News stories from Saturday March 31, 1973

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

Participants in the Senate's investigation of the Watergate conspiracy said they wanted elaboration on James McCord's testimony dealing with H.R. Haldeman, the White House chief of staff. McCord, convicted of wiretapping telephones of the Democratic National Committee, discussed Mr. Haldeman in a secret session of the congressional panel last Wednesday. He is scheduled to testify before the panel next week. [New York Times] Indian leaders on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in eastern Montana, which contains one of the richest unmined coal beds in the West, have instructed the Bureau of Indian Affairs to cancel billions of dollars worth of strip mining leases negotiated by the bureau and granted in recent years to four of the country's largest energy corporations. The unanimous decision of the Northern Cheyenne tribal council to abrogate surface mining agreements obtained in its name by the bureau is the first concerted show of Indian resistance to a speculative boom in Western coal lands. The effect could be widespread, involving years of litigation. [New York Times] A California pharmacologist and his colleagues have found two classes of drugs that can block the transformation of normal cells into cancer cells even after the cells have been infected by cancer-causing viruses. The pharmacologist, Dr. Martin A. Apple, told the American Cancer Society's Science Writers Seminar that the potent drugs had been shown to be highly effective in preventing the development of cancer in chickens and mice that had been exposed to viruses known to cause cancer. The use of drugs as a cancer preventative would present an entirely new role for anticancer chemicals, which now are used therapeutically after cancer has developed. [New York Times] Protests and rallies by housewives and politicians blossomed in front of many supermarkets on the eve of what consumer groups hope will be a weeklong, nationwide boycott of meat. Butchers in many areas said they were already feeling the effects of curtailed meat buying, and some said they were cutting orders for next week by as much as 50%. Prices, however, were not any lower. [New York Times] President Nguyen Van Thieu of South Vietnam left for the United States to seek assurances from President Nixon of continued American military and economic aid. An estimated 50,000 well-organized supporters gave Mr. Thieu a send-off at Tan Son Nhut airport, with a full display of pomp provided by bands, artillery salutes and clapping civil servants. [New York Times] The chief North Vietnamese and American delegates to the Four-Party Joint Military Commission left Saigon today, and the Communists accused the United States and South Vietnam of having "systematically and very seriously sabotaged" major provisions of the Paris peace agreement. In similar statements summing up the commission's two-month life, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong charged that Saigon, "encouraged by the United States," was continuing the war and undermining peace-keeping operations. [New York Times]