Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Prize-winning writer who fled Russia, criticized what he called the West’s indifference to the fate of such countries as the Soviet Ukraine. In a taped message broadcast Sunday by Radio Canada International, he said that 6 million Ukrainian peasants died in a 1933 famine and Europe ignored the tragedy. “Even the photographs of the dying villagers… were not printed by Western editors,” he said.
Jewish activist Vladimir Slepak, his wife and son announced the end of their three-week hunger strike in Moscow. They began the fast April 13 to mark the fifth anniversary of their application to go to Israel. The 47-year-old electronic engineer is believed to have waited longer than any other Moscow Jew for permission to emigrate.
Greek Cypriot leader Glafkos Clerides rejected Turkish demands for joint management of public services in Cyprus and said the Turkish stand could delay reopening the island’s main airport. The Turkish community must be represented in the running of islandwide services, he said, but “I am not willing to consider 50-50 participation of public utility boards.”
French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing said he planned to organize another multinational meeting — similar to the one that broke down in April — to prepare for a full-scale international energy conference among oil-producing, oil-exporting and developing countries. Giscard d’Estaing, on a three-day visit to Morocco, said he would “take new initiatives for the relaunching of a world preparatory energy conference at the next opportune moment.”
Meeting under the chairmanship of Northern Ireland’s chief justice, Sir Robert Lowry, members of the Protestant-dominated constitutional convention decided to hold the convention’s first session Thursday. The task of the convention, created by the British government last week, is to agree on a form of government acceptable to the Protestant majority and the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland.
Antonio Alecce, the head of one of Italy’s biggest pharmaceutical companies, was arrested on charges of fraud and selling ineffective medicines, police said. An arrest warrant issued by a Rome magistrate said Alecce had been charged with “fraud, commerce in imperfect medicines, supplying medicines in a way dangerous to public health and violations of certain health laws.”
Reports circulated today of Israeli and Egyptian preparations for possible new war in the Middle East. A Jordanian newspaper said Israel last week recalled thousands of reservists to active duty and was massing troops and armor along the length of the Syrian and Jordanian fronts. The Israeli military command declined official comment. But an Israeli military source said “nothing is happening,” and denied that more than “the usual number” of reservists were mobilized. The source had been asked about reports from Arab travelers in the independent Jordanian newspaper Al Dastour that tank columns and missile batteries were “moved up to scores of concentration points on both Arab fronts.” Al Dastour said thousands of Israeli reservists released from service after the October, 1973, war were recalled to active duty when the buildup started last week. In Jerusalem, Israeli Defense Minister Shimon Peres said the Egyptian army was working intensively on groundwork for a possible second crossing of the Suez Canal similar to the one that signaled the beginning of the 1973 war.
Four men were injured in an explosion today in Beirut, Lebanon at the offices of the daily newspaper Al Moharrer, which supports the Palestinian guerrilla movement. The four, who work at the paper, were hospitalized briefly for treatment of wounds that were described as not serious. The bomb, at the entrance of the newspaper’s building, went off just before noon and damaged some parked cars. For the last few days Al Moharrer has been campaigning against the Lebanese rightist Phalangist party, members of which fought with Palestinian guerrillas last month.
The United States has reached final agreement with Jordan on the the disclosure of the Hawk defense system, a State Department official said today. The accord, which will outfit the Jordanians with sophisticated surface‐to‐air missiles, was made final while King Hussein was in Washington last week for talks with President Ford, Secretary of State Kissinger and other officials. The official refused to disclose how many batteries of missiles the Jordanians would receive or how much they would cost, but another official estimated the cost to be at least $100‐million, over a period of years.
The Defense Department disclosed that the United States had started removing from Thailand many of the 120 planes flown there by fleeing South Vietnamese pilots last week before the Communists took over Saigon. Both North Vietnam and the new Saigon Revolutionary Government demanded that Thailand return the planes to South Vietnam, but Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger said last week that the United States still had title to the aircraft, which it supplied to the former Saigon government under the military aid program.
Although more than 100,000 Vietnamese successfully escaped from Saigon, the evacuation was marred by what diplomats and newsmen describe as bad planning, bitter feuding between sections of the United States mission and often an every-man-for-himself attitude.
State Department officials said that they believed the Cambodian Communists had forcibly evacuated virtually the entire population of Phnom Penh soon after they took over the capital last month. At least two other cities – Kompong Chhnang and Siem Reap — were reportedly all but emptied, the officials said. A State Department spokesman said today that on the basis of “reliable information,” Washington had learned that “orders were issued by the Khmer Rouge to their outlying commands to kill top political and military leaders around the country” who had been in the old American‐backed Government. Both the White House and the State Department said that there was solid intelligence information that in at least one outlying area, 80 to 90 Cambodian military officers and their wives had been killed.
The Cambodian Communists, who have always been something of a mystery to Washington, are generally believed to be determined to reconstruct the Cambodian society without outside intervention or assistance. American officials report no requests from the new government for any kind of aid. The information from Cambodia comes from intercepted communications within the country as well as from the fragmentary reports that the French Government was able to receive from its mission in Phnom Penh, the only foreign embassy that went on operating after the fall of the American-supported government. The journalists who arrived in Thailand from Cambodia on Saturday have agreed among themselves on a temporary news blackout to insure the safety of the foreigners remaining in the country. One Washington official said that it did not seem that the Communists were carrying out large‐scale massacres or bloodbaths, but rather were following a policy of “pretty brutal repression,” particularly in scattering the population.
An epidemic of typhoid fever that affected thousands of Mexicans and Americans and that was described as the largest in the world in several decades has abated, Mexican and United States Public Health Service doctors said in a report received yesterday. They said that the epidemic had waned almost as mysteriously as it began three years ago. When the epidemic was first recognized, Public Health Service doctors expressed concern over the fact that the strain of typhoid bacterium causing the epidemic had become resistant for the first time to chloramphenicol, the antibiotic drug considered most effective in combating the infection.
Senator George S. McGovern (D-South Dakota) flew to Cuba at the invitation of Premier Fidel Castro for a four-day visit seen as part of a thaw in U.S. relations with the island’s Communist government. The trip by McGovern’s party of 30, including about two dozen journalists, was marked by security measures evidently stemming from fears of violence by anti-Castro activists among more than 350,000 Cuban exiles in southern Florida.
After 20 months in power, the military junta has been unable to brake Chile’s inflation, the world’s worst, or control the highest unemployment in a generation. The talk of an “economic take‐off” so evident after the 1973 coup has given way to Pessimism not only among the poorest sectors, who have shouldered the main economic purden, but increasingly also among middle‐class and even wealthy Chileans. New foreign investment, desperately sought by the junta, has amounted to only $2‐milion. Copper, the major source of foreign‐exchange earnings, has for months been selling at such low prices that the Government has ordered a 15 percent cut in production to prevent an even greater price decline.
Muslim rebels in northern Chad recently executed a French army major, one of three hostages they were holding for ransom, according to a reporter for the Paris newspaper Le Figaro.
Television broadcasting began in South Africa, as the first test broadcasts of the South African Broadcasting Corporation TV system were made; regular broadcasting would start on January 5, 1976. Crowds flocked to electric appliance stores in Johannesburg to glimpse the first test television broadcast in South Africa, one of the few industrialized countries still without television. Government-controlled television officially goes on the air next January 1, with a single channel broadcasting five hours a day in both the English and Afrikaans languages. The first test showed films from South Africa’s industrial and agricultural exhibition.
Compromise federal strip-mining legislation — similar to a bill vetoed last December by President Ford — won swift Senate approval. Proponents of the bill emphasized in a brief floor debate that they had made efforts to meet some of Mr. Ford’s objections. The measure now goes to the House for expected concurrence later this week. That would hasten another showdown with Mr. Ford, who expressed his displeasure with many of the bill’s provisions as late as last month.
The House passed unanimously and sent to the Senate a measure to limit the amount of money which can be spent on security for presidential homes. A key provision would restrict full-time security measures to only one residence of the President, Vice President or any other official designated to need Secret Service protection. All improvement of property would have to be removed when protection is ended or paid for.
Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger denied having any involvement in alleged CIA domestic spying or foreign assassination plots. “Since I have been in Washington,” Kissinger said, he has not been concerned, or been informed, about domestic intelligence. Kissinger, after a two-hour closed-door session with the Rockefeller commission, which is investigating the CIA, told reporters with a chuckle that none of the assassination allegations “pertain to any period of which I have personal knowledge.”
Secretary of State Kissinger said that he and the National Security Council had had no involvement in the Central Intelligence Agency’s domestic spying operations and that he had never “transmitted” to the agency any feeling of concern about domestic security on President Nixon’s behalf. He made the statement to newsmen after testifying before the Rockefeller Commission, which is investigating the C.I.A.’s domestic activities. It appeared to contradict Richard Helms, a former chief of the C.I.A.
President Ford asked Congress for $507 million to pay for the resettlement of 150,000 refugees from South Vietnam over the next 28 months, The administration has already committed $98 million, taken from other federal funds, for the evacuation of refugees who fled the Communist takeover in South Vietnam.
For the first time since the founding of Social Security in the U.S., the Social Security Administration announced the retirement and disability program was in debt; and that its $46 billion reserve would be drained by 1983. Concerned with larger‐thanexpected deficits in the Social Security system, the Administration is drafting legislation “to restore the short‐range soundness of the program,” the Social Security commissioner, James B. Cardwell, said today social Security payments in the 1975 calendar year will exceed income from payroll taxes by $3‐billion, Mr. Cardwell said. “This is cause for concern but not, alarm,” he observed at a news briefing.
President Ford, responding to continuing high unemployment, asked Congress today to appropriate nearly $1-billion more this year for Federal food stamp and school nutrition programs.
Congressional liberals and moderates, having held their ground against the administration over aid to Indochina, are now backing away from their intentions of a few months ago to mandate record cuts in defense spending and reduce United States forces overseas. It appears that many Democrats in Congress wish to avoid signaling American isolationism to other nations and being tagged as isolationists by the Ford administration.
The House Ways and Means Committee approved today a tax on automobiles based on how many miles they get per gallon of gasoline. Proponents called it a way to turn the industry around toward gas‐efficient cars. Opponents said it was “a mouse.” a “faint memory” and a “slap on the wrist.” The vote could conceivably be changed as the committee completes consideration of the energy tax bill. It has already approved, also tentatively, Federal gasoline tax increase of at least three cents a gallon.
Senator Hubert Humphrey testified at the trial of his former campaign manager that as a candidate for re-election in 1970 he personally sought the support of the Associated Milk Producers, Inc. But he said he had no personal knowledge of the illegal contribution that Jack Chestnut, his former aide, is accused of taking.
Eight sacks of the 11 containing registered mail stolen Sunday morning from a Times Square area post office were recovered from the Hudson River. New York City postal officials indicated the loot included hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of jewelry. A spokesman said it would take four or five days to complete the tally. The theft occurred after a mail truck pulled into a substation and found it was followed by a panel truck containing four armed men. The four forced two security guards to lie on the loading dock as they shifted the bags to the panel truck and sped away.
Dr. Kenneth Edelin, convicted of manslaughter in connection with an abortion, denied a report he was to perform a similar operation. Boston City Hospital officials issued a statement that the doctor “has been at his desk since 9 AM. He hasn’t left his office and hasn’t been scheduled for surgery and has performed no abortions.” A spokesman quoted Edelin as saying he “has not changed his views, and will carry out his duties in a legally and medically sound manner.” Edelin, appealing the manslaughter conviction, delivered premature twins on Friday.
A jury took just under two hours today to conclude that no constitutional rights had been violated by any of nine defendants accused in a $1-million civil suit of systematically and illegally barring antiwar demonstrators from a Billy Graham Day rally attended by President Nixon in 1971.
A suit to permit the federal Food and Drug Administration to ban production of plastic “throwaway” bottles was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals by the Environmental Defense Fund. FDA has conceded that the containers, expected to come into general use for soft drinks and beer in a few years, will inevitably damage the environment by creating non deteriorating litter on land and on waterways. But it said the law does not permit it to ban such items on environmental grounds. The FDA invited a lawsuit to clarify the issue, however.
Kenneth Keating, Ambassador to Israel and former Republican Senator from New York, died in a New York City hospital at the age of 74. His political career in New York was associated with the “good” Republican years. He lost his Senate seat to Robert F. Kennedy.
The Busch Gardens Williamsburg Theme Park opened in Virginia.
The 59th annual Pulitzer prizes were announced. Prizes were given to Robert Caro’s controversial and current “The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York,” and the first five volumes of “Jefferson and His Time,” by Dumas Malone. The prize for the best play went to Edward Albee’s “Seascape,” his second play to win a Pulitzer. In journalism, The Boston Globe, The Xenia (Ohio) Daily News and The Indianapolis Star were cited. A Pulitzer is awarded to Michael Shaara for historical novel “Killer Angels”
Major League Baseball:
Consecutive doubles by Fred Lynn, Jim Rice and Rico Petrocelli keyed a four‐run fourth that carried Boston to its third straight victory, downing the Indians, 7–5. Luis Tiant, with help from Dick Drago, got his third triumph against three losses.
The Rangers edged the Angels, 4–3. Cesar Toyer collected three hits, including a two‐run single, in the eighth inning and led the Rangers to their ninth victory in the last 11 games. The Angels went into the eighth leading, 3–1, on consecutive triples in the first by Jerry Remy and Mickey Rivers, a double by Remy and a run‐scoring single by Rivers in the third and a seventh‐inning homer by Bill Sudakis. Ferguson Jenkins, who trailed until the Rangers rallied, retired the side in order in the ninth to pick up his fourth straight triumph.
Oakland releases pinch runner Herb Washington. Washington, who played in 104 Major League games for the A’s without batting, pitching, or fielding, stole 30 bases, and scored 33 runs.
The St. Louis Cardinals provided Bob Gibson with his first victory of the campaign last night in Busch Stadium as they routed the Philadelphia Phils. 11‐3. Gibson increased his career victory total to 249, most by an active pitcher. Luis Melendez and Mike Tyson slammed two‐run triples off Steve Carlton in a six‐run first inning and Gibson coasted along on that big lead until he tired and was relieved in the eighth.
Doug Rau pitched a two‐hitter in posting his third straight victory and second major league shutout, as the Dodgers blanked the Astros, 2–0. The Dodger lefthander allowed only one Houston runner past first base on a single by Doug Rader and a walk to Enos Cabell with one out in the second inning. Larry Dierker (3‐3), the losing pitcher, got the other hit, a single in the third.
The Expos edged the Cubs, 3–2. Pepe Mangual and Larry Parrish backed Dennis Blair with homers in the Expos’ victory. Mangual’s first homer of the season with one on gave Montreal a 2‐0 lead in the third. Parrish delivered what proved to be the deciding run when he connected in the sixth. Blair, winning his first game in four decisions, was relieved in the seventh by Chuck Taylor, who earned his first save. Ray Burris was the loser.
New York Yankees 1, Baltimore Orioles 3
Boston Red Sox 7, Cleveland Indians 5
Houston Astros 0, Los Angeles Dodgers 2
Chicago Cubs 2, Montreal Expos 3
Philadelphia Phillies 3, St. Louis Cardinals 11
California Angels 3, Texas Rangers 4
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 855.60 (+7.12, +0.84%)
Born:
Chris Howard, NFL running back (Jacksonville Jaguars), in Kenner, Louisiana.
History Diaries 