News stories from Sunday April 11, 1976

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

Some questions raised by the disclosure last December that President Kennedy and two major Mafia figures were close friends of Judith Campbell have been examined in Interviews with Justice Department officials, sources close to the Central Intelligence Agency, and underworld figures. Among them were whether Mrs. Campbell used her relationship with Mr. Kennedy to benefit the Mafia, and whether the President learned from her that the C.I.A. was working with the Mafia on a plot to kill Prime Minister Fidel Castro of Cuba. [New York Times] Ronald Reagan, trailing far behind President Ford in the primaries, still talks confidently about winning the Republican nomination for President. He said in an interview, "It's now possible to lose states that were once considered essential and still win," and added that for the first time his campaign would demonstrate that the population shift to the South and West has weakened the political power of the Northeast. He is convinced that because of the population shift he will win at least 700 of the 1,000 delegates in the forthcoming primaries in Southern and Western states. [New York Times] Senator Henry Jackson acknowledged in a television interview that many of the persons running in Pennsylvania as Democratic convention delegates committed to him would rather see Senator Hubert Humphrey win the presidential nomination. He said he would not ask his prospective delegates to "take a loyalty oath" to him no matter what happened at the convention. [New York Times] When the wives of the presidential candidates are asked why they think both the public and the press have apparently abandoned their kid-glove treatment of candidates' wives, the women generally give three reasons: The women's movement, Watergate and Betty Ford's frankness. Senator Henry Jackson's wife, Helen, said "More is expected of wives this year than at any other time in a presidential campaign. We all discuss cerebral things, in fact, I've only gotten one question about fashion, and that was from a man, and the only recipe request came to "Scoop." [New York Times] Exploration for oil off the New England coast has begun. A test drill is being made by a consortium of 31 oil companies on the edge of the Georges Bank 100 miles off Massachusetts to determine whether the seabed would yield sufficient amounts of oil and natural gas to merit commercial exploitation. [New York Times] Lebanese leftists decided to extend the 10-day armed trice to the end of April to allow time for a new president to be named and they also demanded the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon. After a five-hour meeting at which Kamal Jumblat, chief of the Progressive Socialist Party, presided, the leftists issued a statement calling to the attention of "our Syrian brothers to the gravity of military involvement through the entry of the Syrian Army in an illegitimate manner." [New York Times] A recent report on the Israeli radio about frequent Israeli purchases of Arab land on the occupied West Bank of the Jordan has started a political debate about the controversial and often surreptitious ways in which the purchases are made. Israel has been acquiring land on the West Bank for the last eight years, but the purchases are rarely made public, partly because of a Jordanian law that makes it a crime punishable by death for a West Bank Arab to sell land to an Israeli. [New York Times]