News stories from Saturday March 4, 1972
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- In one of the worst terrorist bombings since the current crisis in Northern Ireland began three years ago, a blast in a crowded Belfast restaurant killed two women and injured 72 people. The explosion came without warning as about 100 shoppers, mainly women and children, relaxed in one of the city's most popular snack bars. In the panic afterward, people were trampled and shoppers were cut by shattered glass. [New York Times]
- Mrs. Dita Beard, the missing lobbyist for the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation, was found to be in a coronary unit of a Denver hospital and federal agents were permitted to serve a congressional subpoena on her. Mrs. Beard is the purported author of a memorandum linking a settlement of three government antitrust suits against ITT with a pledge by ITT to underwrite some of the expenses of the Republican National Convention. [New York Times]
- Democratic politicians who had considered inevitable Senator Edmund Muskie's nomination for President at the Democratic National Convention, including a few members of his own staff, were said now to have doubts. The Senator's presidential campaign has begun to flag with the beginning of the primary season. [New York Times]
- The Soviet Union announced a major concession in arrangements for the chess world championship match between Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union and Bobby Fischer, an American. Under the compromise accepted by Moscow, the first half of the match will be played in Belgrade, the site preferred by Mr. Fischer, and the second half in Reykjavik, Iceland, Mr. Spassky's first choice. [New York Times]
- An agreement between the Soviet Union and Libya in which the two countries will jointly develop and refine Libyan oil was announced today. The agreement was the first break in the Western monopoly on Libyan oil development and was seen as a pressure tactic against Western oil companies more than as an indication that the Russians would play a major role in the Libyan oil industry. Libya has been demanding a role in the Western companies' operations. [New York Times]
- Senator Edward Kennedy charged that the Nixon administration was ignoring humanitarian responsibilities in Vietnam by "sabotaging" and reducing health programs for civilian war casualties. The Senator, chairman of a Senate subcommittee on refugees, made public a General Accounting Office report that found a reduction in support of health programs in Vietnam although war casualties were still plentiful. [New York Times]