Charges that eight years of corrupt control of South Vietnam made President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu one of the world’s richest men provoked sharp controversy among Saigon officials arriving in this country, and brought a denial of the charges by a former aide of Mr. Thiệu. The accusations were made by Nguyễn Văn Ngải, who was minister of rural development under Mr. Thiệu until he was ousted last year, and who is a refugee at Camp Pendleton, California. “Without doubt, he is a billionaire,” Mr. Ngải said in an interview when he arrived at the camp. This was denied at another refugee center at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, by General Đặng Văn Quang, who was Mr. Thiệu’s special assistant for intelligence and military affairs.
Austrian Cardinal Franz Koenig urged the Hungarian government to “rehabilitate” the memory of Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty, whom he called a “modern martyr” in an era of political and ideological combat. At a Requiem Mass in Vienna, Cardinal Koenig criticized Hungary’s Communist government for failing to clear the former Hungarian primate of criminal charges at what he called a “show trial” in 1949.
Three Italian convicts who last night staged a rebellion with leftist political overtones in a penitentiary at Viterbo, 50 miles northwest of Rome, gave themselves up today, freeing a prison guard they had been holding as a hostage. A clandestine far‐left group, Armed Proletarian Units, which claimed the prison rebels as members, promised it would release a high judge kidnapped last Tuesday as soon as the three men had been transferred to penetentiaries in northwestern Italy. The Judge, Giuseppe di Gennaro, a 51‐year‐old internationally known expert on prison reform, has been missing since Tuesday night. Pictures showing him shackled and unshaven in what was described as a secret “people’s prison” were found in Viterbo penitentiary and in telephone booths in Rome last night.
Mafia chieftain Frank (Three Fingers) Coppola, 76, was acquitted of charges that he ordered the assassination of Italy’s top anti-Mafia detective, Angelo Mangano. An eight-man tribunal in Florence also dismissed charges against two alleged Mafia hirelings, Ugo Bossi and Sergio Boffi, accused of shooting and seriously wounding Mangano outside his Rome home in April, 1973. The verdict was expected.
A West German magistrate in Schleswig released on bail seven Belgian Jews charged with ransacking the home of the former Gestapo chief of Nazi-occupied Belgium. They were protesting German delays in bringing him to trial. The officer, former Lieutenant Colonel Ernst Ehlers, allegedly played a part in sending the protestors’ parents, and 12,000 other Belgian Jews, to die in Nazi concentration camps.
The Vatican has disavowed traffic in a Holy Year souvenir—bricks that supposedly were used to block the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica and that are on sale for $40 to $80.
Negotiations toward a technical assistance contract between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Saudi Arabia have broken down in a disagreement over a guarantee for the entry of Jews to work on the project.
Points for inclusion in an eventual Persian Gulf collective security pact have been under study in recent days here and in Iraq, the main centers of power in the upper gulf region, well‐placed foreign sources reported this week. There has been no official confirmation in Tehran of the reports, but an Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, has spoken publicly of the possibility of forming “security structures” to band together the states that adjoin the gulf — all oil exporters. Mr. Hussein is understood to have raised the possibility of such a pact earlier this year when he and the Shah of Iran met in Algiers and settled their countries’ long‐standing feud.
Premier Souvanna Phouma of Laos worked desperately to stave off the collapse of the fragile coalition government after a series of cabinet resignations brought to a climax a week of renewed military conflict — demonstrations and assassinations. The next several days are expected to be critical to the survival of the coalition between the right wing and the Communist-led Pathet Lao. The Premier announced that he had received the resignations of the Defense and Finance Ministers and two deputy ministers, but had not yet acted on them.
Concerned over recent Communist victories in Indochina, hundreds of thousands of South Koreans attended a rally in Seoul in support of President Park Chung Hee’s call for increased preparedness against possible aggression from North Korea. A five-point resolution adopted at the rally, in which some opposition politicians took part, called on the United States to honor its defense commitment to South Korea.
Deputy Premier Deng Xiaoping, China’s most important official after Chairman Mao Tse‐tung and Premier Chou Enlai, leaves for a state visit to France this weekend to seek to improve political relations. He is expected to have several meetings with President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and Premier Jacques Chirac. French diplomats here believe one topic may be the possibility of setting up a French-Chinese consultative committee that would meet regularly to debate important international issues.
Queen Elizabeth II toured the ancient city of Kyoto, Japan, trooping through temples, shrines and gardens and sampling bean cake and green tea at a ritualistic ceremony. An estimated 250,000 Japanese lined the streets to greet the first British monarch to visit Japan. The queen and Prince Philip flew from Tokyo to Kyoto, prevented by a strike from riding the world’s fastest train to the disappointment of the Japanese.
The military authorities on Guam were ordered to halt until further notice all transportation of South Vietnamese refugees to the continental United States. The order came from the Interagency Indochina Task Force, of which L. Dean Brown is chairman. The State Department, which is a member along with the Defense, Justice and other agencies, said in Washington, “Because of limited funding availabilities, we are slowing the airlift of refugees now on Guam and Wake to reception centers in the United States.” The order was announced 36 hours before the scheduled arrival on Guam of an additional 20,000 refugees. The halt touched off considerable concern for the sanitary and health situation on the island.
Surveying Canadian high-school students last winter, a publisher discovered that most had no idea what percentage of their country’s population spoke French or who the Governor General was.
United States officials disclosed today that the General Assembly of the Organization of American States, which is meeting in Washington, is nearing agreement on a formula that will lead to the lifting of the trade embargo against Cuba sometime this summer. Secretary of State Kissinger said, “We’re coming to some understanding of how to proceed, and the United States was in accord with that procedure.” He made it clear that he did not expect concrete action to lift the embargo at the current meeting.
The Dominican Republic’s four top military chiefs resigned, confronting President Joaquin Balaguer with the most serious crisis in his nine years in office. Balaguer named himself provisional chief of staff of the armed forces and appointed new commanders of the air force and navy but not the army. In their letter of resignation, the officers said they were quitting because they disagreed with recent unspecified policy decisions. The resignations came two days after the swearing in of General Rafael Nivar Seijas as chief of the national police.
The Gulf Oil Corporation, through its representative here, has informed the Bolivian Government that it has not paid a $4‐million bribe to protect its investments in Bolivia. However, the company said it was “unable at this time to give assurances that Bolivia was not involved in political contributions from Gulf.” The note, made public today, was in response to an ultimatum by the government calling on Gulf to divulge information on the allegations of bribery.
Brazil has opened one of the most extensive vaccination campaigns in history amid warnings that a meningitis epidemic now sweeping the country could reach catastrophic proportions. The disease killed 4,000 people in an estimated total of 40,000 cases in 1974. Health Minister Paulo De Alfeida Machado has said that the situation could be even worse this year unless precautions are taken. The incidence of the disease for the first three months of this year has increased more than fivefold over a comparable period in 1974.
A major earthquake struck Chile’s southern agricultural region, destroying several homes and causing damage to a hospital, but no deaths or serious injuries were reported. The quake, felt for 900 miles from Santiago to Puerto Montt, and in neighboring Argentina, measured between 6 and 7 on the Richter scale. Its epicenter was about 350 miles southeast of Santiago in Lebu, a small farming community. Worst hit were the port of Concepcion and the town of Angol. Older dwellings made of adobe collapsed and a five-story hospital was damaged. The last serious earthquake in Chile was in July, 1971, when 85 persons were killed and thousands of homes destroyed.
The economy is on course for a recovery from recession later this year, but “if we assume the fight against inflation is over, we are grossly mistaken,” Chairman Alan Greenspan of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers said in a closed meeting with 119 top executives attending the semiannual meeting of the Business Council, a research and study organization, in Hot Springs, Virginia. Later, he told reporters that the upturn. when it arrived, might be quicker than expected, but he warned of the “real danger” of pumping money into the economy too rapidly, which could push prices higher.
Federal District Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr. made public his final school desegregation plan for racially troubled Boston, requiring the busing of 21,000 students, 12,000 of them in the elementary grades. Scheduled to take effect this fall, the plan calls for the busing of 4,000 more students than Judge Garrity’s current interim program.
The country may be in the depths of the worst recession since World War II, but a lot of Americans are still having fun. Interviews around the country indicate that most people — though worried about their jobs, high prices and, to some extent, about the nation’s economic future — are still spending their money and their time on recreation.
The Central Intelligence Agency’s use of the Howard Hughes organization to disguise its recovery of a sunken Soviet submarine was the most recent example of a long-standing practice in which dozens and perhaps scores of American companies have lent their names and reputation — usually for a price — to shield the C.I.A.’s covert activities abroad. These relationships between the C.I.A. and American-based multinational corporations, known as “commercial-over agreements,” have put career C.I.A. officers in the overseas offices of companies that range from some of the world’s largest to others, unknown to the general public.
U.S. Treasury Secretary William E. Simon announced the federal government would not provide aid to provide $1.5 billion to meet two months of expenditures for New York City. The requests had been made by city Mayor Abraham Beame. Simon announced that the federal government would not rescue New York City from its financial crisis. The announcement said that Mayor Beame and Governor Carey were informed of the decision and had been granted a request to see President Ford Tuesday. There was no hint that this decision was likely to be changed.
Because of the gasoline shortage, transportation accidents killed nearly 10,000 fewer persons last year than in 1973, but bicycle and motorcycle deaths soared, federal safety experts said. Statistics released by the National Transportation Safety Board showed that the toll was 50,541 dead, 16% below the 60,356 killed in 1973 — the sharpest drop in any single year since World War II. The highway death toll, representing 90% of the fatalities, dropped by 18%, but motorcycle fatalities rose by 12.4% and bicycle deaths were up 20%. Safety Board Chairman John H. Reed noted, however, that the highway deaths were increasing again.
Mandatory safety standards being developed for the government by Consumers Union would increase the prices of power lawn mowers from 24% to 49% and put 25 companies out of business, according to a private study commissioned by the industry. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission gave about $135,000 to Consumers Union to draft proposed standards designed to reduce the estimated 190,000 mower-caused injured annually. Among the standards are such safety devices as a shield that prevents stones from hitting persons and a device that turns off the engine when the user’s hand is removed from the handle.
Two small bombs exploded within a short time of each other in Washington, damaging windows in the downtown office of the Soviet airline Aeroflot and at the Mexican Embassy’s chancery. No one was injured. A spokesman for the FBI raised the possibility that the bombings might be connected to the meeting in Washington of the Organization of American States and to protests by anti-Castro Cubans against OAS moves to lift sanctions against that country.
A complicated ticket sales procedure that bypassed normal accounting was used by Braniff International to raise $40,000 for former President Richard M. Nixon’s reelection campaign, the airline admitted. It has pleaded guilty to making illegal corporate contributions to political campaigns. The Civil Aeronautics Board had charged that the company generated more than $640,000 as “an ‘off-the-books’ source of funds” for use by the airline’s top executives. The airline said 3,632 tickets were sold and not recorded in its books. Money not used for political contributions was spent on such business promotions as giving extra consideration to travel agents, tour groups and promoters, the airline said in a response to the CAB charges.
Detroit Mayor Coleman Young said several policemen who demonstrated against pending layoffs were drunk at the time and he vowed that officers “who display this sort of attitude won’t be around for long.” A police spokesman said criminal warrants might be sought against several white police officers who scuffled with a black officer during Friday’s layoff protest. Photographs appeared to show that the black officer, William Green, waved a gun by its barrel during the scuffle but Green said he had merely picked up the gun after it had fallen from his pocket. “Our investigation seems to indicate that officer Green was the victim, not the perpetrator,” the spokesman said.
A mother and five of her 11 children were killed in a fire that Newark, New Jersey, authorities thought might have been set by an arsonist. Five other children escaped by jumping or by being thrown from a third-floor window by an older sister and being caught by an older brother. The 11th child was not at home. The victims were Evelyn Mills, 34, and Pamela, 7; Lavanche, 4; Pope Jr., 3; Leeandre, 2, and Injione, 3 months.
The natural gas reserves in Alaska’s North Slope are the largest in North America, with none other of comparable size, a petroleum engineer has told a Federal Power Commission hearing. W. J. Sleeper, senior vice president of a Dallas geological research firm, said the Prudhoe Bay reserves were estimated to total 114.3 trillion cubic feet. Proven reserves have been put at approximately 24 trillion cubic feet. Two pipeline companies are seeking commission approval to transport the gas over different routes.
The world’s entire adult flock of wild whooping cranes has reached its breeding grounds, apparently escaping death from a deadly bird disease on its northward migration, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced. A spokesman said all 47 mature birds arrived at Wood Buffalo Provincial Park in northern Canada, their summer home, and four pairs already have begun nesting.
The Betamax home videotaping system was introduced by Sony with the LV-1901 going on sale in Japan. The unit, which contained a color TV, the recorder, and the tapes, retailed for $2,488 (equivalent to more than $9,000 USD in 2010).
Brian Oldfield of the United States set a mark for the shot put of 75 feet, more than 3 feet further than had ever been achieved. The record was not recognized, because Oldfield was paid as an athlete for the International Track Association (ITA).
Darrell Waltrip won his first national NASCAR race in his fourth season of competition, in the Music City 420 in Nashville. Waltrip would go on to win three NASCAR championships (1981, 1982 and 1985).
Major League Baseball:
Will McEnany provides 3⅓ innings of hitless relief to seal the Reds 7–1 win over the Mets. Clay Kirby gets the win. The Mets lost their 6th game in a row.
Tom Paciorek, a last-minute starter for Los Angeles, belted a three-run homer today that carried the Dodgers to a 6–2 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Earl Williams’ one‐out single in the 11th inning gave Phil Niekro and the Atlanta Braves a 2–1 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies today.
Pepe Mangual singled home Jerry White with the deciding run in the eighth inning to day as the Montreal Expos defeated the Houston Astros 8–7.
Jose Cardenal and Don Kessinger collected five hits between them, including a pair of doubles, to lead the Chicago Cubs to their third straight victory today, a 5–1 triumph over the San Diego Padres.
John Curtis, who replaced the sore‐shouldered Bob Gibson in the St. Louis pitching rotation, allowed four hits in 8 ⅔ innings tonight in his first start of the season” as the Cardinals defeated the San Francisco Giants, 9–2. St. Louis broke a scoreless tie with eight runs in the sixth.
Catfish Hunter, the prodigal son, returned home with his $3.75‐million contract today and dazzled the folks by pitching the New York Yankees to a two‐hit, 3–0 victory over the three‐time, worldchampion Oakland A’s.
Bill Hands pitched an eight‐hitter today and Mike Hargrove drove in two runs, one of them on a squeeze, in leading the Texas Rangers to a 5–2 victory over the Detroit Tigers.
The designated hitter, Al Bumbry, scored three runs and hit a single, double and triple to pace an extra‐base Baltimore barrage today as the Orioles defeated the Minnesota Twins, 8–6.
Buddy Bradford, who entered the game hitting .083 drove in four runs, three with a homer that capped four‐run fifth tonight and paced the Chicago White Sox to an 8–3 victory over the Cleveland Indians.
Pete Broberg and Torn Murphy teamed up to pitch a two‐hitter and Hank Aaron singled three times as the Milwaukee Brewers defeated the Kansas City Royals, 3–0, tonight.
Frank Tanana restricted Boston to four hits while striking out a careerhigh 13 batters and Billy Smith singled in his first‐major‐league run tonight as the California Angels scored a 2–0 victory over the Red Sox.
Philadelphia Phillies 1, Atlanta Braves 2
Minnesota Twins 6, Baltimore Orioles 8
Boston Red Sox 0, California Angels 2
San Diego Padres 1, Chicago Cubs 5
Chicago White Sox 8, Cleveland Indians 3
Texas Rangers 5, Detroit Tigers 2
Milwaukee Brewers 3, Kansas City Royals 0
Houston Astros 7, Montreal Expos 8
Cincinnati Reds 7, New York Mets 1
New York Yankees 3, Oakland Athletics 0
Los Angeles Dodgers 6, Pittsburgh Pirates 2
San Francisco Giants 2, St. Louis Cardinals 9
Born:
Hélio Castroneves, Brazilian race car driver; winner of Indianapolis 500 (in his first appearance, 2001, and in 2002, 2009 and 2021); in São Paulo, Brazil.
Adam Deadmarsh, Canadian-American Team USA and NHL center (Olympics, silver medal, 1998; NHL Champions, Stanley Cup-Avalanche, 1996; Quebec Nordiques, Colorado Avalanche, Los Angeles Kings), in Trail, British Columbia, Canada.
History Diaries 