News stories from Saturday October 28, 1972

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

President Nixon predicted that he would have "a great win in Ohio and a great win in Michigan" as he campaigned by plane and motorcade through blue-collar suburbs and small towns in both states. At a stop in Youngstown, Ohio, he made a brief speech devoted in large part to stressing the importance of re-electing Senator Robert Griffin [of Michigan], who is seeking a second term, noting the Senator's vital support in several areas, including "standing against any kind of program that would bus children away from their homes." [New York Times] The administration is considering an increase in the wholesale price of milk products, and thus in consumer costs. This is expected to stir another controversy involving the milk industry and its political contributions. The dairymen's campaign treasury now contains $1.7 million in undistributed cash for candidates. The administration's new price proposal would bring the second price increase in milk products since last year. [New York Times] President Nixon signed legislation creating an independent commission with authority to set and enforce safety standards for thousands of consumer products. The bill, among 44 listed in a White House announcement of measures approved by the President, is regarded by consumer-protection advocates as a landmark, comparable to the Automobile Safety Act of 1966. [New York Times] Senator George McGovern, stopping briefly in Spokane in one of the longest of his campaigning days -- it began in Anaheim, Calif. -- called upon the United States to make the United Nations once more "the first stop on the road to crisis rather than a last resort." He discussed the United Nations in a speech prepared for a rally at Spokane's Gonzaga University. [New York Times] South Vietnam's Foreign Minister, Tran Van Lam, said that acceptance of the proposal for a settlement of the war made public by North Vietnam and the United States would amount to a "surrender" for his country and was therefore unacceptable. In an interview, Mr. Lam said that South Vietnam refused to accept any cease-fire agreement that did not include the withdrawal of all North Vietnamese troops from the South, and that his country insisted also upon the re-establishment of the demilitarized zone. [New York Times] In Cambodia, where most of the seven million people are believers in mystical signs and spirits, there has been a spate of omens this month, the only manifestations that have given any hope to the disillusioned Cambodians that peace might return to them after two and a half years of the hopeless war that they did not want or seek. Whether the omens indicated good or bad developments, no one would say, but those Cambodians who addressed realities acknowledged that the future seemed bleak and that it seemed likely that their country would be the last of the three Indochina states to get a peace settlement. [New York Times]