President Nixon hopes to stress his strong points as a leader in foreign policy when he embarks on his Middle East and Moscow journey Monday, but his impeachment problems will be awaiting him when he returns.
President and Mrs. Nixon will attend frequent formal dinner parties and probably encounter 100-degree heat on their travels to five Middle East countries this week.
A wide-ranging military and economic agreement, which both sides said “heralded an era of increasingly close cooperation,” was signed in Washington by the United States and Saudi Arabia. The agreement establishes two joint commissions, one on economic cooperation, and the other on Saudi Arabia’s military needs. It was the first agreement of its kind between the United States and an Arab country, and American officials said they hoped it would provide Saudi Arabia with incentives to increase her oil production and would serve as a model for economic cooperation between Washington and other Arab nations. The agreement was signed by Secretary of State Kissinger and Prince Fahd Ibn Abdel-Aziz, Second Deputy Premier of Saudi Arabia and a half-brother of King Faisal.
After eight days of deliberation, the Palestine National Council voted overwhelmingly in Cairo for a policy platform enabling its leaders to take part in the Geneva peace talks on the Middle East, provided what the council describes as the national rights of the Palestinian people are recognized as an issue. The vote in the 150-member council, which serves as a parliament for the Palestinian Liberation Organization, was regarded as a victory for the movement’s moderate wing led by Yasser Arafat. It was taken for granted that the Geneva conference, contrary to earlier expectations, will not convene in July. Egyptian and Arab diplomatic sources now say that the more likely date will be late December, following a summit meeting of Arab heads of state.
The Việt Cộng and South Vietnamese government agreed to resume negotiations on implementing a true ceasefire and the search for more than 1,000 missing American servicemen. The military negotiations, which are to be resumed next Tuesday, were suspended last month. There was no immediate word on similar negotiations in Paris aimed at working out a political solution for South Vietnam. The talks were suspended in mid-April. The Việt Cộng announced today they would again participate in the Saigon talks. Their announcement came a day after South Vietnam restored the rights and immunities of the Việt Cộng and North Vietnamese delegations. Spokesmen for both sides cautioned against expecting too much at the outset since the military negotiators have accomplished little in 15 months.
In Cambodia, seven persons were implicated in the deaths of two government leaders during a confrontation last Tuesday between police and students, according to an official broadcast.
After risking their lives for a decade in Indochina, a number of privately employed American helicopter pilots are expressing bitterness and resentment over a United States Government contract that requires them to fly what they term dangerous, paramilitary missions into Cambodia without extra pay and with little chance of being rescued if they go down. The pilots — most of whom have flown in Vietnam for the Army or the Marines and in Laos as part of the secret air war of the 1960s — work for Air America, the private airline financed largely by the Central Intelligence Agency, the State Department and other Government bodies.
In interviews 10 of the 35 helicopter pilots based in Saigon described flying hazardous missions from time to time in Cambodia during recent months: ferrying American military officers — often armed with grenades and rifles — into combat areas, transporting weapons and ammunition for the Cambodian Army, evacuating the wounded, and carrying high-ranking Cambodian officers and troops into besieged cities. The missions anger the pilots, mostly because they no longer receive the lucrative combat pay of earlier years. Air America, arguing that its operations were becoming purely commercial, decided last October to cut off the extras, thereby reducing pay, the pilots complain, from about $45,000 a year to $28,000.
A new series of atmospheric nuclear tests by France in the South Pacific this summer will be her last in the atmosphere, a spokesman for President Valery Giscard d’Estaing said. After the forthcoming tests, the eighth series undertaken by France in the South Pacific, all others will be conducted underground, the spokesman said. No date was given for the new tests, but the official announcement said that a zone around Mururoa atoll in French Polynesia would be closed to air and sea traffic starting Tuesday.
All three Irish hunger‐strikers in British jails ended their fast today, following the lead of the Irish Price sisters last night. Dolours Price, 23 years old, and Marion, 20, are serving 20‐year terms in Brixton Prison for their part in a fatal London car bombing last year. The three who followed their example are Hugh Feaney, Gerard Kelly and Francis Stagg. The abandonment of the hunger strikes was widely approved by Irish Republican Army spokesmen in Dublin and Belfast. The move will make it easier for the British Government to accede to the prisoners’ demand to be moved to jails nearer their homes in Northern Ireland so that relatives can visit them. Meanwhile, the body of Michael Gaughan, a hunger striker who died in a British jail on Monday, was flown to Dubin for burial.
About 300 young demonstrators from the extreme left staged the first public protest against Portugal’s new government Saturday over the arrest of a Maoist-line editor. The marchers called for the release of Jose Luis Saldanha Sanches, 29, arrested Friday after publishing an article calling on soldiers and sailors in Africa to desert.
Government leaders today continued emergency talks on Italy’s deepening financial crisis, but political conflicts delayed urgently needed measures to pull the nation back from the brink of insolvency. The two major parties in Premier Mariano Rumor’s Cabinet — his own Christian Democrats and the Socialists — disagreed on economic and social strategy. The majority of the Christian Democratic party wants to fight inflation through tight curbs on bank credit for private business, state‐owned enterprises and local governments. The Socialist party opposes credit restrictions on the ground that they would lead to mass unemployment within a few months. Many business concerns are already in trouble because of cash‐flow problems.
About 1,200 demonstrators eluded riot police in Geneva today to invade the grounds of the Palais des Nations, European center of the United Nations, and replace on a flag pole the blue and white banner of the world organization with a red flag. The demonstrators were protesting against the presence of a Chilean delegation at the general assembly of the 125‐member International Labor Organization, a United Nations specialized agency, that is holding its annual session here. However, the assembly had already adjourned for the weekend before the demonstrators surprised the police stationed at the principal entrances, getting in through an unguarded side gate.
Exiled Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn blames the vast system of forced labor camps in Russia at the feet of Lenin, the hallowed saint of the Communist system, in the second volume of his “Gulag Archipelago.”
Six students celebrated the end of their exams today by scaling the 960-foot Eiffel Tower, but police gave them a summons for making the climb without permission. The students, all experienced Alpinists, reached the summit after a 90-minute climb in three roped groups of two. Police were waiting for them when they reached the ground.
The Earl and Countess of Donoughmore, who were kidnapped by gunmen from their country mansion last Tuesday, were found alive and well in Dublin’s Phoenix Park during the night, police sources said. The 71‐year‐old Earl and his 68‐year‐old wife were found after days of mounting concern for their safety. The two had been bundled into a car by three gunmen who invaded their home, Knocklofty House in County Tipperary southwest of Dublin. There was speculation that the two had been held captive by the Irish Republican Army in a plan to use them as hostages against the release of I.R.A. prisoners on hunger strikes in British jails.
Jules Leger, the Governor General of Canada, suffered a stroke while dining at University of Sherbrooke and would be incapacitated for six months. During Leger’s illness, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, Bora Laskin, performed the ceremonial duties of the Governor General as the Administrator of the Government of Canada.
All 44 people aboard Aerolíneas TAO Flight 514 were killed in Colombia when the Vickers Viscount 785 crashed into a mountainside during its approach to Cúcuta after departing from Bucaramanga. Metal fatigue caused the left tailplane and left elevator of the 16-year-old aircraft to fall off at an altitude of 7,000 feet (2,100 m).
In a move expected to increase the price of all aluminum products, Jamaica has quadrupled the money it charges foreign companies to mine bauxite, aluminum’s raw material. Senators in the Caribbean island nation, the world’s largest bauxite-producing country, approved the higher charges on Friday. The House of Representatives passed them Tuesday and they will take effect after the formality of an approval by the governor general.
Army units swept the Portuguese African territory of Mozambique today, arresting members of the disbanded but once much‐feared security police. The military command said that the action had been under way since this morning and that more than, 200 former members of the security police had been taken to Machava Prison. It was there that hundreds of political prisoners were detained by the security police before the Lisbon coup of April 25.
When the Federal Bureau of Investigation was told to stop the 17 so-called “national security” wiretaps on newsmen and officials that began in 1969, that order came from Henry Kissinger’s National Security Council office, according to highly reliable sources. The sources said that specific “turn-off” orders were telephoned to the FBI as late as February, 1971, when the last eight wiretaps were stopped by General Alexander Haig, who at that time was a deputy of Mr. Kissinger. These new allegations, which were confirmed by the New York Times with officials deeply involved in the wiretaps, contradict Mr. Kissinger’s testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last fall.
Six times in this second year of Watergate, voters have elected congressmen in normally Republican districts and five times they have elected Democrats. The Republicans, who are trying again, say this time they’ll stay independent of the White House.
Authorities appeared no closer Saturday to finding Patricia Hearst and her Symbionese Liberation Army associates despite receiving a tape from the trio of fugitives. There were hints in the message from the three, which was delivered to a Los Angeles radio station yesterday, that they might soon reappear in some dramatic way to reinforce the bold language of the tape. Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation said that the United States Attorney’s office had been asked to subpoena the original tape, which the station, KPFK, refused to surrender to the authorities. The recording by Miss Hearst and William and Emily Harris established that their main concern was not merely to hide after the shootout with the police on May 17 in Los Angeles in which six members of the so‐called Symbionese Liberation Army died. The three S.L.A. members stated repeatedly in the tape that they were willing to die in a revolutionary struggle that they said they believed would sweep the land.
The Bank of America in San Francisco, the world’s largest commercial bank, announced the settlement of a class action suit brought on behalf of its women employees, which a bank official said represents “a breakthrough for women” as well as having vast personnel ramifications throughout the banking industry. The settlement will provide an estimated $10 million a year in additional wages for women (73 percent of the bank’s 54,000 employees are women), and increase the overall proportion of its women officers to 40 percent by the end of 1978. The agreement contains a provision for a $3.75 million trust fund that the bank will establish for women employees for training, education, travel, sabbatical leaves and other “self-development” programs.
The Krupp Foundation, which controls the Krupp industrial complex in West Germany, has given $2 million to Harvard University toward “the strengthening of relations between America and Europe.” The gift was announced by Harvard. Half of the income from the gift will be used to establish a new chair in European studies for a senior professor. The rest will support seven or eight graduate students, for whom fellowship money has become quite scarce in recent years as the focus of American political and scholarly interest has shifted to Asia.
A tentative settlement was announced in the week-long nationwide strike by 110,000 workers in the men’s and boy’s tailored clothing industry. The accord was announced in Washington following three days of intensive bargaining.
The price of farm land almost anywhere in the country is soaring like an overheated balloon. This week, the land and buildings on a 600‐acre grain farm anywhere near the affluent town of Nevada in central Iowa would cost at least $480,000. That amount, for about the smallest farm on which anyone here could survive, is about 30 per cent above the price two years ago and 100 per cent more than a debacle ago. It would cost at least $70,000 more for the machinery to till and harvest the land. And still to be purchased would be seed, fertilizer and gasoline, the last two costing about twice what they did last year.
Two armed men hijacked an armored Wells‐Fargo truck tonight in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, tied up the driver and escaped with about $600,000 in cash and checks, the police said. A spokesman for the Broward County sheriff’s office said the driver was later found unharmed but handcuffed inside the truck, which was abandoned at the New York Yankee’s spring training park. Witnesses said the truck had been picking up receipts at one of the area’s largest furniture stores. Two other employes of the Wells‐Fargo Armored Service Corporation told the police that they had been inside the store and that when they went out, the truck was gone.
Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley was released from the hospital Saturday after undergoing surgery six days ago to correct an obstructed artery in his neck. Daley, 72, walked unassisted from Rush Presbyterian St. Luke’s Hospital and told reporters he felt “great.” He was admitted a month ago after suffering what his doctors described as a small stroke. The surgery was performed to remove fatty deposits from an artery in the left side of his neck, lessening the chances of a serious stroke. A spokesman for the mayor said Daley will rest for several weeks at home before returning to his job at City Hall.
Florida’s Board of Regents adopted a plan last week to improve the racial mix of nine state universities. The plan includes a lowering of entrance requirements for some freshmen at four predominantly white schools to attract more blacks to them and a “bonus” offering to white students to enroll at predominantly black Florida A. & M. universities. The board also voted “relocation incentives” of up to $10,000 for any of A. & M.’s 260 black, professors who volunteer to move to a predominantly white school or to any of the latter’s white professors who agree to transfer to A. & M.
The board also mandated that all schools make “strong efforts” whenever possible to replace faculty members who leave the system with a man or woman of the opposite race. The adjustment in entrance requirements would involve 10 percent of entering freshmen (a total of about 1,000) at University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida Technological University at Orlando and the University of South Florida at Tampa. They now require a minimum score of 300 on Florida’s 12th Grade Aptitude Test. Under the new policy, one in every 10 applicants will be admitted with scores below that level. A. & M. already accepts students who score under 300.
An outbreak of 36 tornadoes, at least 18 of them F2 or higher, killed 22 people. Of the dead, 12 lived in Drumright, Oklahoma and six more in Emporia, Kansas. Tornadoes and flash floods smashed through Oklahoma and Kansas and more than 12 inches of rain pounded Arkansas yesterday, killing at least 16 persons and injuring several hundred. Oklahoma’s Governor David Hall prepared requests for disaster aid for his state. Tulsa, the state’s second largest city, was hit by several tornadoes yesterday. Eight persons died in tornadoes and floods in the state, with five victims in the town of Drumright between Oklahoma City and Tulsa. Another tornado at Emporia, Kansas, destroyed all 20 stores in the Flint Hills Shopping Center, then hit a nursing home and a mobile home park. Five persons were killed, all at the trailer park.
Jon Pertwee made his last appearance as “Doctor Who” in the final episode of “Planet of the Spiders” and was replaced by Tom Baker.
Keyboardist Rick Wakeman quits rock group “Yes” (for the first time).
The Coupe de France, championship of the knockout tournament of French soccer football, was won by AS Saint-Étienne, 2 to 1, over AS Monaco, before 45,813 spectators at the Parc des Princes stadium in Paris. Saint-Étienne had finished in first place in Division I of the Ligue de Football Professionnel during the regular season, with a record of 23 wins, 9 draws and 6 losses.
In the U.S., the rules committee of the NCAA approved a new rule of automatic disqualification for any athlete who made a false start in a college track and field race. The move came on the last day of the annual NCAA outdoor track and field championships and was prompted by the increasing problem of athletes moving forward before the start of a race.
Miguel Rivera aboard Little Current wins the 106th Belmont Stakes in 2:29.2. Little Current of John Galbreath’s Darby Dan Farm swept down the stretch at Belmont Park yesterday with the force of a tidal wave to take the 106th running of the Belmont Stakes. Under the confident and competent urging of the Puerto Rican rider, Miguel Rivera, Little Current came from next‐to‐last obscurity in the field of nine to take the 1½‐mile race by seven lengths from Thomas Nichols’s Jolly Johu, who had the better of Cannonade by a nose.
Mike Lum’s 5th-inning grand slam, off Steve Rogers, is the difference as Atlanta tops the Expos, 5–3.
At Comiskey, Wilbur Wood wins his 10th as the White Sox belt the Red Sox, 13–6. Second baseman Ron Santo helps with a grand slam.
Born:
Lauren Burns, Australian taekwondo competitor and 2000 Olympic gold medalist in the women’s 49-kilogram competition; in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Gabe Northern, NFL linebacker (Buffalo Bills, Minnesota Vikings), in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Joe Cummings, NFL linebacker (San Diego Chargers, Buffalo Bills), in Missoula, Montana.
History Diaries 