News stories from Saturday September 28, 1974

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

President Ford announced three decisions to help implement a "coherent and comprehensive program" to deal with inflation and recession. He said he would offer the program within 10 days. In a speech closing the national conference on inflation, the President announced the formation of the Economic Policy Board to coordinate and consolidate the government's economic efforts; the creation of a White House Labor-Management Committee, and the appointment of a Princeton University economist to head the government's Council on Wage and Price Stability. [New York Times] The inflation conference, which appeared ready in its first session Friday to fall apart under pressures of partisanship and special-interest pleading, ended with moderately successful attempts to define some areas of general, though not unanimous, agreement. Chief among these was a consensus that cutting the federal budget would not do very much quickly to reduce the rate of inflation. This was a conclusion that President Ford almost certainly had neither expected nor wanted. [New York Times] Betty Ford, the President's wife, underwent cancer surgery in which her right breast was removed. Doctors at Bethesda Naval hospital described her condition as "satisfactory" last evening in their first formal medical bulletin. President Ford, who had appeared grim and pale at midday when he saw his wife soon after the operation, emerged from the hospital smiling after a second visit in the evening. [New York Times] According to Senate testimony disclosed today, Alexander Haig, while an assistant to Henry Kissinger, asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation to place under surveillance some of the government officials who became targets of a controversial wiretap program. General Haig, who told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in July that he "never viewed myself as anything but an extension of Dr. Kissinger," testified that, in passing the names of officials to the F.B.I. he had been told to ask "generally that they be surveilled." [New York Times] A New York City policeman who testified at a departmental trial last week was found slain and dismembered in a plastic bag outside a Chinese laundry at 220 West 79th Street, between Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway. He was identified as Patrick J. Kelly, 46 years old, who had been off duty since testifying at the trial last Thursday. Officer Kelly was to have returned to duty last night after a period on restricted duty because of an illness, authorities said. District Attorney Richard Kuh declined to discuss the trial. [New York Times] Governor Byrne of New Jersey said that he would begin consultations with the state's Attorney General and public defender in connection with the public defender's request to reopen the case of Rubin (Hurricane) Carter, a former boxer, and John Artis, who were convicted in 1967 of a triple murder in Paterson and are now serving life terms. [New York Times] Possibilities for restoring ties between the United States and Cuba were discussed by Senators Jacob Javits and Claiborne Pell in Havana with Cuba's Foreign Minister Raul Roa and President Osvaldo Torrado. The Senators, members of the Foreign Relations Committee, flew to Havana at their own initiative to see what could be done about ending the 13-year-old rift between Havana and Washington. They have been told that Premier Fidel Castro will receive them tomorrow. [New York Times] A hostage held by guerrillas in the Venezuelan consulate in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic, escaped, but the leftists continued to hold seven other persons captive, including the Venezuelan consul and a United States diplomat. The guerrillas, who kidnapped the diplomat and seized the consulate Friday, are demanding $1 million ransom and the release of 37 Dominican political prisoners in return for the hostages, who include Barbara Hutchison, director of the United States Information Service in the Dominican Republic. [New York Times] The Portuguese left appeared to have scored a major victory over President Antonio de Spinola and his conservative supporters by forcing them to cancel a mass demonstration in Lisbon. Another confrontation between the essentially conservative President and strong leftist elements in the armed forces and the civil population was averted, but President Spinola's hold on his office was considered more tenuous than ever. [New York Times] Representatives of the United States and four other major oil-importing countries -- Japan, Britain, France and West Germany -- assembled in Washington for the first session of a two-day meeting to hasten coordination of their methods of dealing with the crisis caused by the rise of oil prices. Because of rain, the meeting place was switched from Camp David to the State Department. Details of the meeting, which has no formal agenda, were withheld from the public to allow the participants a wide degree of flexibility in their discussions, American officials said. [New York Times]