Two regiments from the ARVN 2nd Division and one brigade of airborne troops are landed at Phan Rang Air Base, on 6 April, in hopes of mounting a counteroffensive. After three days of relative quiet, the airborne brigade is sent to Xuân Lộc (10 April) where a major battle is developing; it is replaced by a ranger group. North Vietnamese troops and tanks overrun Phan Rang and extinguish ARVN presence in the region.
Communist attacks were stepped up today for the second day in the Mekong Delta, the populous rice-producing area south of Saigon, the South Vietnamese command said. In the region around Saigon there were no signs of a major attack, although government and Communist forces continued to probe each other’s lines. Northward along the South Vietnamese coast, two important ports, Nha Trang and Cam Ranh, both of which the Communists said they had occupied, apparently still remained in government hands. Reports from refugees, pilots of planes and intelligence sources indicated that the Saigon Government was making some efforts to strengthen its tenuous hold on the isolated cities.
Some Government troops have also been reported in Phan Rang and Phan Thiết. These coastal cities, along with Nha Trang and Cam Ranh, were officially written off by Saigon early last week after almost all officials and troops there had fled in panic. One Western official in Saigon said there was a possibility that the small Government forces still in Nha Trang and Cam Ranh, along with a few reinforcements being sent in, might make a stand “this time.” But, he added, with a North Vietnamese division sighted only a short distance away, the two port cities “essentially are just indefensible enclaves.”
Reporting on the action in the delta, where Western intelligence officials believe the North Vietnamese may be trying to open a new front, the Saigon command said yesterday that 120 armed incidents had been initiated by the Communists in 24 hours. Saigon troops were said to have killed a total of 95 Communists in the delta yesterday. A spokesman put government losses there at 14 killed and 50 wounded. This morning the Saigon command reported four more shelling attacks on district capitals in the delta, with 45 civilians wounded.
In the attack on the Saigon suburb, Nhà Bè, 60 rounds of mortar shells, rockets and 75‐mm recoilless cannon fire fell at 2:30 this morning. The shelling apparently did not hit any of the oil and gasoline tanks and there was no report of major damage to other installations. Six people, including four soldiers, were injured. Closer to the capital, meanwhile, scattered clashes were reported in four provinces — Bình Tuy, Bình Hòa, Bình Dương and Giã Định. Early yesterday Communist gunners were also said to have fired four rockets or mortar rounds in the vicinity of the Biên Hòa air base.
Saigon itself looked remarkably normal yesterday, a hot sunny Sunday. Movie theaters and restaurants were crowded, and young Vietnamese women in bright traditional dresses wandered around the downtown boulevards. The only visible signs of the crisis brought about by the abandonment of large parts of the country in the last three weeks were the increased numbers of soldiers patrolling the streets. Occasionally martial music and stern exhortations to fight on could be heard from loudspeakers around town.
Among signs of undercurrents of fear were the many Vietnamese who anxiously sought out American friends to ask for help to get visas to go to the United States. And at the large American defense attaché office at Tân Sơn Nhứt Air Base, which used to house the United States military command here, many Americans were busy shredding files and packing their belongings.
Disputes over who holds Nha Trang and Cam Ranh began Thursday when the government announced it had lost radio contact with the two places and the Việt Cộng’s radio said their forces had entered Nha Trang. On Friday the Communists made a similar claim for Cam Ranh, which is on a barren, sandy peninsula that once housed a huge United States Navy and Air Force base.
In a broadcast at noon yesterday, the Việt Cộng radio described in detail an “enthusiastic atmosphere” in “liberated” Nha Trang. According to the broadcast, heard by many people in Saigon, the Communists have helped the “people” put Nha Trang’s water and electric power plants back into operation, restore its radio station and reopen shops and restaurants. All had been closed in the panicky exodus of troops and officials earlier in the week. But a correspondent of The New York Times, flying in a small plane along the coast today, could hear a distinctly American voice giving the standard call sign for the Nha Trang airfield control tower. The sign is “Victor 7.”
When a pilot asked the man in the control tower what he could see on the ground at the Nha Trang airfield, he replied that there was a two‐engine C‐47 plane there. Air America, which flies charter flights in Indochina for the United States Government, including the Central Intelligence Agency, has several C‐47’s.
Refugees arriving yesterday by ship at Vũng Tàu, a small resort town and port 40 miles east of Saigon reported that in Cam Ranh and Phan Rang signs of normal life under government rule were beginning to reappear. Some of the refugees said that officials in the enclaves were appealing for the return of civil servants and their families who had tied.
At Vũng Tàu, 40 miles southeast of Saigon, the bathers were out almost as usual today, enjoying ice cream and beer, swimming in the warm South China Sea and watching the armada of landing craft, ships, barges, boats and fishing craft. A few hundred yards from the bathing beach, at a pier, the navy barge AN 2801 had pulled in. The big steel vessel, pulled by a South Korean tugboat, had been traveling for nine days, all the way from the waters off Hue, loaded with fleeing soldiers and their families.
The sun had scorched them on the open deck all that time and they had been without food and water. From the huge pile of debris on the deck — smashed bicycles, suitcases with the contents strewn about, dolls, pots — at least 50 bodies were pulled out by nightfall, most of them children and women. The AN 2801 was not unique. Hardly a vessel of the hundreds of large and small boats that have been moving down the coast has avoided deaths — some from starvation, thirst and exposure, some from shooting by renegade soldiers turned bandit, some in disputes over fragments of bread.
Some survivors told of vessels stopping at Cam Ranh Bay, farther up the coast, in hopes of finding some sanctuary. “Some people came out in boats with water,” a woman said, staring blankly out to sea. “They sold it to us for 1,500 dong” — about $2—“a glass. Of course, most people could not afford a whole glass, so we tried to share it.”
The day before yesterday, South Vietnamese officers and troops fleeing the central part of the country aboard the American ship Greenville Victory, chartered to the United States Military Sealift Command, rebelled when they realized that they were being taken to Phú Quốc Island instead of the mainland destination they had expected — Vũng Tàu. Incensed, they ordered the captain to change course and take them to the mainland. Faced with several thousand heavily armed and angry troops, the captain and his crew obeyed.
Despite the great potential danger here in Vũng Tàu in the presence of tens of thousands of armed, hungry troops, the town appeared peaceful, and Colonel Tao’s own troops and policemen were obviously in control. There was no evidence of any looting or of the rampages that ripped apart Đà Nẵng and other cities before they collapsed.
Government offices were hard at work, an unheard‐of situation in South Vietnam on a Sunday afternoon, and soldiers were even getting back pay. Many of the renegade soldiers now roaming Saigon and other parts of South Vietnam had not been paid in two months, it was learned today.
In conversations today with dozens of men who had been soldiers until they headed south, not one showed any inclination to rejoin his unit or go back to fighting. Government authorities here in Vũng Tàu, on Phú Quốc and some other places hope to regroup the troops into new units, but judging from conversations with those former soldiers, that will be impossible.
Opposition politicians made public today a letter from a top government official that quotes the United States Ambassador, Graham A. Martin, as saying the evacuation of children “will help create a shift in American public opinion in favor” of South Vietnam. The politicians, headed by a neutralist, Trần Ngọc Liễng, called the airlift of children an “inhumane” propaganda campaign for more United States war aid and demanded it be stopped immediately.
A United States spokesman, asked for comment on the letter, written by Dr. Phan Quang Đán, Deputy Premier for Social Welfare, said Mr. Martin “has had as his overriding concern the welfare of the orphans.” The spokesman said Dr. Đán and Mr. Martin met last week on the airlift and that Dr. Đán said the evacuation might also have some effect on U.S. public opinion. “The Ambassador agreed with Mr. Đán’s view but this was not the reason for bringing up the entire matter of the orphans,” the spokesman continued. “The Ambassador’s reason and concern was simply the welfare of the children.”
The American plan to evacuate thousands of South Vietnamese children is a criminal operation that his people would never tolerate, said Premier Phạm Văn Đồng of North Vietnam, who made a number of comments on South Vietnam and the United States involvement there after voting in Hanoi in elections for a new National Assembly. “The American plan is unhealthy and abominable,” he said, asserting that public opinion must be aroused over the issue. He also said that events in South Vietnam were progressing satisfactorily.
“It was the most incredible scene of deprivation and illness I’ve ever seen,” Dr. Alex Stalcup said as he described conditions aboard a chartered Pan American World Airways 747 jet that arrived in San Francisco with 313 South Vietnamese children, most of them infants. Emergency airlifts continued to fly hundreds of children to the United States, and many were rushed to hospitals. Dr. Stalcup was among a group of physicians that boarded the Pan American plane. There were severe cases of dehydration, pneumonia, diarrhea, chicken pox and other viral diseases.
The United States was continuing to build up its forces off Vietnam with at least one aircraft carrier, three destroyers, a half-dozen amphibious ships and units of a Marine Corps division, according to independent sources in Saigon and news releases from the American Embassy there. Three other aircraft carriers, including the nuclear-powered USS Enterprise (CVAN-65), were said to be in the zone. But in Washington the Defense Department denied that there was any large‐scale movement toward South Vietnam.
Of the $53.5‐billion in military aid that the United States has provided to foreign countries since 1950, South Vietnam has received 28.4 per cent, or $15.2‐billion, according to details disclosed today. Other recipients of more than $1‐billion, according to a list declassified by the Defense Department, have been Laos, with $4.61‐billion; France, $4.15‐billion; South Korea, $3.67‐billion; Turkey, $3.21‐billion; Taiwan, $2.64‐billion; Italy, $2.29‐billion; Greece, $1.59‐billion; Belgium, $1.24‐billion; the Netherlands, $1.22‐billion; Thailand, $1.16‐billion; Cambodia, $1.14‐billion, and Britain, $1.03‐billion. Representative Les Aspin, Democrat of Wisconsin, who secured the list under the Freedom of Information Act, said that the State Department had insisted that details for six countries be kept classified. They are Iran, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia.
In the South, which traditionally has been the most bellicose and military-minded part of the nation, there seems to be virtually no sentiment for any new American military involvement in Indochina. Except for the strong feeling that the United States should provide humanitarian aid — food, medical supplies, help for refugees — there is also little sentiment for sending more American money into Vietnam.
With the conquest of South Vietnam imminent, elections were held in North Vietnam for the 492 seats available in the National Assembly. All 492 candidates were unopposed members of the Vietnamese Fatherland Front.
The assessment in informed circles in Cambodia of the Phnom Penh Government’s chance of survival is gloomier than it has ever been in this five‐year war. Although the government’s ability in the past to stagger on through repeated misfortunes has made seasoned observers reluctant to predict Phnom Penh’s fall to the Communist‐led Cambodian insurgents, that is what these observers are doing now. “The picture is black,” said one source close to developments here. “We think the next week or two will be crucial.”
The pattern of attrition continued its inexorable momentum today as government forces lost a few more bits of ground, troop morale kept sliding, the insurgents seemed to be massing for a possible major shelling attack against Phnom Penh, and the American Embassy went ahead with its evacuation preparations. Yesterday morning there still were three other embassies here but first the Japanese and South Korean missions closed. The South Vietnamese followed soon after.
The American Embassy, thus the last functioning foreign mission here, today completed a partial evacuation — by air to Bangkok — which scaled its staff down to 100 or so from its original complement of 285, composed of 200 Americans and 85 foreigners on contract. The embassy has declined to divulge the exact number of the remaining personnel or to discuss other details of its final evacuation plans, but it was learned today that the embassy had also begun quietly calling, in its nearly 300 Cambodian employes and telling them that those who wished to leave the country would be assisted. There are fears that these people might be targets of a victorious insurgent army for having worked for the Americans.
Like the government’s shrinking defense perimeter and shrinking chances, the diplomatic community has also shrunk, almost out of sight, as embassy after embassy has closed. Except for the Americans, the only diplomats left are a South Vietnamese consular officer and a French consular officer. This means, among other things, that sources of information have narrowed and that reporters can no longer cite diplomatic sources in their dispatches from here without almost certainly indicating the Americans. The embassy’s moves, taken on instructions from Washington, appeared to reflect not only the deteriorating military situation around Phnom Penh but also the expectation that when Congress reconvenes this week after its Easter recess it will reject the appeals for emergency military aid for Phnom Penh.
The American Embassy is in a delicate position here, being the symbol and weathervane of Washington’s intentions. It is known to be worried that its evacuation steps, which it has described publicly as “temporary precautions,” could sow demoralization in Cambodian Government and military circles and hasten the collapse of Phnom Penh. Nevertheless, Washington considers the steps prudent and necessary, to avoid any last minute chaos — so the process continues, including the thinning and burning of embassy files. The falling ashes from this burning laid a thin black film on the embassy’s concrete yard today. Although there are still Cambodian officials who say that the city’s defenses can be held for many months or even into next year with a minimum of American aid, the facts of life for the Phnom Penh forces are clear to see and they are all unpleasant.
The capital, swollen by the refugees to more than two million people, is encircled by a determined force of perhaps 30,000 insurgents who are within five miles of the city’s center at some points and who keep punching holes in the defense perimeter. All supply lines to the capital have been cut by the rebels except for the airport, which is now the only link to the outside world; an American airlift of food, fuel and ammunition from Thailand and South Vietnam is keeping the government alive and even this is constantly threatened by rocket and artillery attacks on the airport.
Moreover, the amount of ammunition being flown in seems to be dwindling every day, and authoritative sources say this is simply because there is not much ammunition left in the allocation for this fiscal year, which totaled nearly $300‐million. These sources indicated today that unless Congress voted new aid, the last ammunition will have been sent to Phnom Penh within perhaps three weeks. The fear is that the army will crumble at that point, knowing the ammunition airlift is dry — regardless of how large the stockpiles in the country might be. Because of this, there has been speculation that the Pentagon might deliberately string out the airlift supplies longer by flying in smaller and smaller amounts each day.
Another blow to government hopes was the fall last week of the Mekong River town Neak Luong, for it not only sealed the Mekong as a potential, supply route, but it also freed several thousand insurgent troops — some sources say as many as 6,000 — to move north about 30 miles and attack Phnom Penh’s thin southern defenses. These defenses, which, had been the only quiet areas on the Phnom Penh perimeter in the offensive that began over three months ago, are now beginning to feel the new pressure, and some outposts on the Bassac River have already been lost.
The government has sent some reinforcements to the southern line, but only at the expense of weakening other critical points on the perimeter. For it is scraping bottom on recruits, and there are simply more holes in the line than troops to plug them with. In addition, many of the reinforcements are being flown from isolated province capitals that are themselves besieged and could fall if their defense forces are weakened significantly. Battambang, in the northwestern corner of the country, and Kompong Speu, west of Phnom Penh, are under heavy attack now.
Another negative sign has been the lack of result from the departure of the Cambodian President, Marshal Lon Nol, who left under pressure last Tuesday for an extended trip. It had been hoped by some that his departure would bring about a political and military reorganization that would possibly stiffen the army’s resistance, or at least put the government into a position to negotiate an orderly turnover of power. But there has been no sign of change.
Premier Long Boret of Cambodia arrived in Bangkok this evening on his way back to Phnom Penh after accompanying President Lon Nol to Indonesia, the first stop on a journey that will take Mr. Lon Nol to the United States for “medical treatment” and probable exile. Mr. Long Boret, who will fly to Phnom Penh with his wife tomorrow on a Cambodian military plane, said that President Lon Nol planned to leave for the United States Thursday.
Despite a tide in foreign affairs apparently running in Moscow’s favor in Indochina, the Middle East and Portugal, the overriding theme in Soviet foreign policy remains that of détente. The Kremlin has initally reacted to Western setbacks in muted fashion, and some foreign diplomats have concluded that the Russians were not entirely prepared for the windfalls that Soviet policy has received. Moscow must now figure out how to seize the short‐term advantages without impairing its long‐term objectives of accomodation with the West, and particularly the United States.
Britain has proposed a summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization next month to reexamine common problems and reaffirm Western unity. TIME magazine reported. “The United States is expected to endorse the idea,” TIME said. The news weekly said the summit was proposed by British Foreign Secretary James Callaghan in a letter to Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger.
The death toll from shootings and bombings rose to 10 in Northern Ireland after one of the bloodiest weekends in six years of sectarian strife. At least 80 persons were reported injured in the incidents, all in Belfast, and which further jeopardized a cease-fire declared by the Irish Republican Army on February 10. The IRA made no claims that it was responsible for any of the weekend attacks or that the truce was ending. Police suggested that the incidents might have been the results of factional differences within extremist groups.
Queen Elizabeth will make an official visit to the United States next year-the 200th anniversary of the country’s declaration of independence from Britain, Newsweek magazine reported. “The queen will open the Summer Olympics in Montreal next year and is expected to add the United States to her itinerary, her first official call since 1957,” the magazine said.
President Valery Giscard d’Estaing hid the French government away during the weekend to review his administration’s progress and future projects after almost a year in power. A presidential spokesman said the seminar at the Chateau of Rambouillet 25 miles southwest of Paris was considered “extremely positive.” He said. that a recurring theme in the talks by 23 ministers and senior secretaries of state was the need to reduce inequality in the French social system.
Political opposition to a pact guaranteeing the Portuguese military a dominant role for the next three to five years began to crumble as a major center-left party indicated it would offer no significant resistance. The country’s left-wing military leadership wants the 12 parties taking part in the April 25 elections to sign an agreement beforehand giving supreme power to a military revolutionary council. Eight of the parties have opposed the plan. One, the Popular Democrat Party, which belongs to the government coalition, said it had accepted the reality that Portugal was living a revolution and had agreed to go along with the armed forces.
The Soviet Union disclosed early today that a manned spacecraft launched on Saturday had been forced to abort its mission and return to earth.
The two sons of Soviet scientist Benjamin G. Levich arrived in Israel and said they were optimistic that Soviet authorities would grant an exit visa to their father. Yevgeny, 26, an astrophysicist, and Alexander, 29, an electrochemist, came from Vienna with their families after trying to leave Russia for years. They said officials had promised that their father, a Jew, would be able to leave Russia by the end of 1975. “We are a good example that Soviet authorities will carry out their promises and this makes us optimistic about our father,” Alexander Levich said.
Secretary of State Kissinger’s latest Middle East mission apparently failed because of major miscalculations by Egypt, Israel and Mr. Kissinger himself. This was one of the chief conclusions reached after extensive interviewing here and in Egypt and Israel by New York Times correspondents looking into the reason for the breakdown last month of Mr. Kissinger’s effort to bring about a new Egyptian‐Israeli accord. In the aftermath of that failure, charges and countercharges have been made. A severe strain has developed between the Ford Administration and Israel.
President Ford and Mr. Kissinger have contended that the Israelis were shortsighted in not accepting a package deal worked out by Mr. Kissinger, and were therefore largely responsible for what might have proved to be the end of Mr. Kissinger’s “shuttle diplomacy.” But Simcha Dinitz, Israel’s Ambassador to Washington, Israeli leaders in Jerusalem and the leadership of the American Jewish Community have contended that Israel showed the utmost flexibility and that any blame lies solely with the Egyptians. The Egyptians, in turn, blame the Israelis entirely.
The Israeli Cabinet discussed tensions in relations with the United States today and apparently decided to resist American pressure to soften Israeli terms for an accommodation with Egypt.
King Khalid has proclaimed an amnesty for political prisoners in Saudi Arabia and for Saudis who fled the country for political reasons, the official press agency reported tonight from Riyadh, the royal capital.
Yen Chia-kan was sworn in as the new President of Nationalist China, as a 30-day period of official mourning began for the late Chiang Kai-shek.
The bullet-riddled bodies of six men were found near Buenos Aires and police said they were victims of a mass execution carried out by a clandestine right-wing death squad. Police said the bodies were found in a field near the international airport and that the men were believed slain by the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance. The new killings brought to 132 the number slain this year in warfare between left-wing guerrillas.
Defense Department officials say the Soviet Union is stockpiling long‐range guided missiles in East Africa in a large newly built naval‐support installation at Berbera, Somalia. These so‐called cruise missiles are believed intended for the surface ships and submaraines of the Soviet squadron deployed in the Indian Ocean. The squadron, whose strength is said to vary from 10 to 15 ships, is active in the Arabian Sea, the section of the Indian Ocean east of the entrance to the Persian Gulf. Now that the Soviet squadron is assured of rapid resupplying of its cruise missiles, a military analyst said, the Russians and their Arab friends from Iraq to Southeast Yemen could in an international crisis control the exits from the Persian Gulf and from the Suez Canal‐Red Sea supply lines. The missiles are believed to range from the SSC‐1, with a range of 200 miles, to the SSN‐5 with a range of 700 miles.
The death of King Faisal, the strongly anti‐Communist ruler of Saudi Arabia, the steady flow of sophisticated Soviet weapons to Iraq, Syria, and Egypt and the breakdown of negotiations between Israel and Egypt has led some officials to talk of a prewar, rather than a postwar, situation. These officials say that although there may be diplomatic advantages in slowing American arms shipments to Israel, the military fact is that Israel is the only Middle Eastern country with forces powerful enough to balance Arab strength and deter the Russians.
States have claimed less than one-fifth of the $2 billion in impounded highway funds released by President Ford in February as an antirecession move. Most of the money has gone to states with lower than average unemployment rates. As of March 31, only 16 states had been able to use the newly freed funds. Their added spending totaled $356.6 million. Mr. Ford, in announcing the release of the funds, estimated that the action would create 125,000 jobs. Many states, however, don’t have state funds to match the federal money. Others haven’t had time to draw up plans and some still haven’t spent previous allotments.
The New York City Bar Association warned that domestic CIA activities had a serious potential for infringement of First Amendment rights. In a 46-page report the group called for legislation that would more clearly define the spy agency’s role and give Congress a stronger command of its purse strings. The report chided Congress for not exercising its foreign policy-making responsibilities “as a partner with the executive” The report said the full Congress should at least know precisely how much money is being alloted to the CIA, if not a specific breakdown on how the funds are disbursed.
John M. Waters, director of the Internal Revenue Service under former President Richard M. Nixon, said the agency was sound despite White House attempts to divert it to political purposes. There had been “efforts to get the system to do some things that should not have been done. We resisted those efforts,” Waters said.. “While I regret very much that the Nixon team ended up in such disaster overall, I’m convinced our tax system stood up and operated properly” Walters said he was proud of the system. “I don’t know of a friend who was befriended or a single person whose rights were violated,” he said.
Senator Henry M. Jackson (D-Washington) offers a strong challenge to President Ford in a Gallup Poll presidential trial heat. In a nationwide sampling of 1,111 registered voters, Mr. Ford received 43% approval to 41% for Jackson. The senator, a declared candidate for the Democratic nomination in 1976, currently wins greater support than do two other Democrats, Senator Edmund S. Muskie of Maine, who has indicated he will not run, and Governor George C. Wallace of Alabama, who has indicated he will.
Senator Edward M. Kennedy was jostled and poked by a crowd of anti-busing demonstrators today as he tried to elbow his way to his car outside a junior high school where he had given a speech. The crowd would not let him get to his automobile, and aides and policemen had to encircle the Senator and link arms as they walked several blocks to a subway station. The crowd of about 300 angry adults followed him all the way, shouting and waving pickets ripped from fences. The Massachusetts Democrat has been a target of white parents since school busing to achieve racial intergration began under a Federal court order last September. Anti-busing leaders say they are upset with Mr. Kennedy because he declines to condemn the busing.
Entertainer Tiny Tim was injured in a three-car accident in which a man was killed and four other persons were injured, police in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, said. Tiny Tim, whose real name is Herbert Khaury, was in satisfactory condition at a hospital with chest injuries. State police said the man killed was Paul Croop, 62, of Ilion, New York; and his wife, Margarie, 55, was critically injured. Police said Tiny Tim was a passenger in a car driven by his manager, James Cappeliuzzo, when the accident occurred. Cause of the crash was not known.
A recent and rapid succession of developments that have been dismaying in many ways to people concerned about environmental progress has raised the question of whether energy problems and inflation are sidetracking environmental quality. The answer seems to be a fence-straddling yes and no.
Ted Bundy victim Denise Oliverson disappears from Grand Junction, Colorado. Oliverson, 24, was last seen biking away from her Grand Junction home. Denise had an argument with her husband and rode her bike to her parent’s home to cool down. But she never arrived. Her husband assumed she had stayed the night at her parent’s home when she didn’t come home. She would never come back or be seen again. The next day, on April 7, a railroad employee spotted her sandals and yellow 10-speed bicycle under a viaduct just a block from her home, according to statements from 259 pages of newly released reports and documents relating to Oliverson’s disappearance. She was Bundy’s fifteenth known murder victim. Bundy confessed to Denise’s murder, claiming that he abducted her during her bike ride and murdered her in his car. He dumped her body in the Colorado River. While he didn’t confess to sexually assaulting her, it was part of his modus operandi and was his motive. Denise’s body has never been found.
A key Federal official has denounced the scientists of the National Cancer Institute as “a lot of old fogies” and has described as “an irrational decision” a Government requirement that workers be exposed to virtually no vinyl chloride.
Attorney General Edward H. Levi said today that the Justice Department was considering a number of proposals that would reduce or eliminate the possession of pistols in metropolitan areas.
Nuclear reactor demand is down sharply from last year, according to an industry magazine. Nucleonics Week said U.S. manufacturers have sales or options for only nine units this year, compared with 29 in 1974 and 49 in 1973. The reasons for the decline are inability to finance construction and uncertainty over growth of demand for electricity, the magazine said. Of five nuclear construction companies surveyed by the magazine, only one — General Electric Co. — reported sale of a nuclear unit this year.
Californians probably will vote in 1976 on whether nuclear power plants in the state need new safety restrictions, the office of Secretary of State March Fong Eu announced. People for Proof, sponsors of the Nuclear Safeguards Initiative, turned in almost 500,000 signatures on qualifying petitions, according to Caren Daniels, press secretary for Eu. It is “reasonably certain” the initiative has the 312,404 valid signatures needed to qualify, she said. The initiative would require the nuclear industry to prove to the Legislature within five years that plants and waste-handling procedures were “reasonably safe.”
Vandals cut down two trees, a 175-foot redwood and a 220-foot Douglas fir, in the Ladybird Johnson Grove of Redwood National Park near Crescent City, park rangers reported. Park Superintendent George von der Lippe said the FBI and Humboldt County sheriff’s office had been asked to assist in an investigation. The two felled trees were discovered by a park employee. Von der Lippe said the incident was, so far as he knew, the first such vandalism involving such large trees in the park.
“The Rocky Horror Picture Show” closes at Belasco Theater NYC after 45 performances.
Harry Chapin’s musical revue “The Night That Made America Famous” closes at Barrymore Theatre, NYC, after 75 performances.
The Houston Astros purchase pitcher Joe Niekro from the Atlanta Braves.
Born:
Hal Gill, NHL defenseman (NHL Champions, Stanley Cup-Penguins, 2009; Boston Bruins, Toronto Maple Leafs, Pittsburgh Penguins, Montreal Canadiens, Nashville Predators, Philadelphia Flyers), in Concord, Massachusetts
Zach Braff, American TV actor (‘Dr. John Dorian’ – “Scrubs”); in South Orange, New Jersey.
Dannon Phillip Pampolina, American rapper and drummer (The Party), in Houston, Texas.
Died:
Ernst Bergmann, 71, Israeli atomic scientist.
History Diaries 