News stories from Saturday December 9, 1972

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

Apollo 17, with its three astronauts, coasted closer to its destination on the moon. The astronauts are scheduled to enter lunar orbit tomorrow afternoon at 2:48 Eastern standard time. Two of the astronauts will enter their landing craft, the Challenger, and cast off the command ship, America, for a landing on the moon at 2:55 PM Monday, and they will begin their first excursion outside Challenger at 6:33 PM. The landing site is a steep-walled valley on the southeastern rim of the Sea of Serenity. [New York Times] Former President Harry S. Truman, hospitalized since last Tuesday because of lung congestion and a weakened heart, was reported to be "resting better than at any time in recent days." The 88-year-old patient, who is at the Research Hospital and Medical Center in Kansas City, Mo., improved enough during the day to have brief conversations with his physicians and members of his family. [New York Times] Robert Strauss, a 54-year-old Dallas lawyer and businessman, was elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee at a meeting of the party in Washington, where his predecessor, Mrs. Jean Westwood, who had fought an ouster, announced her resignation. He pledged to reconcile his opponents and to preserve reforms that have broadened participation in the party. "I belong to no man; I am owned by no organization," Mr. Strauss said. [New York Times] Canadian rescuers found the pilot of a twin-engined airplane that went down in the Canadian Arctic on Nov. 8. The pilot, Martin Hartwell, 47 years old, was the only survivor of the four persons who were aboard the plane when it went down during a medical mercy flight. The search for the plane was the largest in Canadian aviation history, and it cost more than $1 million. [New York Times] Juan Jose Velasco, the man who gained worldwide fame recently as the dogged "Argentine intelligence officer" who tracked down Martin Bormann, the most wanted Nazi war criminal, says that he has never seen Bormann, never, in fact, even looked for him and has no knowledge whether he is dead or alive. Mr. Velasco, who was identified as the star informant in the newspaper version of Bormann's fate, researched by Ladislas Farago early this month, said in a series of interviews in Buenos Aires that the documents used by Mr. Farago were forgeries. Investigations also disclosed that the photograph said to be of Bormann that was published around the world for the last two weeks was actually a picture of a 54-year-old Buenos Aires high school teacher named Rodolfo Nicolas Siri. [New York Times] The Soviet Union and North Vietnam concluded a new agreement for economic and military aid. Moscow pledged "large-scale deliveries" next year for the civilian economy of North Vietnam and for the country's military. The two countries also agreed to establish a joint agency to coordinate the rebuilding of North Vietnam's economy, devastated by years of American bombing. [New York Times] The Vietnam cease-fire talks continued in Paris between Henry Kissinger, President Nixon's national security adviser, and Le Duc Tho, the chief North Vietnamese delegate, who met with their full negotiating teams at the villa in Gif-sur-Yvette, that they have used on alternate days. There was no progress report, but Mrs. Nguyen Thi Binh, the leader of the Viet Cong delegation, who does not take part in the secret talks, made a sharp statement. [New York Times]