News stories from Saturday December 14, 1974
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- President Ford arrived at Fort-de-France, Martinique, for talks tomorrow and Monday with President Valery Giscard d'Estaing of France on a wide range of political and economic issues. He was accompanied by Secretary of State Kissinger. [New York Times]
- Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who is being replaced as the American Ambassador to India by William Saxbe who has resigned as Attorney General, is leaving India in a melancholy mood. He said in an interview in New Delhi that his own task -- which was to improve relations with India -- was finished and that relations with India were now "in an equilibrium state," but too little attention was being paid to her. [New York Times]
- The Senate, voting 56 to 27, blocked an anti-busing filibuster and then voted 55 to 27 to nullify a House-approved amendment to a $8.6 billion appropriations bill that would have curbed government enforcement of desegregation orders. The key vote was a closure vote, which required a two-thirds majority to end debate on language revising the House amendment, and was only the 19th such success in the Senate's history. [New York Times]
- Senior administration energy planners went into seclusion at Camp David to work out for President Ford recommendations about how to achieve a quick reduction of crude oil imports. In private conversations, there was a noticeable lack of optimism that the government would take decisive action or that a large reduction would be achieved. "I won't bet exactly how it's going to come out," one planner said, "but what I will bet is that it's too little, too late." Officials also have begun to work on an equally prickly policy problem, one that could become the subject of a major national debate in 1975. It is how to encourage development of high-cost domestic energy supplies, such as shale oil or liquefied coal, without locking the American economy into high, across-the-board energy costs. [New York Times]
- Sponsors of a federal strip mine control bill that seems certain of final pre-adjournment passage in Congress on Monday, despite President Ford's announced intention to veto it, began a campaign to persuade the President to change his mind or, if that is not possible, to muster enough strength in Congress to override any veto. [New York Times]
- Walter Lippmann, the retired columnist and author who was dean of American political journalism in the 20th century, died at a nursing home in New York. He was 85 years old. His career spanned six decades and he was for millions of readers the conscience of the nation through the trials of the Depression, wars and international confrontation. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1958 and 1962; the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964 and Overseas Press Club awards for interpretation of foreign news in 1953, 1955 and 1959. [New York Times]
- The Ford Foundation, the country's wealthiest philanthropic institution, whose income from its investments has been declining, announced that it will reduce its annual grants over the next four years from $208 million to $100 million. This means, according to the foundation's president, McGeorge Bundy, that ''important" programs in each of the foundation's six areas of interest "will be out of business." [New York Times]
- Israel reported that her forces intercepted and killed four Arab gunmen and apparently thwarted an Al Fatah plot to liberate the Most Rev. Marion Capucci, the Greek Catholic Archbishop in Jerusalem, who was sentenced to prison last week for smuggling guns to Palestinian guerrillas. [New York Times]
- The South Korean government expelled an American missionary, the Rev. George Ogle, a Methodist, accusing him of having disrupted social order and fomenting anti-government demonstrations. Dr. Ogle was put aboard a Korean Air Lines plane for Los Angeles as a group of about 100 supporters protested against his expulsion. [New York Times]