News stories from Sunday December 17, 1972

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

General Alexander Haig, Henry Kissinger's deputy, is off to Saigon to brief President Thieu on what happened at the Paris Peace Talks last week. Kissinger has stated that the breakdown in the talks is the fault of North Vietnam. Le Duc Tho, says Kissinger, is demanding changes in agreements that were already reached however North Vietnam blames the U.S. for doing the same thing.Senator George McGovern says that the Nixon administration misled the American people in the closing days of Campaign '72 when it said that peace was at hand. North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho arrived in Peking today en route from Paris to Hanoi. [NBC] Saigon reports 151 enemy dead in fighting near Quang Tri city. U.S. B-52 bombers attacked enemy targets in South Vietnam and North Vietnam. [NBC] Between 200 and 300 soldiers die in Vietnam every day. U.S. Air Force Sgt. Lewis Taylor was killed after the October announcement that peace was at hand. Taylor was killed in an enemy attack on an American Air Force Base near Saigon. He was a career soldier who wanted all North Vietnamese soldiers out of South Vietnam before the signing of a peace agreement; Taylor leaves a wife and three children. Taylor's wife said that she voted for President Nixon last month because she felt he would end the war. Now she is bitter over the fact that the war continues. [NBC] Former President Harry Truman is slightly improved but still in very serious condition. Hospital spokesman John Dreves stated that Truman was more alert today, but his kidney function is still inadequate. [NBC] Search aircraft spotted the U.S. Coast Guard helicopter that crashed into the Gulf of Mexico last night. There was no sign of the eight men who were aboard. [NBC] Cold weather and snowstorms in the Midwest are causing natural gas shortages. In Effingham, Illinois, an appliance factory shut down because there is no gas so 1,600 people are out of work just before Christmas. In Milwaukee, the power company warned 27 factories that they face reduced service. Federal power commissioner T.A. Phillips stated that the shortage borders on being critical; the East Coast is now importing oil. Natural gas production results in little profit, therefore the government may soon try to stimulate the gas industry. [NBC] Blacks in recent decades have migrated to the North; now the reverse is true. More industries are opening up to blacks in the "New South." Donna Faulkner and Floyd Hall are among those returning to the South. Faulkner says that blacks in the North are fatalistic and have no ambition. Hall stated that blacks in the South are more productive and energetic than those in the North. [NBC] Racism is now a problem in England with the influx of Indians, Pakistanis and Africans. In Loughborough, Asians are on strike because of racial discrimination being practiced at their factory. White workers refuse to honor the picket line. Fearing an Asian takeover, the government is investigating the dispute at the Mansfield Hosiery Mills. The striking Asians have a strong case that they are kept out of good jobs by management and the Knitwear Workers Union. [NBC] The Department of Health, Education and Welfare is drawing up safety regulations for tricycles. [NBC] Astronaut Evans stepped out of the Apollo 17 spacecraft today to retrieve film from service modules which will be jettisoned before re-entry into the earth's atmosphere. Apollo 17 will splashdown on Tuesday afternoon. [NBC] Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Soviet novelist and government critic, says that he needs to borrow money. He has $80,000 in Nobel Prize money in a Swiss bank, but is afraid that if he leaves the Soviet Union to get it he won't be allowed back in. [NBC] Four Israeli leftists were questioned by police in Tel Aviv. They are suspected of working with an Arab sabotage ring; at least two of the four went to Syria for training. [NBC] Ann Armstrong was named as a counselor to President Nixon, a cabinet-rank position; she is the first female to be a presidential counselor. [NBC] William Clements, the Dallas oilman named by President Nixon to be deputy Defense Secretary, is a defendant in a civil lawsuit which charges that there was a conspiracy to hide millions of dollars in profits from an Argentine oil deal. [NBC]