News stories from Sunday May 18, 1975

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

The United States was considering using B-52 bombers against the Cambodian mainland after the seizure of the freighter Mayaguez last week if the carrier Coral Sea had not arrived in the area of the freighter by Wednesday, a top United States official said. Reporters aboard the plane that brought Secretary of State Kissinger to Vienna for talks with Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko of the Soviet Union, were told that to wait longer would have brought a high risk of the Cambodian government making public ransom demands, thereby freezing its position in regard to the freighter. [New York Times] Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger said that the number of United States marines and airmen killed, missing and wounded in the rescue of the freighter Mayaguez was considerably larger than initially reported last. week. He said the latest information lists three marines and two airmen killed in action, 16 missing and 70 to 80 wounded. [New York Times] The administration will send to Congress this week the first of three bills aimed at fundamentally changing the way the government regulates transportation. The first bill, administration officials said, will be submitted in the next day or two and will propose changes in the way the 88-year-old Interstate Commerce Commission regulates railroads. Similar legislation for trucking is expected in the next two weeks and a proposal affecting the Civil Aeronautics Board and the airlines within the next month. [New York Times] One of the advisers who attended the first meeting of President Ford's campaign planning committee recently made remarks that indicated that the federal election act of 1974, which changes the way campaigns for federal office are financed, was complicated beyond understanding. The second in a series of three articles on the new law finds that the situation is even worse than it appears. Not only is the law full of ambiguities and contradictions, it is also under all-out legal challenge, and no one is sure whether it will survive long enough for the 1976 election. [New York Times] New York state Senator John Marchi said that Mayor Beame would have to commit the city to some ceiling on spending in the coming year to get state aid, but added that the ceiling figure would be negotiable and "part of the political process." Meanwhile, state Senator Roy Goodman said Treasury Secretary William Simon had told him that the "door to federal aid" that appeared closed last week "could be reopened." [New York Times] Federal officials have begun an investigation of correspondence schools across the country for possible fraud in connection with a federally guaranteed student loan program. The filing for bankruptcy of a large correspondence school in Chicago, Advance Schools, Inc., prompted the investigation, undertaken primarily by the Office of Education of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. [New York Times] President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, completing a week's tour of four Arab countries in Damascus, said that he had obtained a mandate to speak for the Arab world, not only Egypt, when he meets with President Ford in Salzburg June 1. At a news conference as Yasser Arafat, head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, sat next to him, Mr. Sadat made it clear that he believed his trip strengthened the Egyptian negotiating position. [New York Times] Saudi Arabia's Council of Ministers approved a five-year domestic economic plan of vast magnitude, requiring the investment of $140 billion and the assistance of a half million foreign technicians, managers, teachers and laborers who would be imported into the country. The foreigners would increase the domestic labor force by 31 percent to 2.3 million from 1.6 million. [New York Times]