President Ford firmly believes there is a “high likelihood of war in the Middle East” unless the United States can get Israel and the Arabs to negotiate further military disengagements.
Leonid Zamyatin, a Kremlin spokesman, warned that the Soviet Union might re-examine its economic commitments to the United States in retaliation against what the Russians view as discriminatory provisions of the trade reform bill recently enacted by Congress. He charged that Congress had violated the 1972 accord providing for equal-trade status between the two countries by attaching qualifications that linked the American extension of lower import tariffs to a policy of freer Soviet emigration. A Soviet journalist writing in the newspaper Sovietskaya Rossiya indicated that Russia might retaliate against U.S. business firms for restrictions written into the recently approved trade bill by Congress. Commenting on the trade agreement the writer said: “… the failure of one of the parties to honor its commitments cannot but affect the commitments assumed by the other party under a series of commercial and financial agreements.” Congress wrote the restrictions into the trade bill to pressure Russia into allowing freer emigration of Jews to Israel.
When it comes to making love, Soviet men and women “show staggering ignorance on questions of the physiology of man and woman,” according to Dr. A. I. Belkin in a sex-advice article in Zdorovye magazine quoted in Moscow. The advice included the importance of sexual foreplay and the role of love and understanding in overcoming such complaints as frigidity and impotence. Sex education is all but nonexistent in the Soviet Union. The doctor also appealed to men to take more of a share in household chores, giving wives more time to rest from domestic drudgery.
“The German Jewish Secretary of State of America is making suspicious trips throughout the world for the purpose of destroying Cyprus. Someone should be found to put a violent end to his attempts.” One day recently, Athens newspapers carried this declaration by Bishop Chrysostomos of Piraeus. In the present mood in Greece and Cyprus, the view of the Greek Orthodox metropolitan caused surprise only by its open invitation to do bodily harm to Henry A. Kissinger. In less violent terms, the Bishop’s sentiments find their echo in cocktail party chatter in Nicosia and Athens and come up easily in conversations between Americans and Greek and Cypriot acquaintances.
Anti‐American feeling in Greece has its roots in the common belief that the United States was responsible for the military coup in Greece seven years ago. That sentiment grew strong under the military junta and weighed heavily on Cyprus. Now a new element has been added. The element is Israel, depicted as the chief motivating force of American foreign policy in this region. American bases in Greece are presented as intended primarily to support Israel, and the United States is said to have fomented strife in Cyprus to extend its bases to that nonaligned island. The Greeks’ traditional tendency to consider their nation helpless victim of sinister foreign machinations has now been buttressed by the Arab‐Israeli conflict. It has supplied the motivation that was so far lacking for the conviction that the United States alone was responsible for the 1967 coup and all that followed.
The death toll in a coal mine explosion at Lievin, France, climbed to 42 as union leaders called for increased security measures to prevent similar disasters. Leon Delfosse, national president of the mining section of the CGT Union, said miners in the Lens area would stop work until after the funeral of their colleagues Tuesday. Miners throughout the Pas-de-Calais area and northern France also would stop work Tuesday, he said.
The runaway member of British Parliament, John Stonehouse, was released from detention in Melbourne, Australia, but there was no official word on whether the government would allow him to remain in Australia. The minister for immigration said that Stonehouse’s release was authorized because as a member of the British House of Commons he has a right to enter Australia without an entry permit. He has said that he fled Britain to escape pressures of blackmail and business failure.
The Portuguese Government has decided to solve the problem of a sudden surplus of students trying to enter college this year by canceling first-year courses at the country’s three universities.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ismail Fahmy and the country’s new war minister arrived in Moscow for a meeting with Soviet leaders amid indications the Kremlin may be changing its mind about Leonid I. Brezhnev’s trip to the Middle East next month. Cairo reports said that the sudden trip by Mr. Fahmy and General Mohammed Abdel Ghany el‐Gamasy, who was named War Minister after the death Wednesday of Ahmed Ismail, was the result of an urgent invitation Thursday, from. Mr. Brezhnev, the Soviet leader, to President Anwar el‐Sadat of Egypt. Tass, the Soviet news agency, said the visitors were met by Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko and Defense Minister Andrei Grechko. Tass and the rest of the Soviet press have given low-key treatment to the visit, and all mention of Brezhnev’s scheduled trip to Egypt, Syria and Iraq has vanished from Soviet newspapers.
An Ethiopian Government delegation led by Information Minister Mikael Imru began talks in the troubled northern city of Asmara today with more than 400 Eritrean. representatives. Informed sources in Asmara, the Eritrean capital, said that the discussions would continue through Sunday. They said that the meeting centered on the Eritrean situation following urban guerrilla attacks this week in Asmara and the recent dispatch of Ethiopian army reinforcements to Eritrea. The Eritrean Liberation Front has been fighting a war of secession against Addis Ababa for the last 12 years.
A wave of speculation has stirred New Delhi that prime Minister Indira Gandhi may call national elections a year ahead of schedule.
A 6.2 magnitude earthquake in northern Pakistan killed 5,300 people, and injured 17,000, as well as destroying 4,400 homes. The quake struck in the late afternoon at 5:11 local time (12:11 UTC) and was concentrated in the village of Pattan in the Jammu and Kashmir region.
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, leader of Bangladesh, proclaimed a state of emergency and directed the Jatiya Rakkhi Bahini, the nation’s paramilitary “National Defense Force”, to arrest suspected terrorists and leaders of opposition political parties. Troops and paramilitary forces moved swiftly into strategic positions in cities and towns in Bangladesh today after a state of emergency was declared throughout the country. A proclamation Issued by President Mohammadullah said that extreme measures were necessary to curb internal subversive, lawlessness and political killings. A statement issued later by the Government said: “A group of people who opposed the war of liberation have since been active in various subversive activities and they have been joined by others who failed to attain power by constitutional means.” Bangladesh won independence from Pakistan three years ago after the brief war between India and Pakistan. In recent months the new nation has suffered from floods, famine and rising prices. According to the Prime Minister, the situation has been aggravated by underground elements trying to disturb the peace by killings. At least six members of Parliament have been killed by unknown assailants during the last year, and Sheik Mujib said that 3,000 members of his Awami League party had been slain, apparently for political motives. There have also been bombings and arson.
A Laotian Government delegation headed by anti‐Communist and pro‐Communist ministers today visited the town of Ban Houay Sai on the northwestern border of Laos to negotiate with mutinous soldiers who have been holding the town since before Christmas. An official source in the Laotian royal capital of Luang Prabang said that the delegation was led by Interior Minister Pheng Phongsavan of the anti-Communist “Vientiane side” and Information Minister Tiao Souk Vongsak, a member of the pro‐Communist Pathet Lao. The mutineers had demanded a visit by is mixed delegation, the first to be sent to deal with trouble in territory controlled by the anti‐Communist side. The mutineers had made pro-Pathet Lao demands and have also asked for a relaxation of the ban on opium growing.
Five thousand Thai students gathered at Thammasat University last night to demand punishment or exile for former Premier Thanom Kittikachorn, who defied a government has slipped into the country early Friday with the aid of a retired air marshal.
Two and a half years after North Korea and South Korea announced that they would begin political talks, relations between the two neighbors have largely reverted to their former state of hostility. The meetings have grown increasingly rare and have bogged down in sterile exchanges. There has been a small but perceptible increase in military clashes in the last year, and angry propaganda attacks have been reinstituted despite a no-slander pledge made when the talks were disclosed in July, 1972. In the last few weeks there have been signs that North Korea may be trying to downgrade the talks even further.
About 300 disabled war veterans stormed a branch of South Korea’s major opposition party and beat up politicians and newsmen because of a reported remark by a politician that earlier protests were “stupidity by the disabled.” The raid was on the branch of the New Democratic Party in Taegu. It was the second in two days over the alleged remark. It was not clear who made the remark or when.
A massive oil leak from a seaside petrochemical complex in western Japan caused over $72 million in damage to facilities and marine resources, officials of Mitsubishi Oil Co. reported. An estimated 18,000 barrels of oil flowed into the scenic Inland Sea, polluting fish, edible seaweed and other marine resources December 19. The pollution may affect the marine life for the next four to five years. Meanwhile, nearly 1,000 patrol vessels and fishing boats were mobilized to take part in an operation to recover oil.
Pieces of twisted metal hang grotesquely from shattered buildings. Sheets of corrugated iron are draped over telephone poles. Along the main pipeline into town, some of Darwin, Australia’s remaining residents are bathing and washing clothes with little concern for modesty. More than 16,000 people have been evacuated from the city, which was smashed Christmas Day by a cyclone that had Winds of up to 160 miles an hour. Parts of the city, where Shattered apartment blocks stand stark and empty, have the eerie atmosphere of ghost towns. There has been some looting, according to the police, and officers, including some brought in from other areas, can be seen patrolling the streets with shotguns. At the airport thousands of homeless Darwin residents waited in the stifling heat for flights out, many of them staring, glassy‐eyed, like people in a state of shock.
Twenty-four people, including 21 U.S. tourists, were killed when their plane crashed on takeoff from Tikal, an archeological center in the jungles of northern Guatemala, a spokesman for the Guatemala air force said. The plane had been hired by a travel agency to take the tourists to the Tikal ruins but the name of the airline was not yet known. The spokesman was unable to give the names of the dead tourists.
A band of guerrillas with automatic weapons shot their way into a party for the United States Ambassador to Nicaragua at a residence in Managua. They killed two policemen, wounded several other persons, and took about 25 people hostage, but the American Ambassador, 59-year-old Turner Shelton, had left the party before the attack. Three leading Nicaraguan diplomats were among the hostages, 13 of whom were released.
The Senegalese marxist group Reenu-Rew founds the political movement And-Jëf at a clandestine congress.
President Ford is planning to propose some fundamental changes in economic policy in his State of the Union message Jan. 20, the White House press secretary announced at the end of a four-and-a-half-hour meeting between the President and his advisers at Vail, Colorado. Ron Nessen, the press secretary, said that Mr. Ford told his economic advisers that he intended to take a “hard and tough” approach with “no gimmicks.”
President Ford is being urged to veto a bill that his advisers said would add 6 cents to the price of a half-gallon of milk and 12 cents to the price of a pound of cheese. The bill, sponsored by Senator Hubert H. Humphrey (D-Minnesota), would require that the federal government raise the level at which it supports the price of manufacturing-grade milk by about 18%. It has been estimated that the bill would cost consumers $1 billion next year.
Chief Justice Warren Burger, in a year-end statement in which he overcame his reservations about making direct legislative proposals to Congress, called on Congress to revitalize the federal court system by increasing judges’ salaries and establishing 63 new judgeships to help handle the steadily increasing judicial workload. He also urged congressional action on a plan to establish some sort of new federal court that would relieve pressure on the Supreme Court by deciding less significant cases than the high court hears. Burger asked Congress to increase the pay of federal judges and to increase their number, adding 52 new district judges to the present 454 and 11 circuit judges to the current 97. Burger said the judges’ pay had not risen in nearly six years. At present district judges earn $40,000 a year, circuit judges $42,500 and associate justices of the Supreme Court $60,000. The chief justice said district judges had handled 139,159 cases in fiscal 1974, compared to 120,000 four years earlier. Circuit judges disposed of 16,436 cases, 87% more than six years earlier.
More persons moved out of the nation’s largest cities than moved in during the first three years of the ’70s, according to the Census Bureau. The nation’s 15 largest metropolitan areas lost 2% of their population during the period because of migration to suburbs and smaller cities and towns. However, because birth rates exceeded migration losses, the cities have maintained about the same populations, the bureau said. Greater Los Angeles had the sharpest drop from migration among the top 15, losing 3.8% of its population. Greater Los Angeles’ population fell to 6.945 million from 7.042 million and the city fell to No. 3 behind New York and Chicago.
The Federal Immigration and Naturalization Service has been overwhelmed by a wave of illegal aliens into the New York City metropolitan area, whose number is officially estimated at more than one million. Enforcement of immigration laws has virtually been paralyzed. An investigation by the New York Times finds that, through individual and organized fraud, counterfeiting, falsification of travel and identification papers and smuggling, illegal aliens have mounted what immigration authorities call a “silent invasion” of New York and North Jersey.
The Central Intelligence Agency spied on at least four U.S. public officials, including Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, Time magazine said. It said the others were Rep. Claude D. Pepper (D-Florida), former Rep. Cornelius Gallagher (D-New Jersey) and the late Sen. Edward Long (D-Missouri). Time alleged that illegal CIA domestic spying came about in part because the FBI regularly refused to follow up CIA requests for surveillance of American citizens. The CIA was interested in the four U.S. officials because of their contacts with foreign officials and firms, the magazine said.
A former domestic agent for the Central Intelligence Agency, recounting the details of his undercover career, says New York City became a prime CIA domestic spying target during the late 1960’s because it was considered “a big training ground” for radical activities in the United States. He told the New York Times that more than 25 CIA agents were assigned to the city at the height of antiwar activity. He also said that his involvement began with the advent of the Black Panther movement in 1967 and the increase of antiwar dissent during the last months of the Johnson administration. “And then it started to snowball from there,” he said.
The Bethlehem Steel Corporation, the nation’s No. 2 steel producer, announced a partial rollback of price increases, effective Monday. Soon after announcing its price increases last Monday, Bethlehem learned that the United States Steel Company, responding to government pressure, was rolling back some of its previously announced increases. Bethlehem said today that it would not go ahead with the scheduled price increases on tin plate and steel rails, but that price increases of about 4 percent on plate steel and about 6 percent on structural steel would take effect on Monday as scheduled. About 20% of the increases in the price of steel that were to go into effect Monday have been rolled back by Bethlehem Steel Corp. The company said it would comply with a request from the Council on Wage and Price Stability not to increase prices again before June 1, 1975.
The Atomic Energy Commission and the industry it nurtured are unable to account for thousands of pounds of nuclear materials that could be fashioned into crude nuclear bombs, according to experts in business, universities and the commission. Although officials say there are now no unresolved cases of theft, the amounts of highly enriched‐uranium and plutonium that cannot be accounted for means that the A.E.C. is unable to give positive assurances that the missing materials have not fallen into the hands of a terrorist group or hostile governments. The experts say that a large share of the material is believed to be missing only in the sense that it is imbedded in processing machinery or lost in the crude statistical methods used to keep track of the material. But they note that, with only 40 pounds of enriched uranium or 12 pounds of plutonium, a small group of people could make a nuclear weapon capable of killing thousands.
The schedule for building the nation’s first demonstration “breeder” nuclear power plant in Tennessee by 1982 should not be relaxed as some have urged, high officials of the Atomic Energy Commission concluded after reviewing the commission’s breeder program last fall.
A seaman was wounded when a bomb was hurled onto the Soviet cruise ship Maxim Gorki while it was docked in San Juan, Puerto Rico. His injuries were reported as minor. The ship left port without releasing an estimate of damages. A group of Cuban exiles took responsibility for the blast.
Fires killed about 11,600 persons across the nation during 1974, 100 fewer than in 1973, the National Fire Protection Association reported in Boston. Property worth $3.7 billion went up in flames, a 22% increase over the previous year. The deadliest fire killed 24 persons June 30 when a discotheque burned at Port Chester, New York. The costliest fire wiped out a forest area and part of Cloudcroft, New Mexico, April 9, with damages put at $32 million.
If the Salton Sea is to become less salty — it’s already more saline than the ocean — the job will have to be paid for by the state of California or some local agency. Congressman Victor R. Vesey (R-California) said he has learned that Secretary of the Interior Rogers C. B. Morton has strongly recommended against any federal funding of the proposed $58 million, 29-mile impoundment dike which supposedly would reduce the salt content of the inland sea. According to an ecological study, the salinity level of the sea will reach 40 parts per million by 1976, which will kill all fish within five years.
In a 106 to 89 loss to the Atlanta Hawks, Elmore Smith of the Los Angeles Lakers had an unusual performance in a game where he made only one of 11 free throw attempts. He missed three consecutive shots from the free throw line (under the now defunct “three to make two” rule in the NBA at the time), all three of which failed to hit anything but the floor.
The Texas Tech Red Raiders and the Vanderbilt Commodores played to a 6–6 tie in the Peach Bowl in Atlanta. Neither team scored in the first quarter. Vanderbilt led 3–0 at halftime thanks to a 31-yard field goal kicked with ten minutes left in the second quarter. With three minutes left in the third quarter the Red Raiders drove to the Vanderbilt 16 yard line but only got 3 points out of the drive on a 26-yard field goal. Texas Tech then attempted another field goal after a Vanderbilt fumble but the attempt was blocked. In the fourth quarter Vanderbilt retook the lead, 6–3, after a 26-yard field goal. Texas Tech responded with a 35-yard field goal with two minutes left in the game. Vanderbilt could not turn its final possession into a score and the game ended in a 6–6 tie. Texas Tech finished with 19 first downs to Vanderbilt’s 10 and with 306 yards of rushing offense to Vanderbilt’s 140.
In the Sun Bowl in El Paso, Texas, the Mississippi State Bulldogs defeated the North Carolina Tar Heels 26–24. On the first play, Terry Vitrano ran for 55 yards, which set the tone for the rest of the game. Terry Vitrano rushed for 164 yards on 20 carries with the winning touchdown en route to being named MVP of the game. His teammate Walter Packer ran for 183 yards on 24 attempts, for two touchdowns. The 455 yards of rushing by the Bulldogs established a new Sun Bowl record. Vitrano scored the winning points on a 2-yard plunge with 3:41 remaining after the two teams had traded the lead throughout the fourth quarter.
In the Fiesta Bowl, played at Tempe, Arizona, the Oklahoma State Cowboys defeated the BYU Cougars 16–6. A shoulder injury to BYU quarterback Gary Sheide late in the first quarter led to a defensive battle. After completing four of five passes for 43 yards and leading the Cougars to two field goals, he was knocked out of the game, hit from behind by Cowboy defensive lineman Phil Dokes. Oklahoma State quickly took advantage, as Tony Buck returned an interception of BYU backup Mark Giles to the Cougar 26-yard line. Three plays later, Kenny Walker took a pitch and raced around the left end for a twelve-yard touchdown run to lead by a point at halftime. Oklahoma State scored again in the third quarter on a 42-yard field goal by Abby Daigle to take a 10–6 lead. With under ten minutes left in the game, BYU began a long drive from their own two. Giles marched his club all the way to the OSU 28 on short passes and runs, but turned the ball over on downs when a fourth down pass fell incomplete. The Cowboys then took control of the ball and clock and scored with 1:14 remaining on a forty-yard halfback pass play from Leonard Thompson to Gerald Bain. Walker finished with 34 yards rushing and was named the offensive player of the game; Dokes took the defensive honor.
None of the six teams in these bowl games were ranked in the Top 20 but were invited to the postseason games because of winning records.
Randy White of Maryland blocked a punt to start a second‐half comeback today that gave the East a 16–14 victory over the West in the 50th annual college football Shrine game. Mike Franckowiak of Central Michigan provided the winning points with a 32‐yard field goal with 4 minutes 35 seconds left. The East trailed at halftime, 14–0, but struck back with two unusual touchdowns and closed the gap to 14–13 early in the final quarter. White, a defensive tackle, started the comeback when he blocked a punt by Skip Boyd of Washington. The ball was deflected into the arms of an East linebacker, Terry McClowry of michigan State, who ran 16 yards for a touchdown. After David Brown of Michigan intercepted a pass by Steve, Bartkowski of California and returned the ball 36 yards, the East drove 35 yards for its second touchdown. Brad Davis of Louisiana State scored on a 10‐yard run, scooping the ball off the ground after the quarterback, Dennis Franklin of Michigan, fumbled the snap from center. Franckowiak missed the extra‐point attempt on Davis’s touchdown early in the fourth quarter, but he came through with the winning field goal, which was set up by an interception of another Bartkowski pass.
Born:
Rob Niedermayer, Canadian NHL centre and left wing (NHL Champions, Stanley Cup-Anaheim, 2007; Florida Panthers, Calgary Flames, Anaheim Ducks, New Jersey Devils, Buffalo Sabres), in Cassiar, British Columbia, Canada.
Died:
Stephen Hayes, 71, Irish republican who served as the Irish Republican Army’s chief of staff from 1939 to 1941, known for preparing Plan Kathleen, a plan for Nazi Germany to invade Northern Ireland in 1940.
Hiralal Shastri, 75, Indian politician and the first Chief Minister of the state of Rajasthan, from 1949 to 1951.
Edwin Eugene Aldrin Sr., 78, U.S. Army aviator and officer, father of astronaut Buzz Aldrin.
Paul Dixon (born Gregory Schleier), 56, American television personality and talk show host, of a heart ailment.
Giuseppe Dozza, 73, Italian Communist politician who was Mayor of Bologna from 1956 to 1966.
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