News stories from Sunday November 30, 1975

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

President Ford flew to China to expand the "new relationship" begun more than three years ago when former President Richard Nixon visited China. After an overnight stay in Alaska, the President stopped briefly at Tokyo International Airport for refueling and ceremonial greetings with Foreign Minister Kiichi Miyazawa, and a member of the Imperial Household Agency, who thanked Mr. Ford for the reception given Emperor Hirohito in the United States in the fall. [New York Times] The Democratic mayors of many of the nation's principal cities adopted an urban policy that they will propose as a plank of the Democratic Party platform in the 1976 presidential campaign. They want increased federal aid to cities, a number of economic reforms, and the setting up of regional tax bases to help cities make up the loss of tax revenues resulting from the movement of residents and businesses to the suburbs. The policy statement was ratified by the mayors, including Mayor Beame of New York, at the National League of Cities' annual meeting in Miami Beach. [New York Times] Because of its financial troubles, New York City has quietly dropped its plan to buy and raze rundown business buildings abutting Yankee Stadium and is using part of the savings, $300,000, to buy equipment for the Yankee baseball team. Upgrading the neighborhood around the stadium had been one of the major selling points for the stadium's remodeling three years ago when the Yankees threatened to leave New York. Direct costs of the stadium's rehabilitation have risen to $75 million, three times what the public was told they would be in 1972. Indirect costs for such things as parking space, interest and tax exemption may add $150 million to the bill over the next 31 years. [New York Times] A compromise agreement reached tonight by the United Nations Security Council extended the mandate of the international peacekeeping force between Israel and Syria on the Golan Heights for six months and paved the way for the Palestine Liberation Organization to participate in talks on the overall Middle East situation that will be held by the Council in January. [New York Times] A noted leftist labor leader in Spain, Marcelino Camacho Abad, who was freed under an amnesty decree by King Juan Carlos I, said that he would not recognize the legitimacy of the monarchy until the Spanish people had been freely consulted and given their consent. An organizer of clandestine workers' commissions, he said defiantly that he would continue his activities. He acknowledged that this might put him back in prison, where he had spent nearly nine years. He was released with several other political prisoners. One of them, speaking to journalists, said of the number of prisoners expected to be freed: "It is just a drop in the ocean of repression." [New York Times] Iran and the Soviet Union completed a 20-year agreement under which a 1,000-mile natural gas pipeline will be built from Iran to the Soviet Union, carrying 13.4 billion cubic meters of Iranian gas annually. The gas will be consumed in the Soviet Union and, under the agreement, the Soviet Union will pipe a similar amount of gas westward for sale in West Germany, Austria and France. [New York Times]