News stories from Saturday February 21, 1970
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- Forty-seven persons died in the crash of a Swiss airliner on a flight from Zurich to Israel. The pilot reported an explosion on board just before the crash. In Beirut, a Palestinian organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said that it was responsible for the explosion and that a high-ranking Israeli official was on the plane. Later the organization denied that it had been responsible. [New York Times]
- The Selective Service System should be replaced by an all-volunteer Army by the middle of next year, a presidential commission told President Nixon. The new system could go into effect by June 30, 1971, if military pay is increased and a stand-by draft for emergencies is created, the commission said. [New York Times]
- As restrictions on erotic and explicit sexual material have been eased by Supreme Court rulings and the sexual revolution, pornography has become big business in the United States. Books, movies, magazines, records and photographs that graphically depict sexual acts are being distributed widely through the techniques of modern American business. [New York Times]
- Attorneys for the Justice Department have called Mike Wallace and another official of CBS to ask them to testify before a federal grand jury investigating the Black Panthers in New Haven, Connecticut. A spokesman said the department was considering serving the two, who were involved in a television program on the Panthers, with subpoenas and added that he did not think such subpoenas would violate a promise for negotiations first that was made to the media. [New York Times]
- Demonstrators protesting the convictions in the Chicago conspiracy trial gathered outside the federal building in Chicago and across the street from the Justice Department in Washington. Speakers at both rallies denounced the trial, Judge Julius Hoffman, Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago and the Nixon administration. [New York Times]
- Official sources in Vientiane said that a North Vietnamese force had overrun the Plane of Jarres airfield, the last remaining major government position on the plain. The Laotian forces were pursued west of the airfield into the hills near the village of Ban Thang, where a second defensive line was formed and hastily abandoned. [New York Times]
- Fourteen American soldiers, more than in any previous battle this year, were killed when a North Vietnamese force hiding in hedgerows ambushed an armored unit south of Danang Friday, military spokesmen said in Saigon. Four bodies of North Vietnamese were reportedly found after the five-hour battle ended. [New York Times]
- Student leaders in Manila abandoned plans for mass picketing of the United States embassy and a march on the presidential palace, possibly because of the heavy concentration of anti-riot forces in the city. The student leaders were also reported to be reconsidering their protest strategy after a wave of adverse public opinion greeted their attacks on the embassy and surrounding shops on Wednesday. [New York Times]