News stories from Saturday July 13, 1974

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

In its last official action, the Senate Watergate committee released a final report in which it proposed a sweeping overhaul of campaign and other statutes that, it predicted, would go far toward preventing another Watergate. The 2,217-page report, concluding a 17-month investigation that first focused attention on the scandals surrounding the Nixon administration, was drawn almost entirely from testimony and documents previously made public. It carefully refrained from assigning guilt or innocence in particular areas to President Nixon or his aides. [New York Times] President Nixon went to the support of Secretary of State Kissinger with a letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in which he reaffirmed his responsibility for the wiretapping of 17 officials and newsmen between 1969 and 1971. Senator William Fulbright, chairman of the committee, which has begun an investigation into Mr. Kissinger's role in the wiretapping, confirmed that he had received the letter, but he declined to make it public before the rest of the committee had seen it. [New York Times] Vice President Ford said that he expected the House Judiciary Committee to recommend impeachment proceedings against President Nixon. He made the statement to reporters after a meeting with the President at Mr. Nixon's estate in San Clemente, Calif. But he added that the committee did not reflect the opinion of the House of Representatives as a whole and asserted that he expected the House to reject the impeachment bill. His meeting at San Clemente was his sixth with the President over the last week. He insisted that he and the President had not discussed impeachment at the meetings. [New York Times] The latest Gallup poll and a series of interviews conducted by the New York Times across the country has found that inflation, overshadowed earlier this year by the energy crisis, has leaped back into prominence as the nation's primary concern. Forty eight percent of the persons polled by Gallup named the high cost of living as the nation's paramount problem, far exceeding the 15 percent who were more concerned with "lack of trust in government," and the 11 percent who named "corruption in government" and "Watergate." [New York Times] An unprecedented interest in veterinary medicine is causing such a surge in applications that officials at some of the nation's veterinary colleges say its now more difficult to get into these schools than into medical school. Some of the reasons cited for this popularity were rising interest in ecology and livelihoods related to nature and public service, and an increase in the professional status and income of veterinarians. Graduates of veterinary colleges are getting jobs with salaries from $14,000 to $20,000. Fees charged by veterinarians in some affluent suburbs are approaching and equaling those of medical doctors. [New York Times] Two federal agencies said that the sludge believed to be creeping toward Long Island beaches is no threat to swimmers and may be of natural origins. But the associate administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, one of the two agencies that held a meeting on the sludge problem, conceded that within two years it will be necessary to find new disposal areas for sewage sludge farther offshore because of the increasing amount being dumped. He said "The health hazard [along the beach areas of Long Island's South Shore] was about as low as you could expect anywhere." [New York Times] New York and Connecticut surveying teams sought to fix the exact position of the state line that runs through Gulliver's, the bar in Port Chester, in Westchester County, where 24 young people were killed in a fire two weeks ago. The nightclub straddles the state line between Port Chester and Greenwich, Conn. The results of the surveys will enable authorities of the two states to resolve the jurisdictional question of who should file homicide or other criminal charges relating to the deaths against Peter Leonard. [New York Times] To help prevent the further infiltration of Arab guerrillas from southern Lebanon, Israel is installing 12-foot-high wire fences, one studded with tiny razor blades and one electrified, along the 50-mile northern frontier. The fences are equipped with electric warning devices. Similar fences were erected by Israel on her Syrian and Jordanian borders. [New York Times] "When an apparently reasonable offer to negotiate is surrounded by impossible conditions it is a mockery," said a Palestinian leader about Israel's conditional offer to negotiate with the Palestine Liberation Organization. The offer made big headlines in Arab newspapers, but Palestinian leaders withheld official comment and were privately skeptical. [New York Times] Col. Vasco de Goncalves, an important political theorist for the Portuguese armed forces but almost unknown to the public, was unexpectedly named Premier of Portugal. He was chairman of the coordinating committee of the Armed Forces Movement that overthrew the dictatorship last April. His appointment as Premier appeared to reflect an effort by the military to take direct control of political affairs after the collapse of the civilian provisional government. Colonel Goncalves said that he expected to announce his cabinet early this week and said that it would include both military men and civilians. [New York Times]