Chancellor Helmut Schmidt of West Germany and President Ford agreed at a meeting in Washington to work toward bringing France into the joint effort of the Western industrial nations to cope with the international energy crisis and accompanying financial problems. A West German spokesman said that Mr. Schmidt was attempting to “build a bridge” between the positions of France and the United States, particularly on the energy policy.
Some of the strongest exchanges of charges and countercharges heard during the current General Assembly session are taking place between the Soviet Union and China in the usually staid Legal Committee this week. At issue in the continuing committee debate are proposals to revise the 29‐year‐old United Nations Charter. The movement for Charter review, headed by the Philippines and backed by such advanced countries as Japan and Italy, touches on the philosophy and structure of the world organization. In essence, the advocates of reform would break the virtual monopoly on decision‐making that the five permanent members of the Security Council — the United States, the Soviet Union, China, Britain, and France — are wielding at the center of the United Nations mechanism.
The Soviet Union is adamantly opposed. Its contention, that it would be “extremely dangerous” to tamper with the Charter is widely understood to mask worries that any changes in the present Security Council structure would weaken Moscow’s ability to veto any proposed action it dislikes.
Four Irishmen accused of bombing offenses appeared at two heavily guarded court hearings in and near London while police interrogated 20 more suspects detained in countrywide roundups. Two of the men, brought before a magistrate’s preliminary hearing at Guildford, were ordered held in custody for seven days on charges stemming from a bar bombing October 5. The other two men went on trial at the Old Bailey Central Criminal Court, accused of conspiring to cause explosions.
The Italian Senate today voted its confidence in the Government of Premier Aldo Moro. The vote was 190 to 113. The approval of Mr. Moro’s program by the 322‐seat body was widely expected. A similar approval in the Chamber of Deputies on Saturday is also foreseen. The declared intention of Mr. Moro’s Government is to halt the nation’s rising inflation, now approaching a rate of 25 percent, through measures designed to reduce a balance‐of-payments deficit expected to reach $10‐billion this year.
Included in the program, which Mr. Moro said would require “many sacrifices” by Italians during the coming year, are steps aimed at restricting the consumption of costly imported goods, particularly oil. Seventy percent of Italy’s balance-of-payments deficit this year represented the bill for imported oil.
Archbishop Makarios advised Acting President Glafkcos Clerides today that he had postponed his return to Cyprus by one day and would arrive Saturday. Official sources said the delay was for technical reasons — a strike at Olympic Airlines was cited as the main factor — but it disappointed Cypriots, most of whom appear elated at the impending return of the exiled President. Archbishop Makarlos escaped from Cyprus after a pro‐Greek coup last July. Many have arrived in Nicosia in cars, buses and trucks from all over the southern half of the Island, controlled by Greek Cypriots, to be on hand for the public holiday that is to mark his arrival.
A military court in Madrid sentenced three Croatian nationalists to 12 years in prison for hijacking an airplane from Sweden to Spain two years ago. Rudolf Prskalo, 32, Nikola Lisac, 42, and Tomslav Rebrina, 32, took over a Scandinavian Airlines DC-9 in Malmoe and forced the release of six other Croatians held in a Swedish jail for killing the Yugoslav ambassador to Sweden. The hijackers freed 83 passengers, but ordered the crew to fly to Spain. The six men let out of jail later were released by Spain when it refused a Swedish request for their extradition. They are believed to have gone to Uruguay.
A proposal to free Rudolf Hess, Adolf Hitler’s one-time deputy who was convicted in 1946 of plotting and carrying out aggressive war, was killed in the West Berlin city assembly. The move was made on humanitarian grounds by a Free, Democratic Party leader, but was greeted by cries of “scandal” and “hypocrisy” in the assembly. Hess is now 80. He is the lone prisoner in Spandau Prison and is guarded by U.S., British, French and U.S.S.R. troops at an estimated cost of $400,000 a year.
“What are we going to do with the King?” said a cafe owner, as he served tiny cups of Turkish coffee. “We don’t need need him, he’s not necessary. If I vote for him now my children will live under him. I can’t vote for someone who will rule my children.” This Sunday, Greeks will decide in a national referendum whether to restore King Konstantine to the throne or establish a republic. In parliamentary elections last month, Piraeus gave the New Democracy party of Premier Konstantine Karamanlis almost exactly the same majority as he received nationwide. Now most people in this industrial port city seem to agree with the cafe owner: They don’t think they need a King. Konstantine, who is 34 years old, inherited, the throne in 1964. In April of 1967 the democratic government here was overthrown by a coup d’état. Eight months later the King tried to start a countercoup, but when it failed, he fled to Italy. In recent years he has been living near London with his wife, a Danish princess, and their three children.
Today was France’s first day since mid‐October without a strike. The wave of walkouts was started, by non‐union personnel in the sorting centers of the Paris post offices. It spread to the national postal system, which Is only now starting to get back to normal after the end of the strike Saturday. Other strikes included those of garbage collectors and railwaymen and gas and electricity workers. Yesterday, some Paris bank clerks suddenly walked off their jobs for a few hours, while taxi drivers staged a protest rally before the Finance Ministry creating a traffic jam on Rue de Rivoli, one of the city’s vital arteries. Today’s quiet on the labor front appeared to be temporary. State TV and radio personnel have threatened a new strike next Monday over a jurisdiction issue and there may be an her rail strike December 12 over wages and working conditions.
Danish Prime Minister Poul Hartling called for parliamentary elections January 9. The move was seen as a response to widespread opposition in parliament to the prime minister’s proposed one-year freeze on wages and profits.
Soviet physicist Andrei D. Sakharav led a group of about 30 dissidents in a silent demonstration in Moscow’s Pushkin Square to mark Soviet Constitution Day. The constitution, proclaimed December 5, 1936, guarantees freedom of speech and assembly. A crowd of about 200 gathered, including several dozen security agents and police, but there were no attempts to interfere.
Israeli Premier Yitzhak Rabin said today that Israel was prepared to make far‐reaching territorial compromises with the Arab nations in return for peace, but he ruled out a return to the borders that existed before the 1967 war. “Under no circumstances am I ready to return to the lines that existed prior to the Six-day War,” he told high school students in Tel Aviv. Mr. Rabin said that he would not detail the exact lines “befor the other side is ready to sit with me to make peace.” He said that Israel still hoped for a peace treaty with Syria. “But I doubt there is room for any other agreements with them besides a peace agreemet,” he said.
The newspaper Maariv reported meanwhile that Israel would propose that the ceasefire line with Egypt be frozen for several years following any second‐stage accord on military disengagement. Maariv said that the proposal would be made to Secretary of Stake Kissinger by Foreign Minister Yigal Allon when Mr. Allon visits Washington next week. The Israeli is scheduled to leave for the United States Sunday. The newspaper said in a dispatch from Washington that Mr. Allon would not carry maps detailing any new Israeli disengagement proposal with him but would discuss the depth of another Israeli withdrawal from Sinai and what Egypt would have to concede to get it. The report said: “Diplomatic sources Washington explained that in contrast to the first separation of forces agreemeat which was unlimited in time, Israel is now interested in both a period for execution of the [second] agreement and an additional period to stabilize the area before a further step is discussed. Israel wants this perlod to last several years.”
The snow‐laden roof of Tehran, Iran’s newly enlarged airport terminal caved in on the main lounge yesterday, and government officials said that 34 bodies had been recovered and as many as 30 more might still be buried in the rubble. Almost all the dead were believed to be Iranians, but airport sources said one was a German. Two Americans were reported among the injured, but their conditions were not known. Airport and hospital sources identified the Americans as Edward Alfred Kasaval, 45 years old of Detroit, and Michael Nimitz, 43, of Wisconsin. The airport was built 20 years ago. Last summer an extra passenger lounge was added to the main terminal building, and one architect, speculated today that this could have weakened the roof supports. Other officials blamed the eight inches of snow lying on the roof after Tehran’s first snowfall of the season. But one airport source said the ceiling of the main hall showed no sign of stress during the last 20 years, and that it had stood up under far heavier snowfalls. Authorities clubbed news photographers who would not stop taking pictures of the scene.
The Shah of Iran expressed his deep regret at the disaster at the airport here, and Empress Farah cancelled a banquet engagement last night to visit the scene.
A group of students have seized the remains of former U.N. Secretary General U Thant, disrupting official plans for his funeral in Rangoon, Burma, an official announcement said. The announcement said the students took the remains to the university convocation hall in Rangoon on Thursday.
Chinese Premier Chou En-lai’s health has been found worse than originally thought and he is limited to dealing with very important issues, Deputy Premier Deng Xiao-ping was quoted today as having told a visitor.
A gunman held three French diplomats hostage for five hours in the French consulate in Mexico City today before he was disarmed by police. A statement from the Interior Ministry tonight said that the gunman, 31‐year‐old Miguel Angel Torres Enriquez, seized the three diplomats, including the Consul General, Raoul Spitalier, in the hope of obtaining, a safe‐conduct pass out of the country. He was disarmed by policemen as he was being driven to the airport. His three hostages were unharmed. The Interior Ministry statement added that the assailant was one of the leaders in the murder of a millionaire industrialist, Eugenio Garza Sada, in the northern city of Monterrey in September, 1973.
Fugitive financier Robert L. Vesco went on television in his adopted home of Costa Rica to deny any wrongdoing in connection with charges in the United States that he looted $224 million from mutual funds he controlled. Vesco also is charged with making a secret $200,000 contribution to the campaign of former President Richard M. Nixon. His Costa Rica speech was in response to widely supported petitions asking for his deportation from that country.
The House Judiciary Committee completed its hearings today on the Vice-Presidential nomination of Nelson A. Rockefeller, which now seems certain to be approved by both houses of Congress.
Federal Judge John Sirica ruled that former President Richard Nixon need not testify in any way — either on the witness stand or through deposition — at the Watergate cover-up trial. He gave two main reasons: Mr. Nixon’s poor health and the kind of testimony that Mr. Nixon could be expected to give and whose value to the defendants, Judge Sirica said in a six-page opinion, “should not be unrealistically overestimated.” He noted that Mr. Nixon “has been accused, in effect, of being an accomplice of the defendants.”
Arthur Burns, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, disagreeing with the Treasury Secretary, William Simon, told Congress that it was a mistake to permit Americans to own gold starting December 31. He urged that Congress pass a pending bill to delay the date by six months, but he conceded that chances of that were slight. The diversion of funds from other investments to gold could amount “to an uncomfortably large sum,” he said.
Senator Henry M. Jackson introduced legislation today that would grant the President standby authority to impose gasoline rationing and other mandatory fuel conservation measures.
Representative Morris K. Udall, the only announced candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1976, said today that he would enter a half-dozen primaries and spend $4-million in his accelerated national campaign.
A number of the nation’s leading industrialists and businessmen interviewed prior to the annual meeting of the National Association of Manufacturers said they feared wage and price controls would be imposed by the Ford administration by the middle of next year. They said inflation and political pressures made controls increasingly likely, but made clear their opposition.
Officers of the United Mine Workers signed a new three-year labor contract with the coal industry, officially ending a 24-day miners’ strike at midnight tonight. Arnold Miller, the union’s president, said that 56 percent of the 79,495 members who had exercised their new right to accept or reject their leaders’ contract proposal had voted for it. Only a few mines were expected to try to resume production tomorrow, however. Maintenance work and safety Inspections required by Federal and state laws were likely to delay until Monday most of the mine operators’ calls for men to work. An extension of the walkout by miners opposing the settlement was reported today to be less likely than previously believed.
United Airlines, in an attempt to stop one of the sharpest declines in domestic air travel since World War II, sought government approval to introduce a new cut-rate excursion plan on February 1 that would reduce coach-class rates on most routes by 20 to 25 percent. Trans World Airlines announced that it would propose a similar plan March 15.
A fierce government‐industry dispute boiled up today over who might have been at fault in last Sunday’s airliner crash near Washington in which 92 persons were killed. The National Transportation Safety Board said that the Pilot of the Trans World Airlines plane, when cleared for a landing approach, had apparently begun an immediate descent to 1,800 feet although the plane was in an area “where the minimum en route instrument altitude was 3,400 feet.” The Air Line Pilots Association, at a news conference, assailed the safety board for what the association viewed as an implicit charge that the pilot of the doomed plane had erred.
Senior Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee reasserted their temporarily dormant power to thwart further efforts within the House to limit their authority. The House Democratic leadership, which was said by one of its members to have ordered Ways and Means Democrats to delay making committee changes until a dozen new members are seated, took the position that the incumbent committee members could do as they pleased.
The Air Line Pilots Association said that after February 1 its 32,000 members would refuse to fly passenger airplanes inside the United States carrying most types of hazardous cargo. The federal program of monitoring the air movement of dangerous materials is “totally out of control,” the union said. The ban would be applied to about 1,400 kinds of explosives, acids, gases, flammables, bacteriological agents and other items the Transportation Department has classified as hazardous. Some materials not banned are radioactive isotopes destined for medical use, dry ice and magnetic materials.
For the first time in its 50-year history the National League of Cities adopted a gun control proposal. The league, meeting in Houston, approved a 127-page urban policy program that included a plan for nationwide registration of all handguns. Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles, the league’s 1974 president, and Mayor Carlos Romero of San Juan, Puerto Rico, the newly elected 1975 president, applauded the move. A stronger proposal to ban private possession of all handguns and require the registration of rifles was rejected earlier by a league committee.
A bomb wrapped in a plain brown package exploded before dawn at a United Parcel Service center in Pittsburgh, killing one worker and injuring eight others. The package, from which wires were protruding, had been removed from a conveyor belt because the address did not match the ZIP code, police said. It was opened by Jack Metz, 38, a driver who had hoped to find an invoice with the correct address. It exploded in his face and he was killed.
A critical shortage of opium will force rationing early next year of codeine and some other pain-killing prescription drugs due to increasing worldwide demand for opium, Congress was warned. Codeine is the major derivative of opium and a representative of three crude opium importers told a Senate health subcommittee that sales in the United States this year have exceeded opium imports by more than 100%. Food and Drug Administration officials also said several other drugs were getting scarce, such as heparin, the anticoagulant used to treat former President Richard M. Nixon, and the antibiotic ampicillin.
A serious atomic power plant accident could expose the public to health risks 10 times as high as those estimated by the Atomic Energy Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency said in Washington. Commenting on the AEC’s Rasmussen Report of last August, which estimated the risks, the EPA said the study may have underestimated the health effects of escaped radiation and that it appeared too optimistic about the chances of evacuating large populations in event of an atomic power plant accident.
Musician Ravi Shankar was in the intensive care unit of Chicago’s Henrotin Hospital with a possible heart condition. Dr. Charles A. Gianasi said, however, that India’s renowned classical sitarist was “exhausted and feeling the strain of the tour but generally he is in fine shape.” Shankar, 54, has been appearing with George Harrison, the one-time Beatle, in a series of concerts.
There is no longer a key to the problem, if the problem is getting into your hotel room. Just don’t let a stranger get your number. Barron Hilton, head of Hilton Hotels Corp., has announced a new electronic lock security system, which will save around $120,000 a month in lost key charges and cut down room thefts. Just give the desk clerk your four favorite numbers. He will feed them to a computer and then you punch them out on a panel by your door.
From evidence collected by Pioneer 11 in the last few days it appears that, if the envelope of magnetically enslaved particles around Jupiter were visible from the earth, it would cover an area of the sky at least four times as large as the moon. Furthermore, the magnetosphere would be forever changing in extent and shape. Because Jupiter is the only planet, apart from the earth, known to have a magnetic field embracing such a region of trapped particles, it is hoped that analysis of it will lead to a better understanding of the earth’s own field and its magnetosphere.
The final episode of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” airs on BBC TV.
The Birmingham Americans won the first and only World Bowl, the championship game of the World Football League, defeating the Florida Blazers by a score of 22–21.
The women’s basketball team of the University of Connecticut, which would go on to win eleven NCAA championships in 22 seasons from 1995 to 2016, played its very first game, a 40 to 27 win over visiting Eastern Connecticut State University.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 587.11 (-11.53, -1.93%).
Born:
Ben McAdams, American politician (United States House of Representatives-Democrat, 2019–2021), in West Bountiful, Utah.
Charlie Batch, NFL quarterback (Detroit Lions, Pittsburgh Steelers), in Homestead, Pennsylvania.
Ken Vining, MLB pitcher (Chicago White Sox), in Decatur, Illinoois.
Stacey Lovelace, WNBA center (Seattle Storm, Minnesota Lynx, Chicago Sky, Washingotn Mystics, Atlanta Dream, Detroit Shock), in Detroit, Michigan.
Died:
Millicent Hearst (born Millicent Willson), 92, widow of William Randolph Hearst.
Henry Wadsworth, 71, American stage and film actor (“The Thin Man”, “Applause”, “Fast & Loose”).
Richard Whitney, 86, American financier, former President of the New York Stock Exchange and convicted embezzler.
Hazel Hotchkiss Wightman, CBE, 87, American tennis player (Olympics, gold medals, Doubles & Mixed Doubles, 1924; U.S. Open, women’s singles, 1909-1911, 1919).
Pietro Germi, 60, Italian actor and neo-realist comedy director (Divorce Italian Style), died of hepatitis.
Zaharia Stancu, 72, Romanian author and philosopher.
The Warriors had not even made the playoffs in the 1973-74 season, finishing above .500 but not in the top four in the conference. But this season they came out of nowhere to win it all.
History Diaries 