News stories from Sunday February 23, 1975

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

Secretary of Defense Schlesinger said in a television interview that Cambodia would "absolutely" fall to the Communists if Congress did not provide the $222 million in military aid requested by the administration. In the strongest terms used so far in public by any administration official in justifying the need for additional funds for the Cambodian government, he said the loss of Cambodia would be "a foreign policy disaster" for the United States. [New York Times] The Executive Council of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. proposed that control over oil imports be taken away from private industry and given to the government. This was one of a series of recommendations by the council for a comprehensive national energy policy. Initially, the council said, the government should determine the amount of oil to be imported, negotiate its price and provide for internal distribution. [New York Times] California is making an intense effort to shift the preponderance of its educational resources toward the very young on the ground that it is better to diagnose and correct learning problems during a child's first few years in school than provide costly remedial programs later. This may force some fundamental rethinking of American schooling, which spends more money on older pupils than beginners. [New York Times] Professional price-fixing by lawyers, stockbrokers and mutual fund operators is under legal challenge before the Supreme Court in a group of cases that could subject the price-fixers to antitrust prosecution for the first time. Although the Department of Justice initiated only one of the lawsuits, the attack on mutual fund practices, the government has joined homeowners protesting high legal fees and small investors protesting the cost of buying and selling back. [New York Times] Despite opposition in India, the United States will announce the lifting of its 10 year arms embargo against Pakistan. State Department officials said that the decision had been relayed to both India and Pakistan and that the action was intended to bolster Pakistan's sense of security. Because of the outcry anticipated in India, which has been strongly opposed to any arms sales to Pakistan, instructions were sent last week to William Saxbe, the new American Ambassador to India, who was on his way there, to delay his arrival in New Delhi until after the decision had been made public. [New York Times] Because the shelling and shooting by the Communist-led insurgents are blind, there are always more civilian casualties than military losses in Neak Luong, as isolated town on the Mekong River, about 38 miles southeast of the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. There is no evacuation plan for the 30,000 civilians, mostly refugees from the countryside. They spend most of their daily lives underground -- in sandbagged bunkers, in trenches under their stilted houses, or deep inside partly destroyed buildings, but still the shells and bullets find them. [New York Times] The Joint United States-Saudi Arabian Economic Commission will hold its meeting Wednesday and Thursday in Washington amid official hopes that it will restore some of the luster to a special relationship. The meeting is expected to result in formal approval of technical assistance for vocational training, establishment of a scientific center in Saudi Arabia and the development of water resources to enable Saudi Arabian agriculture to expand. [New York Times]