European leaders solemnly marked the 25th anniversary of the first step toward Western Europe’s unity here today while the streets of Paris were still brightened with flags and flowers to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the end of World War II yesterday. President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing announced yesterday to widespread and vocal opposition, that there would be no future celebrations of V‐E Day, because, he said, he was certain that the organization of Europe had put an end to wars on the Continent. With President Walter Scheel of West Germany, President Giscard d’Estaing presided at an elaborate ceremony commemorating the call by the late Foreign Minister Robert Schuman for a European Coal and Steel Community, which was the start of French‐German reconciliation and the precursor of the European Common Market.
Highly placed Spaniards in both the civilian and military spheres, ranging from conservative monarchists to socialists, are seeking to get Generalissimo Francisco Franco to leave office quickly. They want to begin a program of democratic reforms under his successor, Prince Juan Carlos de Borbon. The 82‐year‐old Chief of State, who has ruled Spain for almost four decades, has not indicated he is willing to yield. But there is a general feeling of political paralysis here.
The Spanish Government today approved a bill that will legalize labor strikes for the first time since the end of the civil war in 1939. Labor Minister Fernando Suarez announced after a Cabinet meeting presided over by General Francisco Franco that the new law would, recognize strikes as “a last action in support of economic demands.”
The Irish Roman Catholic hierarchy said today that the campaign of killings and bombings in Northern Ireland could never be justified in the name of patriotism. In one or the strongest denunciations vet of the outlawed Irish Republican Army’s campaign of violence, the bishops said that almost every kind of moral wrong has been held justified by “the cause”—the I.R.A.”s campaign to unite Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
After nearly two weeks abroad, Prime Minister Harold Wilson flew back to London last night to find a mood of rising bitterness and dismay over the state of the nation. While he was meeting with Commonwealth leaders in Jamaica and visiting with President Ford, the statistics here were reflecting a deepening economic crisis, Government ministers were quarreling with one another, businessmen were talking of rebellion and the trade unions were showing no signs of easing up on large wage demands. The voices of gloom, so often heard here, gained some new strength. The crucial problem, of course, is that nobody sees a solution. If Mr. Wilson and his colleagues now have a strategy that will bring things under control, it has escaped detection.
Major Italian newspapers have reported during the last few days that judiciary authorities are investigating two banks on suspicion of having “laundered” ransom money from kidnappings. Court officials refused to comment on the ground that pre‐trial inquiries by the judicial branch are protected by secrecy. The press reports on inquiries into what is called here the “recycling” of the huge sums that Italian gangsters have extorted from the relatives of abducted persons during the last several years followed the arrest last Tuesday of a wealthy kidnap victim.
The President of the United Nations Law of the Sea Conference addressed today a “fervent appeal” to all coastal nations to refrain from grabbing a greater share of the oceans’ resources before a new international treaty governing man’s use of the seas can be completed.
A new Middle East war is a real possibility and most likely would trigger a second Arab oil embargo that could lead to international anarchy and economic ruin, the Institute of Strategic Services warned today. “A new conflict and new oil embargo could scarcely be limited to the region, but would threaten to throw the world into a turmoil compared to which the aftermath of the October war would seem like a manageable inconvenience,” an institute survey said. The forceful seizure of Arab oil fields by the United States would be feasible but ineffective, the institute said, because it would come too late for Western Europe and Japan to avoid economic strangulation because of the embargo.
Michael Tzur, the highest Israeli official ever charged with corruption, pleaded guilty in Tel Aviv today to 14 counts of larceny, bribery and corruption.
Saudi Arabia has received a message from Secretary of State Kissinger indicating United States readiness to revive efforts to bring about a conference between oil consumers and oil producers, according to government sources in Jidda. The failure of last month’s preparatory conference for an international conference on energy and raw materials has placed Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, in a critical position. Until now, Saudi Arabia has been the champion within the Organization of Petroleun Exporting Countries, OPEC, of a policy of freezing prices this year as a contribution to a dialogue between producers and consumers for a long‐term price and supply agreement.
In Laos, Kaho Xane Pathet Lao, the official newspaper of the Lao People’s Party, ran the announcement that the nation’s Hmong people “must be exterminated down to the root of the tribe” because their soldiers had assisted the United States in fighting the Communists. The extermination would begin days later.
Five pro-American cabinet ministers, including the Ministers or Defense and Finance, reportedly resigned from Laos’s coalition government, in the midst of mounting protests against United States policies and following a demonstration by several thousand Laotian students and teachers against rising prices and foreign economic influences. Some demonstrators threw stones at the United States Embassy in Vientiane. There was no official confirmation of the resignations, which were reported by highly placed sources.
The military administrative committee running the Saigon area established a cash-only economy for South Vietnam and issued a series of orders to foreigners, including diplomats, according to Saigon broadcasts monitored in Hong Kong. The radio said that the South Vietnamese currency used by the old regime was the only legal tender and that checks were banned. The use of other currencies was forbidden, and banks were closed for the time being.
The new Cambodian government announced a major reconstruction program for the country’s shattered industry and agriculture. The Cambodian radio, monitored in Bangkok, said that the economy would still be based on farming but that intensive efforts were also under way to rebuild factories destroyed by the losing side as the five-year war ended.
Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore said in Washington last night that the loss of American allies in Indochina to Communism was an “unmitigated disaster” and that unless the Ford Administration and Congress spoke with one voice in the future, further aggression could not be deterred.
The South Vietnamese refugee population on Guam continued to grow rapidly as more than 8,000 new refugees arrived on three merchant ships. The new arrivals brought Guam’s present refugee population to nearly 48,000, or almost one-third of the island’s total civilian population. In recent days, 38,000 refugees, who were taken to Guam after the fall of Saigon, left the island to go to the continental United States. On Monday, some 20,000 more South Vietnamese are expected to arrive at Guam on the last six refugee ships from the Philippines.
Arguments are being strongly advanced within the Administration that no new concessions should be made to China on the status of Taiwan, according to sources familiar with these discussions. At the same time, the sources said, conservatives in Congress are advising President Ford that he should not visit China next fall on the ground that such a visit would create pressures to make concessions. The arguments and maneuvers are tied to what the Administration perceives as a need to reaffirm American treaty commitments in the wake of the Communist takeover in Indochina and the uneasiness this has generated among allies.
The Philippines called today for a nonaggression pact in Southeast Asia and the expansion of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, possibly to include the new Communist regimes of Cambodia and South Vietnam.
The Canadian Government, still smarting over India’s use of Canadian materials to produce a nuclear explosion last year, set guidelines today for assisting other countries in developing nuclear power plants. The new policy immediately started a controversy.
A majority of the 23 members of the Organization of American States has decided to postpone action on lifting its politicaleconomic embargo against Cuba until next September, diplomats at the annual O.A.S. general assembly reported today. Several months ago it appeared that pro‐Cuba forces in the organization had developed the momentum to bring the issue to a decisive vote about now. Though there have been increasingly amiable words between the Ford Administration and Premier Fidel Castro — the latest yesterday — it appears that most of the Latin American foreign ministers who have gathered for informal discussions prefer to put off the Cuba question.
The Constitution of Cameroon was amended to create a new office, Prime Minister of Cameroon, which would also be first in line to succeed the President. The first officeholder would be Paul Biya, who would become President in 1982, a post he still holds.
A Senate-House conference committee agreed to set a tentative ceiling of $367 billion on government spending for the new fiscal year beginning July 1. The committee estimates that this ceiling, if maintained, would mean a deficit of $68.8 billion. The deficit and spending figures appeared to be considerably higher than the deficit and spending totals that President Ford has said are the highest he would tolerate.
The Senate Armed Services Committee, preparing for the annual defense debate in the Senate, proposed a 9 percent reduction in the Defense Department’s weapons procurement and research programs in the coming fiscal year. The committee, acting on the military authorization bill, approved most of the major weapons programs proposed by the Defense Department, including $597‐million in development funds for the Air Force’s B‐1 strategic bomber, and it made deeper, across-the-board reductions in Pentagon funding than has been its practice in recent years.
Senator John C. Stennis, Democrat of Mississippi who is chairman of the committee, predicted that the Senate would sustain the panel’s judgment that “tremendous cuts” should not be made in the defense budget pending a review of the nation’s foreign policy in the post‐Vietnam period. “I don’t want to run everywhere where people are in trouble,” the 73‐year‐old chairman observed. “But as I have seen things develop, you get results when you are armed. It is not the only way to persuade people, but it is a helpful way.” The immediate inclination among Senate liberals who have been critical of the size of the defense budget was not to press on the Senate floor for further across ‐ the ‐ board cuts but rather to challenge, probably unsuccessfully, individual weapons programs. Thus, Senator George McGovern, Democrat of South Dakota, will lead an effort to stop development of the B‐1, which the liberals say is militarily unnecessary and excessively expensive.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has empowered its chairman, Senator Frank Church, Democrat of Idaho, to issue subpoenas that would command the testimony of employes of the Central Intelligence Agency and other agencies of the Federal intelligence community. The committee voted, in an unscheduled closed session, to reject a proposal by the executive branch that government lawyers be allowed to “monitor” interviews with present and former government employes, Mr. Church said. Though the committee’s pow er to issue subpoenas is included in its rules, today’s action gave to Mr. Church the discretion of when to issue the subpoenas and cleared the way for swift use of the subpoena power.
The Commerce Department said that the nation’s businesses sold far greater quantities of goods than they bought in March, resulting in a record monthly decline of $1.9 billion in business inventories. Sales, however, declined in March — down 2.5 percent from February — and businesses ended up with a higher proportion of inventories, compared to sales, than they had in the previous month. A substantial decline in inventories is regarded as essential to an upturn in the nation’s economy.
The Federal Energy Administration said today that it would not take higher costs to consumers into account in deciding which electric generating stations would. be ordered to convert to coal from oil or natural gas. “Costs are not considered a policy restraint,” said John A. Hill, a deputy administrator, at a news briefing on the agency’s new program. Conversion to coal is one of the efforts begun by the Nixon Administration to make greater use of the nation’s coal deposits to reduce consumption of imported oil.
Illegal overcharges by oil companies may be as high as $6 billion, Rep. William S. Moorhead (D-Pennsylvania) said Friday. Moorhead said the estimate was given to his staff by a Federal Energy Administration official he refused to name. Moorhead, chairman of a House energy subcommittee, commented as FEA chief Frank G. Zarb appeared before the panel to deliver a general briefing on the agency’s activities.
The Texas Senate and House passed a bill today setting up a 1976 Presidential primary that Senator Lloyd Bentsen of Texas thinks will bolster his chances for the Democratic party’s nomination for President.
Senator William V. Roth said today that Army crowd-control experiments, using hard rubber balls fired at high velocity, have killed or maimed 500 test animals.
The Lockheed Aircraft Corporation and its 24 lending banks announced tentative agreement yesterday on a two-phase plan to overhaul the financial structure of the debt-laden aerospace giant.
A scientist at RCA Laboratories in Princeton, New Jersey, has invented an imaging system that can be used in a laser beam scanner, both to take pictures and project images.
The highest court in Massachusetts heard an appeal for Alger Hiss, 70 years old, to be readmitted as a lawyer in the state on grounds of good character and good record since his release from prison in 1954. The seven-judge Supreme Judicial Court reserved decision after Mr. Hiss’s lawyer challenged a report that he contended would require Mr. Hiss to “falsely confess” guilt in the 1950 perjury conviction.
[Ed: Hiss was GUILTY, PERIOD, beyond all doubt. We know this from both the secret VENONA intercepts AND the Mitrokhin archive obtained after the fall of the USSR. He should have been hanged.]
Brian Oldfield shot puts 22.86 meters (‘unofficial’ world record, due to his professional status) in El Paso, Texas.
A high school student, Houston McTear, equaled the world record in the 100yard dash today with a 9-second clocking in a preliminary heat of the state Class AA championship meet.
In a game that both teams tried to turn into a street brawl, the Boston Celtics staved off elimination from the National Basketball Association Eastern Conference final tonight by defeating the Washington Bullets, 103-99.
In a 4-hour-5-minute struggle that will be remembered as one of the great tennis matches, Bjorn Borg defeated Red Laver tonight, 7-6, 3-6, 5-7, 7-6, 6-2, in the semifinals of the World Championship Tennis final.
Major League Baseball:
At Three Rivers, Dave Parker drives in 6 runs on a double, triple and homer to lead the Pirates to an 11–3 win over the National League West-leading Dodgers. The Pirates are 3 games behind the Cubs in the National League East.
The Mets drop their fifth in a row to the Reds, 4–3. Joe Morgan’s two-run single in the fifth was the fatal blow. Dave Kingman had a home run for New York, his fifth of the year.
The Braves beat the Phillies, 3–1. Rorie Harrison pitched five‐hit ball and his batterymate, Biff Pocoroba, drove in two runs with his first major league hit. Pocoroba, starting his third game as Atlanta’s catcher, lined a single to left in the second inning following a single by Earl Williams and a double by Larvell Blanks, staking the Braves to a 2‐0 lead. Harrison (2‐1) struck out three and walked two and had a shutout until Greg Luzinski hit his sixth homer in the sixth.
The Cubs downed the Padres, 5–2 as Rick Monday hit a two‐run homer in a three‐run first inning and Darold Knowles combined to save Ray Burris’s fourth victory against one defeat.
The Expos, trailing 4‐1, scored four runs in the sixth on singles by Larry Parrish and Pepe Mangual, a double by Barry Foote and a throwing error by Enos Callen in right field, to edge Houston, 5–4. The Astros had taken a 4–0 lead in the fourth.
The Pirates routed the Dodgers, 11–3. The Pirates battered the Dodgers’ star relief pitcher, Mike Marshall, for nine runs in the seventh and eighth innings and coasted to victory. Dave Parker drove in six runs with a double, triple and a homer.
The Giants bowed to the Cardinals, 6–4. Ron Fairly drove in four runs with a two‐run single and a two‐run homer—his first as a Cardinal—to spark the St. Louis triumph. The Cardinals scored all six runs off John D’Acquisto knocking him out with Fairly’s homer in the third.
A Minnesota castoff two years ago. Jim Kaat of the White Sox is the first pitcher in Chicago history to win 12 straight games. The veteran southpaw accomplished that feat last night in Cleveland when he shut out the Indians, 2–0, on a six‐hit effort. Kaat has not lost since last August 31. He struck out five and walked two, although he needed relief from Rich Gussage and Terry Forster in the ninth inning in running his season mark to 5–0. What’s more, Kaat beat the Indians’ ace, Gaylord Perry. The Cleveland rightbander pitched hitless ball over the first five innings but lost his fourth game in eighth decisions.
Jim Hughes, a rookie right‐hander, pitched a seven‐hitter and Glenn Borgmann singled home two runs in Minnesota’s three‐run second inning as the Twins downed the Orioles, 5–2.
Rick Wise pitched a three‐hitter and Rick Burleson had two doubles and a single in leading the Boston Red Sox to their sixth consecutive victory, 4–1 over the Angels.
The Oakland A’s beat the Yankees, 4–3, in Oakland. The winning run scores on a wild pitch by reliever Sparky Lyle in the 8th. Rollie Fingers got the win in relief.
The Brewers thumped the Royals, 7–1. Henry Aaron smacked his 736th career homer to break a 1‐1 tie in the seventh and sparked a five‐run inning. Bobby Mitchell and Don Money delivered two‐run hits. Ed Sprague, making his second start, pitched six innings and earned his first victory.
Singles by Cesar Tovar and Lenny Randle, a throwing error in left field by Dan Meyer and an infield single by Jeff Burroughs accounted for two runs in the third inning in Texas’s 3–1 triumph in Detroit. Willie Horton hit his seventh homer for the Tigers.
Philadelphia Phillies 1, Atlanta Braves 3
Minnesota Twins 5, Baltimore Orioles 2
Boston Red Sox 4, California Angels 1
San Diego Padres 2, Chicago Cubs 5
Chicago White Sox 2, Cleveland Indians 0
Texas Rangers 3, Detroit Tigers 1
Milwaukee Brewers 7, Kansas City Royals 1
Houston Astros 4, Montreal Expos 5
Cincinnati Reds 4, New York Mets 3
New York Yankees 3, Oakland Athletics 4
Los Angeles Dodgers 3, Pittsburgh Pirates 11
San Francisco Giants 4, St. Louis Cardinals 6
The stock market, buoyed by news of a record drop in inventory levels in March, registered a broad advance yesterday in much heavier trading. At the session’s end, advances on the New York Stock Exchange outscored declines by more than 2 to 1, with 1,084 issues up and 429 down.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 850.13 (+9.63, +1.15%)
Born:
Brian Deegan, American freestyle motocross cyclist, in Omaha, Nebraska.
Chris Diamantopoulos, Canadian actor (“The Three Stooges”; “Silicon Valley”), and cartoon voice (“Mickey Mouse”), in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Tamia [Washington], Canadian R&B, hiphop, and pop singer, in Windsor, Ontario, Canada.
Died:
Philip Dorn, 73, Dutch actor (Enemy Agent; I Remember Mama), dies of a heart attack.
History Diaries 