News stories from Saturday March 6, 1971

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

The Nixon administration announced that the present rate of Vietnam troop withdrawals will continue for the next 18 months. Officials provided a withdrawal timetable: 284,000 troops will remain by May 1; 200,000 by the end of this year; 50,000 at the end of 1972. [CBS] South Vietnamese forces captured Tchepone, Laos; South Vietnam held a special news conference to announce the capture, although Defense Secretary Melvin Laird had said previously that Tchepone was not an important objective. North Vietnam shelled the Quang Tri and Khe Sanh bases in South Vietnam. [CBS] Turkey is still searching for the four kidnapped U.S. Air Force men despite the expiration of last night's deadline for ransom payment. Security forces are guarding entrances to the Mideast Technical University, which is believed to be the base for the group responsible for the kidnapping. [CBS] Maoist demonstrators attacked the U.S. embassy in Colombo, Ceylon, with Molotov cocktails. [CBS] The Mideast cease-fire deadline is tomorrow; Israel charged that Syrian planes flew over occupied territory today. President Sadat of Egypt has proposed reopening the Suez Canal if Israel withdraws behind El Arish. One proposal calls for a new border from El Arish to Elath, Israel, with an Israeli land corridor to Sharm el Sheikh at the southern tip of the Sinai. Whoever controls Sharm el Sheikh controls the Gulf of Aqaba. [CBS] Republican party chairman Bob Dole said that the Democratic presidential candidates are "Neville Chamberlains" in their hopes for peace through appeasement. [CBS] Some strike action against the nation's railroads was believed possible as contract talks between the carriers and the United Transportation Union broke off. The union has been free to strike since last Monday but has not yet authorized a strike. Federal officials said they understood that the union was not yet contemplating a nationwide strike but might take other action. [New York Times] Backers of a prohibition on strip mining in West Virginia won a vote in the state Senate banning for one year the granting of any new state stripping or coal prospecting permits in 36 of the state's 55 counties and limiting new strip mining permits in the other counties. The measure, which was proposed by Jay Rockefeller, the leading Democratic candidate for governor, was expected to pass the House of Delegates easily and become law. [New York Times] St. Vincent's Hospital in Bridgeport, Conn., said that the General Electric Company had taken an option on 66 acres of undeveloped hospital land in Fairfield, Conn. The announcement touched off speculation that all or some of G.E.'s corporate headquarters might be shifted from Manhattan. [New York Times] First returns in the balloting by striking British postal workers indicated overwhelming acceptance of a compromise settlement involving arbitration. If the strikers return to work Monday as expected, Britain will have been without mail service for 47 days. The settlement amounts to a defeat for the postal workers, who will not receive any immediate pay increase. [New York Times] Airlines and law enforcement agencies were reported to have shown some progress in their fight against the growing traffic in stolen airline tickets. More than 28,000 blank tickets were stolen in this country last year. But new security measures, such as use of an ink that shows tinkering with serial numbers on tickets, have cut the problem in Los Angeles and other cities. [New York Times]