News stories from Saturday December 7, 1974
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- The Democratic mid-term conference in Kansas City, attended by 1,911 delegates, moved toward adoption of the first national party charter after a last-minute compromise headed off the possibility of a walkout by militant blacks. The protest among blacks and women over a paragraph of the charter dealing with minority participation in party affairs had threatened to result in a disruptive floor fight and possibly a walkout. After a series of caucuses and negotiating sessions, enough legalistic hairs were split to restore at least a semblance of intra-party harmony. [New York Times]
- President Ford undertook with about a dozen advisers his first detailed examination of what is to be a "national energy policy." The policy and related presidential decisions will be announced next month, possibly as part of the State of the Union message. Emerging from a briefing for newsmen after the meeting were the following: except for natural gas, there is no current energy shortage, and the short-term goal of the government's policy is still to cut imports by about 15 percent, or one million barrels a day, by the end of 1975. [New York Times]
- A scheme to embezzle $2.5 million from the Los Angeles city treasury was broken up by arrests made by agents of the Los Angeles County District Attorney, who proceeded on information developed by the Senate Investigations Subcommittee headed by Senator Henry Jackson, Washington Democrat. The arrested men were identified as Bernie Howard, a New York City accountant, and Morton Freeman, a Los Angeles area businessman. Mr. Howard has been linked in Senate hearings with Carmine "the Doctor" Lombardozzi, a Brooklyn gangster and associate of Carlo Gambino, reputed New York Mafia boss. [New York Times]
- Leonid Brezhnev, head of the Soviet Communist party, and President Valery Giscard d'Estaing of France completed three days of talks in Paris and issued a communique calling for stepped-up efforts to conclude the current European security conference with a 35-nation summit meeting. Both said in statements that their talks had provided an "extremely important" new momentum for peace in Europe as well as for French-Soviet relations. The joint communique reflected a close alignment of French and Soviet positions on major international issues, including the Middle East and the role of the United Nations. [New York Times]
- Tens of thousands of jubilant Greek Cypriotes in Nicosia greeted President Makarios of Cyprus when he returned to the capital from which he fled for his life in a coup last July. Joyful cheering greeted the Archbishop as he stepped on the second-floor balcony of the Palace of the Ethnarch of Cyprus. In a speech the Archbishop promised not to accept partition of the island between ethnic Greeks and Turks. [New York Times]
- The Greek people will decide tomorrow between restoration of the monarchy or establishment of a republic. Political analysts in Athens generally believe that the voters will choose a republic, but they are not sure whether the vote will be decisive enough to bury the issue that has disrupted Greek political life for most of this century. Speaking for the republican side, Prof. George Koumandas asked a national television audience for an overwhelming victory that would "get rid of, once and for all, the nightmare of national division." King Constantine, who has been in exile for seven years, made two emotional broadcasts, pre-recorded in London, emphasizing his desire to return to Greece and "unify" the nation. These have reportedly increased his support, particularly in provincial areas. [New York Times]
- Secretary of State Kissinger said Congress's failure to approve the Vladivostok arms control agreement could spur a new arms race and pose "extremely serious" consequences to relations with the Soviet Union. Mr. Kissinger, arguing at a news conference in favor of the tentative accord that puts a ceiling on long-range missiles and bombers and on missiles with multiple warheads, said the Russians made "very major concessions" at Vladivostok. He said that if approval of the accord faced the same kind of bitter debate that held up the granting of trade benefits, "the Soviet Union would be able to conclude only that political detente with us faces domestic difficulties of an insuperable nature." [New York Times]