News stories from Saturday March 14, 1970

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

President Nixon's "state of the world" report was replete with "singularly empty phrases", "simplistic sermonizing" and "pious preachments," the Democratic National Committee said in a reply to the President's report. The attack on Mr. Nixon's concept and execution of foreign policy marked a widening of Democratic criticism. [New York Times] Expo '70 opened in Osaka, Japan, its visitors and exhibits blending into a pageant of sound, color and movement. The visitors swirled and twirled and laughed together, guns boomed, fountains cascaded perfumed confetti, robots blew smoke and colorful troupes from all 77 participating nations sang and danced. [New York Times] Pentagon officials, in urging rejection of the recommendations of a presidential commission for higher military pay and an end to the draft, are arguing that there is doubt that enough men would volunteer for military service, regardless of pay, as long as Vietnam casualty rates remain high. The officials propose instead a gradual increase in military pay with the expectation that the need for the draft will wither away by 1972 or 1973 as enlistments increase. [New York Times] Southern schools have been integrated at an unparalleled pace this year, despite the debate over administration policies. But liberals are afraid that the gains of the last few months will not continue because the momentum of the last decade is spent. Southern segregationists, at the same time, are optimistic for a turnaround. [New York Times] Apparently hoping to counter speculation that two friends of H. Rap Brown killed by a bomb blast in their car on Monday had been killed by foul play, Gov. Marvin Mandel of Maryland released a preliminary FBI report and detailed findings by the Maryland police and state medical authorities. The evidence indicated that the men had accidentally detonated explosives they were carrying. [New York Times] Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia, on his way home after a wave of anti-Viet Cong and anti-North Vietnamese activity in his country, conferred in Moscow with Premier Aleksei Kosygin and President Nikolai Podgorny. The prince had said he would ask the Russians and Chinese to put pressure on their Vietnamese allies to abide by Cambodia's neutrality. [New York Times] The mass antiwar demonstration in Washington last November was "overwhelmingly peaceful," a group of 300 young lawyers who monitored the demonstration said. They said that Justice Department statements "predicted -- and tended to incite -- violence" and that most Americans had been improperly led by the media to believe that the weekend was violent. [New York Times]