. Billy Graham, but he added that as Mr. Nixon’s friend, he had “no intention of forsaking him now.”
In a special report to Congress, President Nixon’s Council of Economic Advisers predicted that the nation’s inflation rate, now 12 percent as measured by the Consumer Price Index, would drop to “the neighborhood of 7 percent” by the final quarter of 1974. But the council noted that 7 percent would be “welcome”, but would still be very high by historical standards.
Arkansas Governor Dale Bumpers defeated Senator W. Fulbright in his bid for nomination to a sixth term in today’s Democratic primary. Fulbright has been in the Senate for 30 years. With 1,276 of 2,688 precincts reporting, the unofficial tally was, Bumpers 134,866, Fulbright 76,482. In the race for the Democratic nomination for Governor, former United States Representative David H. Pryor held a strong lead over former Governor Orval E. Faubus and Lieutenant Governor Bob Riley. It was still uncertain, however, whether Mr. Pryor would get a majority and avoid a runoff two weeks from today.
The Supreme Court ruled today that a class action on behalf of a large group of people must be thrown out of court unless all those people who can be identified receive notice, of the lawsuit and the person who brings it pays for that notice. The decision will almost certainly make it more difficult to use the class action, a relatively new legal weapon for people with a small individual stake in a large important issue common to many others. The ruling, which was unanimous as to its general conclusions, adds significantly to restrictions in effect since 1969, where the high court held that the individual claims of a class could not be pooled to meet the $10,000 minimum claim required before Federal courts would hear a class‐action suit. Today’s decision applies to antitrust actions, which are exempt from the $10,000 minimum that each member of a class must meet, as well as to consumer, environmental and other actions subject to the $10,000 rule.
In Long Beach, California, a young woman later known as the Long Beach Jane Doe was raped and strangled to death. In May 2013, Gary Stamp, then 61, was arrested and confessed to the murder, but the victim’s identity remains unknown. Stamp died of cancer in January 2014.
The Dalkon Shield, a widely prescribed type of intrauterine contraceptive device (IUD), has been implicated by its manufacturer in the deaths of four women who became pregnant while wearing the device and suffered septic spontaneous abortions in the second three-month period of pregnancy. Thirty‐two other women suffered similar septic abortions, but did not die.
A septic abortion is a miscarriage caused by an infection in the uterus. The findings were disclosed in a‐letter sent to 120,000 doctors by the device’s manufacturer, A. H. Robins Company of Richmond, Virginia. Although the letter was dated May 8, a number of doctors in New York did not receive the letter until last week. On receiving the letter, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America reproduced it and sent it on to the group’s 700 affiliated birth‐control clinics with instructions to stop prescribing the Dalkon Shield, pending a meeting of the federation to discuss further action. According to the manufacturer, some 2.2 million women have been fitted with the Dalkon Shield since 1970.
An illegal foray into a gunnery range near Gila Bend, Arizona, by 18 men and women to collect scrap shell casings ended in death from heat exposure for at least four, the FBI said. Officials said one was in critical condition and at least two were still reported missing, wandering on foot without food and water in searing temperatures of more than 120 degrees. The 18 drove in three parties to the range to pick up the spent brass casings. When spotted by an Air Force helicopter, seven of them ran off into the desert as FBI agents closed in to arrest them. Seven others were arrested and 1,257 pounds of scrap brass confiscated, as well as some live 20-mm. rounds. Identification of the persons involved was not immediately released.
General Motors announced it would fix free of charge any damage caused by engine overheating in up to 1.3 million Chevrolet Vegas sold since 1970. It said the offer would be limited to Vegas driven 50,000 miles or less and would not be valid if damage could be traced to driver abuse. Meanwhile, the Transportation Department said there was a potential safety defect in certain 1965 through 1968 Buicks and 1970 Cadillacs made by GM. The department said engine mount separations might cause accelerators to jam in an open position. GM, however, denied the problem was a safety defect and disputed the government’s findings.
The National Organization for Women announced it was going international to urge concerted anti-sexism action around the world. An estimated 1,650 feminists at a conference in Houston also resolved to design and lobby for laws establishing an income for homemakers, full integration of sports at all levels and more equitable marriage contracts. Members also will turn their attention to companies which discriminate against women in employment. Sears Roebuck & Co., the nation’s fifth largest corporation, has been singled out by the Equal Opportunity Commission and NOW as a top priority target but a Sears spokesman said women represent 52.7% of all employees.
A gasoline leak draining into city sewers caused police to close off a three-square mile area of New Britain, Connecticut. Officers said up to 5,000 persons had been advised to evacuate, although they did not know how many actually had left their homes. Officials said fumes, first detected in sewers near a service station, were later discovered throughout the area. Samples of water were being analyzed and officials said they hoped to determine the brand of the leaking fuel.
The American Federation of Musicians said it had reached a tentative contract agreement with the three broadcast networks, temporarily ending the union’s four-week strike. It said union members were being notified that they can return to work immediately at CBS, NBC and ABC. Members began “withholding services” April 30 after a two-year pact expired. A union spokesman said the new, as-yet unsigned contract covers two years and bans so-called “runaway” or overseas recording of new music for shows produced in the United States and Canada, a major issue.
“The Magic Show,” a one-act Broadway musical built around the act of illusionist and stage magician Doug Henning (who could neither sing nor dance), premiered at the Cort Theatre for the first of 1,920 performances, running until December 31, 1978.
26th Emmy Awards: “MAS*H”, Alan Alda & Mary Tyler Moore win, 1st Daytime Award presentation and “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” wins 5 awards, including Cicely Tyson for Dramatic Performance.
The way the cookie crumbles. Cookie Rojas cracks a walk-off grand slam in the 11th, off Bob Reynolds, to give the Kansas City Royals a 9–5 win over the Baltimore Orioles.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 814.30 (-2.35, -0.29%).
Born:
Alicia Minshew, American actress (Kendall Hart-“All My Children”), in Plantation, Florida.
Elliott Fortune, NFL defensive end (Baltimore Ravens), in Roosevelt, New York.
History Diaries 