News stories from Sunday April 19, 1970

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

With their difficult space journey completed, the Apollo 13 astronauts returned home to Houston where they were greeted by an Air Force band playing over the cheers of several thousand persons. Earlier, NASA released pictures of the Apollo craft showing the extent of the damage. [New York Times] The Vietnam Moratorium Committee, which organized the nationwide antiwar demonstrations last October and helped coordinate the massive Washington protest in November, is going to disband. After a year of trying to organize Americans against the war in Vietnam, the organization said in a letter to its supporters that there was "little prospect of immediate change in the administration's policy in Vietnam." [New York Times] The Nixon administration's recently declared desegregation policies are likely to be challenged starting Monday by a special Senate committee that starts months of hearings on those policies. Chairman Walter Mondale of the Senate Equal Opportunity Committee in a pre-hearing discussion labeled the President's racial policy as, "Do as little as possible." [New York Times] Judge Harry Blackmun said in an interview that he would not expect to "see eye to eye" on all issues with his longtime friend Chief Justice Warren Burger if he became a member of the Supreme Court. Judge Blackmun also said that he opposed the death penalty, had great faith in the younger generation and was not disturbed when the Supreme Court sometimes reversed its own prior decisions. [New York Times] Vietnamese Communist forces reportedly struck today close to the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh. According to a military official, the enemy force seized the town of Saang 20 miles south of the capital. They encountered no opposition. In another action, guerrillas reportedly blew up railroad tracks south of the provincial capital of Takeo.In the opinion of senior United States officials, Communists have effectively secured sanctuaries in eastern Cambodia. These officials now believe that the best the United States can hope for is the equivalent of the military situation that prevailed before last month's change of government in Cambodia. [New York Times] Premier Fidel Castro of Cuba announced that government forces are fighting a group of mercenaries who landed Friday in Eastern Cuba. Mr. Castro said the mercenaries had come from the United States and he indicated that they were Cuban exiles. Four Cuban soldiers were reportedly killed fighting the invaders, two of whom were killed and three captured. [New York Times] It was disclosed that the United States secretly placed air controllers in northern Laos in 1966 to help guide bombing of enemy forces by Royal Laotian and American planes. The disclosure, made public by a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee, was the first official acknowledgement that Americans stationed in Laos were at least indirectly engaged in the ground war. [New York Times]