News stories from Saturday October 10, 1970

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

President Nixon's Vietnam peace proposal would only "legalize and perpetuate the intervention of the United States in Indochina" and is, therefore, "a great fraud," the Soviet Union said in a Pravda commentary. The Soviet government also was reported to have expressed its support of the Viet Cong position on the proposal. [New York Times] Egypt will not renew her cease-fire with Israel unless the Israelis return to the United Nations talks on the Middle East and announce their readiness to implement the 1967 United Nations Security Council resolution on the Middle East, Foreign Minister Mahmoud Riad said in an interview in Cairo. He added that Egypt would not remove "a single missile" from the truce zone. [New York Times] Minutes after Canadian officials offered safe conduct to a foreign country to the Quebec separatists who kidnapped the senior British trade commissioner in Quebec, two masked men carrying submachine guns kidnapped the Quebec Minister of Labor and Immigration from his suburban home. There was no immediate word of the fate of the first kidnapping victim after the deadline for freeing 23 prisoners passed unmet. [New York Times] Selective Service and Army officials were reported to have found a significant increase over the last three and a half years in the number of potential draftees trying to be -- and succeeding in being -- disqualified for medical or psychiatric reasons. A growing number of doctors were said to be aiding the draftees, some by interpreting disqualification standards strictly and a few by writing letters reporting nonexistent physical or mental conditions. [New York Times] A presidential task force report recommending more federal scholarships, more aid to black colleges and "a comprehensive system" of federal grants to graduate schools was released by the White House -- almost nine months after it was submitted to President Nixon. The White House also released a task force report on the mentally handicapped submitted on May 28 and a similar report on the physically handicapped submitted on Feb. 10. [New York Times] The itinerary of President Nicolae Ceausescu of Rumania on a tour of the United States in the next two weeks was found to include visits to Disneyland, Colonial Williamsburg, the United Nations and a Broadway musical, conferences with the boards of two large banks, industrialists and the nation's highest officials, and inspections of factories, department stores and flood control projects. "There's never been anything like it laid on for a Communist leader," said one State Department official. [New York Times] As officials inspecting the heavily damaged interior of a bombed courthouse in Long Island City determined that the building could not be used until it has been completely renovated, the Federal Bureau of Investigation joined the local authorities in investigating the early-morning blast that damaged the structure. Nobody was injured in the explosion, which followed a warning call from "the Weatherman." [New York Times]