News stories from Sunday March 31, 1974

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

The pre-presidential papers for which Mr. Nixon claimed a $576,000 tax deduction were culled to eliminate "sensitive" documents, even though he turned the papers over to the National Archives with the specification that no unauthorized person could see them until after he left the White House. According to testimony to the congressional Joint Committee on Internal Revenue Taxation, the items removed from the 1,176 boxes of donated papers included "sensitive files respecting J. Edgar Hoover, Jacqueline Kennedy and the Vietnam War." [New York Times] Interviews with a score of leading economists in recent weeks found not one who expected that the pace of consumer price increases would drop back to the 2.8 percent average of the 1960's. Prof. Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago predicts that three or four years from now inflation will be soaring annually 10 to 12 percent, although most other experts expect less. [New York Times] The boom is over for cattlemen. The steadily growing profits they were enjoying until a few months ago have turned to heavy losses, wiping out much of their capital and in many instances wiping out small investors entirely. The results, observed in the heart of the cattle country from Iowa to the high plains of the Texas Panhandle, will mean less beef for consumers at probably higher prices. [New York Times] An ultraviolet scanner aboard the Mariner 10 spacecraft has detected what seems to be a small moon in orbit around Mercury. It would be the first moon discovered orbiting either Venus or Mercury, the two planets between the sun and the orbit of the earth. Despite an electrical problem that is overheating the craft, its television cameras have been turned on to look for the object. [New York Times] Governor Wilson of New York declared that the nation's poorest old people will not get any help from a 7 percent increase in Social Security benefits that becomes effective tomorrow. He said they were victims of "a cruel hoax" and "rank federal discrimination." The people affected are about 108,000 elderly in New York state -- about 1.9 million nationally -- who are participants in the Supplemental Security Income program that began Jan. 1, shifting the aged as well as the blind and the disabled from welfare rolls to a new federal guaranteed-income program. [New York Times] The Soviet Union joined North Vietnam's demand that the United States halt "violations" of the section of the Vietnam cease-fire agreement that banned shipments of armaments, munitions and other materiel into South Vietnam. The Soviet position, issued by Tass, the Soviet press agency, was the sharpest attack on the United States on the Vietnam issue in many months. [New York Times] President Nixon is expected to decide shortly that the United States will provide Israel with $700 million in additional military aid, administration sources said. It would supplement the $1.5 billion in weapons and ammunition that the United States has provided Israel since October. [New York Times] President Nixon announced in a radio broadcast that he was establishing a committee to coordinate the nation's scattered programs for war veterans. He said, "To insure that we have policies that pull together the activities of the entire government, and more fully meet the needs of veterans, I am today creating a new Domestic Council Committee on Veterans Services." [New York Times]