Belgium will join three other Western European countries in the purchase of American-made F-16 fighter aircraft worth more than $2 billion, a high-ranking United States official said. The four countries, forming a consortium, are making arrangements to purchase about 350 of the F-16’s in one of the largest arms sales in this century. Belgium’s participation was worked out in Washington between Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, and the Defense Minister of Belgium.
British Prime Minister Harold Wilson called on Britons to vote “yes” in Thursday’s Common Market referendum, declaring a decision to stay in the organization would enable the nation to supply political leadership for Europe. British newspapers almost unanimously predicted an overwhelming “yes” vote, perhaps a landslide. Opponents have declared that membership in the market is a “threat to socialist reforms in Britain.”
Portugal’s new Constitutional Assembly met here today for the first time and its moderate majority served notice that it would seek to use the assembly as vehicle for making its voice heard in a country controlled essentially by the armed forces. The inaugural session of the assembly, which is charged with drafting a constitution, was marked by pomp and ceremony as both the military and the 250 deputies sought to give new luster to parliamentary institutions that had fallen into discredit under the authoritarlian regime overthrown in 1974. President Francisco da Costa Gomes received a warm, welcome as he entered the Grecian semicircular chamber in sao Bento Palace to open the session. He did so with an appeal for a muting of party strife and for respect for a pact signed last May, which binds the armed forces and the parties. The pact imposed in advance a constitution that gives essential power for the next three to five years to the High Council of the Revolution. The president contended that this was the only way to insure progress toward socialism and a plurallist society.
Two American Black Panthers awaiting trial on hijacking charges in Paris were given light prison terms for using forged passports. William Holder, 26, was sentenced to 32 months in jail and fined $250. Catherine Kerkow, 24, got three months in prison and a $200 fine. They were arrested in January and will be released pending trial on charges that in 1972 they hijacked a Western Airlines plane and its 97 passengers from San Francisco to Algiers.
President Ford and President Anwar Sadat of Egypt ended two days of talks in Salzburg with statements by both sides that their meeting had been an important step forward to peace in the Middle East. American and Egyptian officials also said that relations between the two countries, which had been poor for more than 20 years, were enhanced and put on a basis of long-term friendship.
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin announced that Israel would remove tanks, troops and weapons from the Suez Canal as a peace gesture to Egypt. Israel announced today that she will thin out her forces along the Suez Canal front as a unilateral gesture in response to the canal’s reopening this week by Egypt. Israel will reduce the number of troops and tanks along the Suez frontline by half and pull back her artillery and missiles. The effect will be to widen the so-called limited-force zone established under the 1974 Israeli-Egyptian disengagement agreement by roughly half and significantly reduce Israeli forces contained within. The reduction of her forces seemed intended to improve Israel’s current reputation as the intransigent party in the Middle East stalemate and open the way to an interim accord with Egypt.
Property on the Nile worth about $1 million that had been offered by the United States as the site for a new mansion for President Anwar Sadat has been turned down by Egypt. A U.S. Embassy spokesman in Cairo said Egypt had changed its mind about the land in the fashionable Giza district. No reasons were given. The property had been acquired by the United States in the 1960s for a new ambassador’s residence. With the rejection by Egypt, the United States plans to proceed with that building project.
Bursts of machine‐gun fire and new roadblocks in Christian neighborhoods kept Beirut off balance today at the start of a new work week in which most stores and offices remained closed because of political tension. The sound of shooting early today, which kept many persons in their homes, was a protest by right‐wing Phalangist militiamen and followers of the former President Camille Chamoun over the killing yesterday of Nairn Bordkan, chief of Mr. Chamoun’s armed militia forces. Although no incidents involving Phalangists and Palestinian guerrillas were reported, there was also little progress in the effort of Rashid Karami, a Muslim leader designated premier, to form a cabinet. Mr. Karami met with President Suleiman Franjieh for two hours to discuss the cabinet problem, which is the key to any political solution. He said later that a “plan had been agreed upon” to bring about a broadly based cabinet of Muslims and Christians, but he did not say how. More than 300 persons have been killed since April 13, when fighting erupted between the Phalangist militiamen and the Palestinians. The conflict has now extended to other armed Muslim groups that support the Palestinians and are political opponents of the anti‐Communist Phalangists.
Libya said it has signed an accord with the Soviet Union for the establishment of an atomic center in the Arab republic to be used for “peaceful purposes only.” It said the center will “include an atomic reactor with a capacity of two megawatts increasable to 10.” The Soviet Union will train Libyans to run the center.
The last of the B‐52 armada that once symbolized American air might in Indochina were set today to leave Thailand, now seeking friendship with countries that were targets of the big bombers. A joint Thai‐United States announcement said the 17 B‐52’s still here would start leaving Friday. The last 31 United States Air Force F‐111 swing-wing fighter-bombers there will start departing June 15 and at least 4,500 of the 23,000 United States servicemen stationed in Thailand will leave by the end of the month, the announcement said. The B‐52’s in Thailand, like most of the 200 United States combat planes now based there, have seen no battle action for nearly two years. Congress cut off American air raids in Indochina Aug. 15, 1973, and since then Thailand‐based planes have been assigned only reconnaissance and supply missions. The cutback announcement said Ubon Air Base, one of seven Thai airfields manned by United States forces at the height of the war, would close as soon as possible.
Assistant Secretary of State Philip C. Habib met today with the neutralist Laotian Premier and the Pathet Lao Foreign Minister to discuss relations between the United States and Laos. Mr. Habib, who as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs is the highest‐ranking American official to visit Indochina since the fall of Cambodia and South Vietnam, arrived in mid‐afternoon from Bangkok, where he will return tomorrow for further discussions with Thai leaders. “I am getting the views of the governmental leaders here,” Mr. Habib said on his arrival at Vientiane Airport. “We will discuss the whole question of relations between our countries and I am doing the same in all the countries in the area I am visiting.”
Collective leadership is likely in the post-Mao future, Deng Xiao-ping, recognized as China’s third-ranking leader after Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai, told visiting American editors in Peking. Deng said Mao’s principle of “three in one” was being applied at all levels of society. He said “three in one” means joint decision-making by the elderly, the middle-aged and the young. Deng also said that China would welcome President Ford if he decided to visit China, whether or not he had anything substantive to discuss. The position of China on Taiwan remains firm, however.
As many as 18,000 refugees could leave crowded camps on Guam for the U.S. mainland within a week, Navy officials said, as their movement was accelerated. “By June 10, we hope to be down to 25,000 refugees on the island,” a Navy spokesman said. However, more refugees were reported heading for the island aboard several Vietnamese merchant ships. Several thousand others were waiting in the Philippines to be flown to Guam over the next three weeks.
Cuba has quietly surrendered three American citizens to the United States on aircraft hijacking charges, the State Department said today. The three were the first alleged hijackers to be sent home since Cuba signed an agreement with the United States more than two years ago. One American, Gregory Alexander Graves, 26 years old, was flown to Georgia today to stand trial for the 1970 hijacking of a Delta Air Lines plane on a flight from Atlanta to Savannah. Mr. Graves was arrested at San Juan Airport yesterday on his arrival from Barbados. Eight days earlier, Carl White and his wife. Norma, who hijacked a National Airlines plane in 1971, were arrested in San Juan, on their arrival from Barbados.
A new Minister of the Economy took over today In Argentina at a time when the country is plagued by inflation, shortages and absenteeism. The new Minister, Celestino Rodrigo, replaces Alfredo Gómez Morales, who failed to get the backing of President Isabel Martinez de Perón for a strong austerity program designed to stabilize the economy. Despite the worsening economic situation, many Argentines focused on the political implications of Mr. Rodrigo’s appointment. Mr. Rodrigo, who has been Linder Secretary of Social Security, is a protege of José López Rega, the right‐wing Social Welfare Minister and Presidential Secretary, whose power has grown spectacularly since Mrs. Perón assumed the Presidency last July.
White settlers, anxious to leave Angola after last week’s resumption of fighting between rival liberation movements, lined up by the hundreds outside the Portuguese Maritime Transport Co. offices Luanda after the firm announced it was taking a 25,000-ton liner off its cruising schedule in July and August to continue services between Luanda and Lisbon.
The black nationalist movement of Rhodesia splintered further today in the wake of fighting between two rival factions yesterday. Rhodesian police said revised figures showed 13 killed and 28 wounded in demonstrations and rioting by black nationalists and accompanying police action at Salisbury. A police spokesman termed the shootings by police self-defense and said demonstrators threatened to overwhelm riot units and dog handlers called in to control initial fighting. Bishop Abel Muzorewa, leader of Rhodesia’s African National Council, called the killings cold-blooded murder.
Vice President Rockefeller said that his commission’s five-month investigation of the Central Intelligence Agency had found incidents where the CIA violated the law, but no widespread pattern of illegal activity. In a briefing for reporters as he prepared to present a 350-page report to President Ford, Mr. Rockefeller said “there are things that have been done which are in contradiction to the statutes, but in comparison to the total effort they are not major.” During the questioning by reporters, he was asked whether his knowledge of the report caused him to disagree with the term “massive” that was used in some reports to describe the CIA’s domestic spying. Mr. Rockefeller said he could not agree with massive, but “that does not mean there haven’t been things done that were wrong.”
The Supreme Court, in a 5–4 decision, moved to subject a previously permissible kind of labor union organizing activity to the scrutiny of the antitrust laws for the first time. The Court held that a construction union had opened itself to a possible triple-damage lawsuit by compelling a contractor that it was not attempting to organize to boycott nonunion subcontractors that the union sought to organize.
Computers of the Army, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency still contain surveillance files on thousands of antiwar protesters despite official assurances four years ago that the files would be destroyed, NBC News reported tonight. NBC said the files grew out of President Johnson’s directive to find out who was behind antiwar protests in the late nineteen‐sixties. Ford Rowan, a correspondent, said the Defense Department had sent 1,500 agents “into the field” in response to Mr. Johnson’s order. “In 1970, Senator Sam Ervin [Democrat of North Carolina] exposed the extent of Army spying. He got the Pentagon to promise to stop its surveillance program and to destroy the files. But four years after the promise to Sam Ervin, the Army’s domestic surveillance files still exist,” he reported.
The invalidation of state laws and private agreements that prohibit druggists from advertising the price of prescription drugs was started by the Federal Trade Commission. The agency’s economists estimate this might save consumers, who often pay widely varying prices for the same drug, more than $300 million a year. Lewis Engman, the commission’s chairman, said the lack of price information was largely the result of various state and local laws and codes of ethics among pharmaceutical associations that do not permit price to be included in the advertising of prescription medicines. It will take at least a year for the commission’s rules to become effective.
A federal judge turned down the request of Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald for removal of his murder trial from North Carolina to Los Angeles and tentatively ordered it to begin in Raleigh July 14. MacDonald’s attorney said he would appeal. The doctor now practices in Long Beach. MacDonald was accused in January by a federal grand jury of the February, 1970, slayings of his wife and two young daughters. They were found stabbed and beaten to death in their duplex home at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, where he was a physician with the Green Berets. MacDonald, himself stabbed several times, said the murders were done by a group of hippies.
The Administration asked Congress for power to pay more than 6% interest on savings bonds. Removing the ceiling on them would allow the rate “to be varied from time to time in accordance with changing financial circumstances in the interest of both savers and taxpayers.” Treasury Secretary William E. Simon told the House Ways and Means Committee. Simon also said he could accept Congress’ estimate of $617.6 billion as the limit that should be placed on borrowing by the Treasury in the coming fiscal year. New debt ceiling legislation is needed soon because the existing temporary $531 billion limit is due to drop July 1 to its permanent level of $400 billion.
Self-styled big game hunter Robert E. Kleasen, described by the prosecution as a “warped mind” who kept his victims’ gold watches as trophies, was convicted in Austin, Texas, of capital murder for the mutilation slaying of a young Mormon missionary. The murder of Mark Fischer of Milwaukee could carry the death penalty. Kleasen, 42, also was accused of killing Gary Smith Darley of Simi Valley, California, but was tried only for the Fischer murder. The young missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were last seen going to Kleasen’s trailer home near Burnet, Texas, for dinner. Their bodies were never found.
The Food and Drug Administration is warning the owners of 5,300 General Electric microwave ovens to stop using them until repairs can be made to stop radiation leakage up to 10 times what the law allows. The FDA’s Bureau of Radiological Health further disclosed that another 13,000 GE microwave ovens manufactured prior to July of 1973 may also have a radiation leakage. The ovens involved were described as “microwave thermal oven range combination units” called “Cooking Center” or “Versatronic.”
Saying they were frustrated by layoffs and pay cuts under federal bankruptcy reorganizations plans, several thousand union members in large cities staged a wildcat strike against REA Express. It affected terminals in Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, Cincinnati and New York City. REA, a major surface and air delivery service, filed for reorganization February 18 and announced it would close 153 of its 340 terminals in the 50 states, Puerto Rico and Canada in addition to reducing the paychecks of its nearly 8,000 union employees by 10%. The union took the matter to court but a ruling last week said the reorganization plan “voided” the union’s contract.
A unanimous jury verdict would not be required in some civil trials under recommendations of an American Bar Association study commission. Also included in the recommendations, outlined in a draft document released in Chicago, is a proposal to permit six‐person juries in Federal and state civil trials and some criminal trials. A unanimous verdict would be required from a six‐person jury, but with larger juries only three ‐ fourths concurrence would be necessary. A unanimous verdict is the current requirement in all cases.
“The prognosis was so good the hospital treatments were stopped six months ahead of schedule,” said a spokesman for Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Massachusetts). He was announcing that Edward Kennedy Jr., 13, has made such good progress that doctors have halted painful hospital treatments for cancer. The senator’s older son remains on medication but will not have to submit every three weeks to three-day treatments with massive doses of methotrexate, a cancer inhibiting drug that produces painful side effects of fever, chills and vomiting. The youth’s right leg was amputated 18 months ago after doctors discovered he was suffering from bone cancer.
It was a remembrance of things past for some as a young man in a pin-striped suit and shod in suede cowboy boots campaigned door-to-door in Newark on behalf of a friend. It was Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 21, the son of the late senator. Robert Jr. toured a racially mixed area of Newark with Robert Shapiro, 23, a former Harvard classmate who is running for the New Jersey Assembly.
A millionaire Atlanta businessman and his family, who described themselves as “sports nuts,” today purchased the Atlanta Hawks of the National Basketball Association. The group, headed by Simon S. Selig Jr., faces an immediate task of attempting to sign David Thompson of North Carolina State and 7‐foot Marvin (The Human Eraser) Webster of Morgan State. The Hawks chose Thompson and Webster in the first round of last week’s N.B.A. draft. They are reportedly asking for, a combined total of $4‐million.
Major League Baseball:
The White Sox pounded a season‐high of 17 hits, including 15 off Bill Lee, as they crushed the Red Sox, 9–2. Stan Bahnsen pitched the distance to win his fourth game, yielding eight hits. Chicago took a 3–0 lead in the fourth, which Deron Johnson opened with his fifth homer. The blow snapped a streak by Lee who had not allowed an earned run for 33 ⅓ innings. Bill Stein led Chicago with four hits and Bucky Dent collected three. Bahnsen struck out three and walked three in cooling off the Red Sox, who had won 10 of their last 13 games.
The Brewers defeated the A’s, 6–3. Robin Yount singled home the tiebreaking run in the eighth inning to give Milwaukee the victory over Oakland, spoiling Vida Blue’s bid for his 10th victory. Kurt Bevacqua opened the eighth with a double off Blue, 9–3, and was sacrificed to third. Yount followed with his single to center. The Brewers chased Blue with a two‐run rally in the ninth, marked by Bevacqua’s third double of the game.
The Mets’ Jon Matlack allowed the Houston Astros just four hits in a 2–0 triumph last night at Shea Stadium that earned the lefthander his seventh victory against three defeats. A smallish crowd of 13,003 saw Matlack beat Houston’s Dave Roberts, another lefthander, for the second time in 16 days. Matlack and the Mets topped Roberts and the Astros, 6–4, on May 17 in Houston. Both hurlers were in much better form last night than in their previous duel in the Astrodome. In achieving the Mets’ second shutout of the season, Matlack struck out six and only once allowed a Houston base runner to reach third base.
Lynn McGlothen, who led the St. Louis Cardinal pitchers in victories a year ago with 16, hasn’t been overpowering this season. His fortunes are reflected in the team’s fifth‐place standing in the National League’s Eastern Division. But last night in Busch Stadium, the 25‐year‐old right‐hander had matters well in hand as he beat the Atlanta Braves, 1–0, on a four‐hit effort. The only run McGlothen needed was supplied by Ted Simmons, whose single into the right‐field corner brought in Ted Sizemore in the fourth inning. Sizemore had reached base on a force‐out and taken second when the Braves’ starter, Carl Morton, walked Reggie Smith.
The Expos beat the Dodgers, 5–3, as Woodie Fryman scattered 10 hits and doubled home a run in winning his fifth game in seven decisions. The 35‐year‐old left‐hander struck out five. The Expos broke a 2–2 tie in the third on consecutive singles by Gary Carter, Bob Bailey and Larry Lintz. Fryman helped his cause when he drove in Mike Jorgensen in the fourth with his double. Doug Rau was the loser, suffering his fifth defeat in 10 decisions.
The Phillies downed the Padres, 5–1. Mike Schmidt, who entered the game with a .181 batting average, drove in three runs with a single and a homer to back the five‐hit pitching of Steve Carlton. Schmidt, whose double set up the Phillies’ first run in the opening inning, cracked his seventh homer in the third after Dave Cash had doubled. Carlton struck out seven and walked four in posting his fourth triumph in nine decisions, while Dave Freisleben (3–6) took the loss. The Padres scored their only run in the seventh when Tito Fuentes doubled and came home on a single by Randy Hundley.
Chicago White Sox 9, Boston Red Sox 2
Los Angeles Dodgers 3, Montreal Expos 5
Houston Astros 0, New York Mets 2
Milwaukee Brewers 6, Oakland Athletics 3
San Diego Padres 1, Philadelphia Phillies 5
Atlanta Braves 0, St. Louis Cardinals 1
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 846.61 (+14.32, +1.72%)
Born:
Kywin Supernaw, NFL defensive back (Detroit Lions), in Claremore, Oklahoma.
Steve Rain, MLB pitcher (Chicago Cubs), in Los Angeles, California.
Dontae’ Jones, NBA small forward (Boston Celtics), in Nashville, Tennessee.
History Diaries 