News stories from Sunday April 25, 1976

Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:

Jimmy Carter, regarded as the front-runner in the Pennsylvania primary tomorrow, was attacked by Senator Henry Jackson, Representative Morris Udall and their political allies, who hope to defeat him, as being unsympathetic to organized labor and blacks. Mr. Carter continued to express confidence that he would win, but he said that "machine politics" was a powerful factor in Pennsylvania, and that if there was a "very poor voter turnout, I may not come in first." [New York Times] A detailed and candid account of the Vietnam war's final battles by North Vietnam's Chief of Staff says that Hanoi's leaders did not expect their offensive last year to lead to complete victory and that they were surprised by the speed of Saigon's collapse. Gen. Van Tien Dung, the Chief of Staff, said that when hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese troops and civilians fled in panic from Pleiku in the Central Highlands, beginning the rout, he was almost incredulous. Hanoi's Politburo and top generals, he said, had planned only a series of attacks that would set the stage for a general offensive and uprising in 1976 to "completely liberate South Vietnam." The general's report is being serialized by two of Hanoi's official newspapers, and apparently is being published to coincide with the first anniversary of the Communists' triumphant entry into Saigon last April 30 and with today's elections in North and South Vietnam for a unified national assembly. [New York Times] Secretary of State Henry Kissinger met with the heads of state of both Kenya and Tanzania on the first full day of his African tour. In his airport statement on arrival and departure, Mr. Kissinger sought to establish a tone of modest expectations for his tour -- he repeated several times that he had gone to Africa to learn the views of its leaders to help him formulate a comprehensive United States policy on Africa. [New York Times] The Socialist Party led in returns from Portugal's first free parliamentary elections in 50 years, but centrist and conservative parties made surprisingly strong showings, with second and third place, respectively. The Communists were running fourth. With about 15 percent of the votes counted, the Socialists were ahead, as expected, led by Mario Soares. They had 32.4 percent of the vote, and it appeared that they would be able to form a minority government. [New York Times] Sirens called North and South Vietnamese voters to polling places to elect a joint National Assembly, the divided country's first unified government in 30 years. The Assembly will have no opposition members, the real power remaining with the Politburo of the Workers' Party in Hanoi. [New York Times] Monopoly-like control by physicians and "passive" patients who generally do not question doctors' orders or medical costs are pushing health care costs up at a record speed, the President's Council on Wage and Price Stability said in a report. "The nature and extent of services provided is usually determined by the physician in a transaction in which the patient is often a passive participant," the report said, giving this as one of the possible causes for soaring health costs, which last year totaled $118.5 billion, 40 percent of it paid for by federal, state and local governments. The reasons why medical costs are so high will be examined at public hearings to be held around the country by the council this spring. [New York Times]