News stories from Sunday December 2, 1973

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

Millions of drivers, facing padlocked gas pumps and warnings of an energy crisis, kept their cars at home today. While city streets from New York to Los Angeles carried their usual light Sunday traffic, many of the country's superhighways and scenic parkways were empty, their service islands bare, and their toll-takers languishing in inactivity. [New York Times] The Nixon administration is seriously considering a change in the controversial oil depletion allowance that would be aimed simultaneously at two objectives: increasing the supply of oil and limiting the "windfall profits" that oil companies might otherwise realize from the Arab oil embargo. [New York Times] The Senate, meeting in its first Sunday session in 112 years, failed to break a filibuster that has blocked legislation extending the government's debt limit and financing presidential campaigns with public funds. When an effort to cut off debate on the measures was defeated by a vote of 47 to 33, or seven short of the required two-thirds, supporters of the campaign financing act accused the Nixon administration of aiding the filibuster with a lobbying effort so that President Nixon would not have to veto the campaign provision. [New York Times] President Nixon paid $78,651 in federal income taxes for the years 1969 through 1972, according to White House documents. The still-confidential documents, being prepared for release this week as part of the President's "Operation Candor", list the biggest payment, $72,686, as being made for 1969. Mr. Nixon was said to have paid $4,298 for 1972, $878 for 1971, and $789 for 1970, the years he claimed various substantial deductions. [New York Times] The American Medical Association is being swept by a rank-and-file rebellion by thousands of physicians. This was apparent at the opening of the A,M.A.'s clinical convention in Anaheim, Calif. The issue is the new government-required professional standards review organizations made up of doctors who, effective Jan. 1, must monitor the quality of every doctor's professional work if the services are being paid for under Medicare, Medicaid and federal maternal and child health programs. [New York Times] Egyptian officials and government-controlled newspapers strongly hinted that Egypt might refuse to go to the proposed Middle East peace conference on Dec. 18 if Israel failed to carry out a troop withdrawal to the Oct. 22 cease-fire lines before that date. [New York Times] A firm consensus appears to have been reached within the Nixon administration that the United States must put pressure on Israel to make significant concessions in the forthcoming Middle East peace talks in Geneva, high American officials said. [New York Times] The people of Israel paid mournful homage to their first Premier, David Ben-Gurion, whose body lay in state throughout the day at the entrance to the Parliament in Jerusalem. More than 200,000 people slowly passed his bier and their faces reflected the short, violent history of the state that Mr. Ben-Gurion, as much as any individual, had helped to found. [New York Times]