South Vietnamese Government forces met heavy resistance today to their effort to recapture a strategic mountain 55 miles northwest of here, according to reports from the field. On the third day of the battle, it was reported, North Vietnamese antiaircraft fire drove back more than 20 helicopters that tried to land additional reinforcements on Black Lady Mountain, or Núi Bà Đen. According to the reports, from Tây Ninh city, a provincial capital below the slopes of the 3,300‐foot mountain, the Communist forces also fired nearly 200 rocket and mortar shells into government infantry and artillery positions at the mountain’s base. The reports said that intense bombardment by South Vietnamese bombers, helicopter gunships and artillery failed to dislodge the North Vietnamese, who are dug into heavily fortified positions. The mountain base fell to the North Vietnamese on January 6.
Continued fighting in South Vietnam has displaced 1.4 million new refugees in the two years since the Vietnam ceasefire agreement was signed, a Senate subcommittee said today. New refugees in 1974 numbered 594,000, and 43,000 civilians were admitted to South Vietnamese hospitals as war-related casualties, according to the Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee on refugees and escapees. The subcommittee estimated that 3.3 million people in Cambodia, more than half the total population, were in refugee status at the end of 1974 and that another 60,000 were displaced in fighting during the first three weeks of 1975. In releasing the report, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, the subcommittee chairman, criticized President Ford’s new requests to Congress for $300‐million additional military aid to South Vietnam and $220‐million for Cambodia. He said it would “fuel the war.”
A middle‐aged woman squatted in the middle of Trương Minh Ký Street as a pack of teenagers, brandishing sticks and hurling bricks, charged a nearby police barricade. In the fracas, she was hurt and her blouse was torn. A Roman Catholic who fled North Vietnam in 1954, she said she had a soldier husband and 10 children. Her husband is stationed far from Saigon, and he is so poorly paid that he can send home almost no money. A daughter married a soldier, she said, but he, too, is far away and poor. The woman’s oldest son was just discharged from the army, minus a leg. Another son was drafted, but she has not heard from him in months. “I came here today ready to die,” she said. “You can see some of my sons there. Maybe they, too, are ready to die.“
South Vietnam is having domestic unrest, and there is little doubt that the revived opposition to President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu is fueled by the disastrous state of the economy. Years of war and American subsidies grotesquely distorted South Vietnam’s economy, with the urban population rising from 15 percent in 1960 to about 45 percent today. Now the subsidies are being cut back by the American Congress, while the war is getting hotter. Inflation reached a punishing 65 percent in 1973. It dropped to about 40 per cent this year, thanks to a leveling off in the price of imported commodities and a tight monetary policy. But the lower inflation rate also reflects a stagnation of the domestic economy. No one really knows how many “unemployed” there are in South Vietnam. An official estimates that half the men of Đà Nẵng, the country’s second largest city, are out of work.
Cambodian Government forces killed 155 insurgents in fighting around Phnom Penh yesterday and today, the military command in Phnom Penh announced.
For the second time in three days the Communist grip on the vital Mekong River supply route was broken when the tanker Vira, carrying gasoline for civilian use, breached the rebel blockade and docked at Phnom Penh. Another tanker reportedly was hit by rocket fire but was continuing toward the capital. Six barges also were making their way up the river.
President Ford hopes to decide soon on forming a new government panel to examine the situation with American GIs missing in action in Southeast Asia. A White House spokesman said that Air Force Brigadier General Richard L. Lawson, Mr. Ford’s military assistant, conferred with the President and later relayed his intentions to a gathering of several hundred MIA family members in Washington.
A United States survey made public today showed that 136 nations spent about $241-billion on defense in 1973, but that the growth of world military spending has appeared to be slowing down in recent years. The survey by the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency also reported a continuing rise in world arms trade, spurred largely by the United States and the Soviet Union. The worldwide export of arms totaled $8.7‐billion in 1973, contrasted with $4.4‐billion in 1963. Of the total arms trade, the United States had $4.7‐billion in exports, the Soviet Union $2.4‐billion, France $540‐million and Britain $315‐million, the agency said.
The major oil-exporting countries, whose Ministers of Oil, Finance and Foreign Affairs have been meeting in Algiers, agreed to hold a meeting there of chiefs of state in about five weeks, and they postponed until then any decisions on negotiations with oil consumers. “We have agreed to a summit meeting,” said Ahmed Zaki Yemeni, Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Petroleum, as he left a closed session of the conference of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
A band of extreme leftists, shouting “Death to the fascists,” broke up a right-wing party congress in Porto, Portugal, after battles with police in Which 15 persons were reported injured, according to witnesses. They reported the leftists — a mixed group of Maoists, Trotskyites and anarchists — broke into a hall in the country’s second largest city where the Center Democratic Party was meeting and disrupted the meeting. Several cars were set on fire.
At least 25,000 students, their left fist clenched, and chanting anti-American slogans, marched through Istanbul today during the funeral of a leftist youth. No injuries were reported. It was the city’s biggest student rally since 1971 when martial law was proclaimed in Turkey’s major cities to reverse the mounting student-led unrest that involved kidnappings, murders and bank robberies. The students marched today after ending a siege at Istanbul University. The university was closed indefinitely yesterday after students staged a sit-in to publicize what they called the “growing tide of unprovoked armed raids by Fascist elements.” Rival left-wing and right-wing students have been fighting with firearms and sticks on Turkish campuses recently. Two youths have been killed in the unrest and several hundred injured.
Despite Yugoslavia’s proclaimed policy of “nonalignment,” the stridently anti-American tone of the country’s controlled press has become even harsher than that in the Soviet bloc.
The specter of private enterprise is haunting the Moscow high school system. Throughout the capital, high School seniors seeking admission to crowded university‐level institutions are reported to be paying relatively large sums to private tutors to teach them how to pass examinations. The success of the tutors is apparently annoying education officials. It has also produced a new status symbol perhaps equal to the car and refrigerator. Parents now boast about their children’s tutors and how much they cost per hour.
Eleven crewmen died when the 1,000-ton British freighter M.V. Lovat sank in gale-force winds 25 miles off the southwest coast of England. The ship was on the way to France when its cargo of coal shifted in the hold and the vessel developed a 10-degree list, the Coast Guard said. The bodies of eight of the 13 crewmen were pulled from the sea and three men died en route to a hospital.
Moshe Dayan, Israel’s former Defense Minister, does not believe that a war between Israel and her Arab neighbors is imminent, even though it is virtually taken for granted in Israel that another round of fighting will erupt in the spring or summer. “I don’t think it will happen,” Mr. Dayan said in an interview at his home in Israel, the first he has given since his forced resignation as Defense Minister last June. “There’s a danger, of course,” he said, “but I don’t think full-scale war is imminent.” He seemed keenly interested in getting back into active political life.
Premier Yitzhak Rabin said tonight that if the Arab countries held peace negotiations with Israel, “they’ll find us more generous than they think.” He acknowledged that his willingness to offer territorial concessions to the Arabs was widely criticized here, but he said of the criticism, “I couldn’t care less about it.” Mr. Rabin was addressing women from 30 countries at an emergency session of the Women’s International Zionist Organization. Conceding that Israeli withdrawals from occupied Arab territories as part of an interim or over‐all settlement involved risks for Israeli security, Mr. Rabin said firmly: “As Prime Minister I’ll do what I believe should be done. I couldn’t care less what criticism will be leveled at this Government policy.” He said that he could not promise his policy would bring peace but that meanwhile he was satisfied it had gained Israel “a year of understanding with the United States.”
The Palestine Liberation Organization announced in Beirut that it had severely punished the Palestinian gunmen who last November hijacked a British airliner from Dubai on the Persian Gulf to Tunis. The gunmen killed one of the plane’s passengers, a West German businessman. The announcement did not say what the punishment was, but Palestinian sources said privately that it was a long prison sentence. The spokesman refused to say where the hijackers were or to comment on Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s earlier statement that they were in Libya. This was the first time that the Palestinian organization announced that it had taken action against guerrillas involved in a terrorist action abroad.
Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko will visit Cairo Feb. 3 as part of continuing consultations between the two countries, Egypt’s Foreign Ministry announced. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ismail Fahmy also said that President Anwar Sadat had received messages from Soviet Communist Party chief Leonid I. Brezhnev and from President Ford, but did not disclose the content or topic of the messages.
Egyptian intelligence authorities recently dismantled an Israeli spy ring, Cairo newspapers reported. An Egyptian father and son have been arrested and the son has been sentenced to death by a military court, according to the reports. The son was accused of recruiting other spies among Egyptian workers in West Germany, and the father, who was sentenced to 15 years at hard labor, was accused of sending messages in invisible ink to Rome and Geneva concerning the Egyptian army.
Iran’s oil exports have fallen by more than 10 percent this month compared with December and the downward trend, which began late last year, is likely to continue in the months to come, an influential Tehran newspaper, Kayhan International. reported today. The English‐language paper, which is privately owned but generally reflects Government views, said that the decrease in exports was the result of a decline in demand for Iranian crude by several major Western oil companies and would necessitate a reduction in Iranian foreign aid, which is financed by oil revenues. There was no immediate confirmation of the report from Iranian officials, but speculation was widespread tonight that the report might have been intended to prepare Iranian and foreign opinion for a subsequent and more official disclosure.
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the first President of Bangladesh, declared a state of emergency and was authorized to rule by decree. Shortly afterward, the legislature, dominated by the Awami League party, banned all opposition political parties. Under a constitutional amendment passed without debate or dissent by her Parliament, Bangladesh changed from a fledging democracy of 75 million people to an authoritarian presidential form of government. The Prime Minister, Sheik Mujibur Rahman, became President vested with full executive powers. He was also authorized to declare Bangladesh a one-party state, shutting off any prospect for organized opposition.
Maritime experts of four Asian nations, meeting in Tokyo, are completing navigational charts for the busy Malacca Strait, where the recent grounding of a Japanese supertanker spread an extensive and damaging oil slick. The 17 hydrographic experts, from Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, are compiling the results of four surveys of the waterway conducted under international agreements in the last five years. They hope to finish by March and have the charts distributed to shipping companies by May. The 300‐mile strait, extending between Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula to connect the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, is the world’s longest channel and one of its most important shipping routes. Only six miles wide at its narrowest point, the strait has long been regarded by mariners as treacherous because of numerous reefs and swift currents that cause significant shifting of sandbars.
Hundreds of earthquakes near volcanic Mt. Aso in southern Japan injured seven people, damaged at least 20 homes and drove about 100 people from their houses, police said. The meteorological agency said 365 tremors, 54 strong enough to be felt by humans, occurred between Wednesday and Saturday.
Despite an unexpectedly high economic growth rate last year, Mexico is beginning to feel the effects of the recession in the United States and is becoming concerned about its eventual impact.
Some 3,000 people from drought‐ravaged Upper Volta have been recruited to help build a 500‐mile railroad in Gabon. They are the first contingent of what is expected to be an imported black African force of 12.000 laborers needed for the $400‐million project. Government recruiters have also been to Senegal and Dahomey. French‐speaking as is Gabon and both with many unemployed.
General Gabriel Ramanantsoa, the Malagasy Republic’s chief of state, today announced the dissolution of his government in an apparent attempt to placate opposition forces. The dissolution followed reports of an abortive coup on December 31 led by Colonel Brechard Rajaonarison, the chief of state’s military adviser. Long-standing ethnic differences between coastal people and those living on the plains may have contributed to new unrest in this country, which became independent France in 1960. The republic covers the island of Madagascar, 300 miles off the southeast coast of Africa. General Ramanantsoa, who assumed power in 1972, said his government needed vitality and that a new administration would be installed without delay. Meanwhile, the previous ministers would be acting in a caretaker capacity, he said.
The two Soviet astronauts aboard the orbiting Salyut 4 space station completed their second week in space today. There was no indication when they plan to return to earth. The Tass press agency said both Lieutenant Colonel Alexel Gubarev, the commander, and Georgy Grechko were in excellent health despite earlier problems adapting to weightlessness. Work in their astronomical and biological program was progressing well, the agency said.
The Republican party announced that it would undertake a comeback campaign involving a national television series and an intensive voter-registration effort. Plans to rebuild the party, which now has the allegiance of less than a quarter of the electorate, were disclosed at a meeting of more than 40 Republican state chairmen in Chicago. Much of what the political professionals heard about their party’s prospects was pessimistic, particularly the results of a series of public opinion studies.
President Ford was found to be “in excellent health” after an annual physical examination at the Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. His physician, Rear Admiral William Lukash, said that Mr. Ford, who is 61 years old, maintained his “ideal weight” of 195 pounds because he exercised and followed a prescribed diet.
Senator Henry M. Jackson criticized the Ford Administration. today for trying to blame Congress for the breakdown in the Soviet‐American trade agreement of 1972. In a statement, Mr. Jackson, Democrat of Washington, responded to comments made recently by President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger that the Jackson amendment linking trade benefits to liberalized emigration had been a major factor in the Soviet decision to renounce the trade agreement. Noting that Mr. Ford had said he wanted to work with Congress to eliminate the problems that precipitated the Soviet action Mr. Jackson said: “This unfortunate reaction suggests that we should reward an egregious Soviet breach of good faith with increased largesse and a weakening of our insistence that they move toward freer emigration.” Mr. Jackson, a likely contender for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1976, was the leader in the Congressional effort to link the extension of the credits and lower import tariffs to emigration. He has blamed the Russians for reneging on assurances that he said had been given Mr. Kissinger and that produced an exchange of letters between Mr. Jackson and Mr. Kissinger on October 18.
The police said they were searching for two men seen running from the Fraunces Tavern annex in Manhattan just before the bombing there Friday at lunchtime that killed four persons and injured 53 others. One of the two men, who are believed to be members of a Puerto Rican terrorist group, was seen getting into a blue or gray step-in van with the license-plate 291-SIL. The police said it was an expired plate that had been stolen in 1973. A police department official said that 100 city policemen and agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation had been assigned to the case.
The Brookings Institution recommended that the federal government. revise its revenue-sharing program to ” pump more money into hard-pressed big cities. More than 38,000 state and local governments have received $30.2 billion since 1972 under the tax redistribution plan. The Brookings report found that “larger and fiscally harder-pressed local governments used proportionately more of their shared revenue to make ends meet and relieve fiscal pressure.” It noted that “smaller and financially better off jurisdictions used more of their money for new spending.”
The Secret Service has been given approval to record phone calls involving the safety and security of the President without using the beep tone required to warn callers they are being recorded. The Federal Communications Commission ruled also that the same waiver of the rules held for the President’s immediate family or the White House and its grounds. The agency said that information gained by taping such calls without the beep tone helped in the apprehension of persons making threats.
Angered by the Indian takeover of an estate near Gresham, Wisconsin, about 300 white persons marched to a community hall at Shawano and demanded that the National Guard evict the intruders. The marchers did not specify what they would do if the guard refused to act, but at previous meetings residents had said they might evict the Indians on their own. The Menominee Warrior Society took over the Alexian Brothers’ estate January 1.
More than half of the draft dodgers and deserters who have signed up for President Ford’s amnesty program have not been able to find alternative service jobs, Selective Service officials said. The program to free draft dodgers and deserters from criminal charges in exchange for alternative service has been hampered by the nationwide job shortage. Participants must seek work with nonprofit private or government agencies that perform public service. Only jobs for which there are no other qualified applicants are open to the amnesty seekers.
The first sentence resulting from the 1973 Indian occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, was handed down today by Judge Warren K. Urbom in United States District Court. The judge technically imposed a maximum 10‐year sentence on Allen Cooper, 35 years old, who had pleaded no contest to a charge of assaulting a Federal officer by use of a firearm. But the exact sentence will not be determined for three months or possibly longer. Mr. Cooper, who is white, is a native of Albuquerque, New Mexico Judge Urbom ordered him to undergo evaluation at a Federal medical center for criminal of menders. After reviewing the medical center’s report, the judge could adjust the sentence.
While President Ford has been calling for the development of nuclear energy, a California environmental coalition reported this week that it was well on the way to qualifying a ballot proposition that could end atomic power generation in the state. The proposal, an initiative measure, would prohibit state licensing of new nuclear plants until there was public “proof” of the safety of their operating and radioactive waste disposal systems. Also, pending such proof, existing plants would be restricted to operating at 60 percent of their design level, and this figure would be reduced by 10 percent each year until such proof was forthcoming. The coalition, called the California Committee for Nuclear Safeguards, includes the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth and Zero Population Growth, all national organizations. Its chairman is Richard B. Spohn, a lawyer who is the Los Angeles director of Ralph Nader’s Citizen Action organization.
Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald, charged by the Army five years ago with killing his wife and two daughters, then freed after a preliminary hearing, has again been charged with the slayings. The murder of Dr. MacDonald’s wife, Collett, and their two children, Kimberly, 4 years old, and Kristen Jean, 2, drew nationwide attention. Dr. MacDonald has maintained that his family was killed and that he was stabbed several times by four “hippie-style” intruders who chanted, “Acid is groovy. Kill the pigs!”
Two women ordained in defiance of Episcopal Church rules have been given faculty appointments by the Episcopal Divinity School of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The women, the Rev. Suzanne Hiatt of Philadelphia and the Rev. Carter Heyward of New York, will have full priestly rights, including the celebration of holy communion. The seminary, regarded as the leading academic center of the church, said the appointments had been approved by an 8–5 vote of the board of trustees and gave the women “all the privileges of other ordained members of the seminary faculty.”
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati ruled that federal air traffic controllers were responsible for the deaths of 16 parachutists who drowned in Lake Erie in August 1967. The appellate court, affirming a district court judgment in Cleveland in 1972, said air traffic control at Ortner Airfield had misdirected the pilot over the lake. Sixteen of the 18 parachutists drowned when they jumped from 20,000 feet believing they were over an airport. The air controller had mistakenly thought a small plane sent up to film the jumpers was in fact carrying the parachutists, the court said.
The Census Bureau reported today that poor families, both white and black, are increasingly headed by women. In a report of the nation’s poor population, the bureau said that the number of poor families headed by a woman increased from 18 percent in 1959 to 36 percent in 1973. In the same period, the number of poor families headed by a man decreased from 70 to 44 percent. Half of all children living in families headed by a woman live in poverty, the report says. A second report released today says that the number of families, especially black families, headed by women is increasing, and women of all races earn less than men.
The Federal Government’s case against Dr. Joseph Beasley, director of the multimillion-dollar private foundation that developed Louisiana’s widely acclaimed birth control program, came to a halt this week because of a deadlocked jury.
32nd Golden Globes: “Chinatown”, Jack Nicholson, and Gena Rowlands win.
Liverpool’s defence of the English Soccer F A cup ended in the fourth round when they were defeated 0–1 at Ipswich Town with a goal from Mick Mills. Eventual cup winners, West Ham were held to a 1–1 draw in their tie against Swindon Town.
Born:
Tim Montgomery, American track athlete (Olympic gold medal, 4x100m relay, 2000); in Gaffney, South Carolina.
John Wade, NFL center (Jacksonville Jaguars, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Oakland Raiders), in Harrisonburg, Virginia.
Daryl Terrell, NFL tackle and guard (New Orleans Saints, Jacksonville Jaguars, Washington Redskins), in Vossburg, Mississippi.
Dat Phan [Đất Phan], Vietnamese-born American stand-up comedian, in Saigon, South Vietnam (now Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam).
Mia Kirshner, Canadian actress (“The Black Dahlia”, “The L Word “), in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Ricky Rodriguez, described by the Family International cult as the first product of “flirty fishing” and heir apparent to cult leader David Berg (d. 2005).
Died:
Charlotte Whitton, 78, Canadian politician, Mayor of Ottawa (1951-56).
Vivien Kellems, 78, American industrialist, who battled the Federal tax system as discriminatory against single people.
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