News stories from Saturday March 24, 1973

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

Two major banks, one in New York and one in Philadelphia, bowed to the Nixon administration and announced that they would reduce their prime interest rates on business loans to 6.5% from 6.75%. The banks, Chemical Bank and the First Pennsylvania Bank and Trust Company, indicated that they would temporarily reduce their lending charges in cooperation with the administration's Committee on Interest and Dividends. [New York Times] A new attempt to break the deadlock over the release of the last American prisoners of war today succeeded only in producing new Communist demands. At a five-hour meeting of the Four-Party Joint Military Commission in Saigon, the Viet Cong produced a list of 32 United States prisoners they said were still in their hands, but they immediately demanded that in exchange for the prisoners' release the United States withdraw all its truce commission personnel and Marine security guards by Thursday. [New York Times] Three British soldiers were killed and another badly wounded Friday night in Belfast after two girls lured them into an ambush. Two of the soldiers were killed shortly after gunmen entered an apartment where the girls had taken them. One soldier died of his wounds today. The dead were sergeants, in their twenties. [New York Times] The Interstate Commerce Commission, in a report to Congress, proposed the restructuring of Northeast railroads into a "federal-aid railway system" with government grants to be funded through a general freight transportation tax of 1%. The agency also proposed for itself new authority to manage the system's reorganization, including elimination of nonessential routes and the joint use of facilities. [New York Times] A revolt against what women and civil rights lawyers perceive to be sex discrimination in the extension of credit is gathering momentum. Under the slogan, "Give credit to a woman where credit is due," the assault takes two forms: a search for legal redress and well-publicized pressure tactics against the business community. Some barriers are buckling more quickly than expected with support from politicians seizing "a nice, clean issue, not like abortion" (as one feminist said) and from retailers and bankers aware that the female 53 percent of the population dominates the consumer economy. [New York Times] William Turnblazer, president of United Mine Workers District 19 in the Kentucky-Tennessee area, denied that $20,000 was funneled through his district to pay for the Yablonski family murders. William Prater, a former UMW organizer from LaFollette, Tenn., is currently on trial, accused of being part of an alleged plot that resulted in the 1969 murder of Joseph Yablonski, his wife and daughter in their Clarksville, Pa., home. [AP] Former Nixon campaign manager John Mitchell says no one from the President's re-election committee, other than those already convicted, was involved in the Watergate bugging. James McCord, one of seven men convicted of breaking into Democratic headquarters, said in a letter earlier this week that "others" had been involved in the plot to spy on the Democrats during last year's presidential campaign. [Chicago Tribune]