News stories from Saturday December 28, 1974

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

President Ford is planning to propose some fundamental changes in economic policy in his State of the Union message Jan. 20, the White House press secretary announced at the end of a four-and-a-half-hour meeting between the President and his advisers at Vail, Colo. Ron Nessen, the press secretary, said that Mr. Ford told his economic advisers that he intended to take a "hard and tough" approach with "no gimmicks." [New York Times] Chief Justice Warren Burger, in a year-end statement in which he overcame his reservations about making direct legislative proposals to Congress, called on Congress to revitalize the federal court system by increasing judges' salaries and establishing 63 new judgeships to help handle the steadily increasing judicial workload. He also urged congressional action on a plan to establish some sort of new federal court that would relieve pressure on the Supreme Court by deciding less significant cases than the high court hears. [New York Times] The Federal Immigration and Naturalization Service has been overwhelmed by a wave of illegal aliens into the New York City metropolitan area, whose number is officially estimated at more than one million. Enforcement of immigration laws has virtually been paralyzed. An investigation by the New York Times finds that, through individual and organized fraud, counterfeiting, falsification of travel and identification papers and smuggling, illegal aliens have mounted what immigration authorities call a "silent invasion" of New York and North Jersey. [New York Times] A former domestic agent for the Central Intelligence Agency, recounting the details of his undercover career, says New York City became a prime C.I.A. domestic spying target during the late 1960's because it was considered "a big training ground" for radical activities in the United States. He told the New York Times that more than 25 C.I.A. agents were assigned to the city at the height of antiwar activity. He also said that his involvement began with the advent of the Black Panther movement in 1967 and the increase of antiwar dissent during the last months of the Johnson administration. "And then it started to snowball from there," he said. [New York Times] The Bethlehem Steel Corporation, the nation's No. 2 steel producer, announced a partial rollback of price increases, effective Monday. Soon after announcing its price increases last Monday, Bethlehem learned that the United States Steel Company, responding to government pressure, was rolling back some of its previously announced increases. Bethlehem said today that it would not go ahead with the scheduled price increases on tin plate and steel rails, but that price increases of about 4 percent on plate steel and about 6 percent on structural steel would take effect on Monday as scheduled. [New York Times] A band of guerrillas with automatic weapons shot their way into a party for the United States Ambassador to Nicaragua at a residence in Managua. They killed two policemen, wounded several other persons, and took about 25 people hostage, but the American Ambassador, 59-year-old Turner Shelton, had left the party before the attack. Three leading Nicaraguan diplomats were among the hostages, 13 of whom were released. [New York Times] Leonid Zamyatin, a Kremlin spokesman, warned that the Soviet Union might re-examine its economic commitments to the United States in retaliation against what the Russians view as discriminatory provisions of the trade reform bill recently enacted by Congress. He charged that Congress had violated the 1972 accord providing for equal-trade status between the two countries by attaching qualifications that linked the American extension of lower import tariffs to a policy of freer Soviet emigration. [New York Times] Two and a half years after North Korea and South Korea announced that they would begin political talks, relations between the two neighbors have largely reverted to their former state of hostility. The meetings have grown increasingly rare and have bogged down in sterile exchanges. There has been a small but perceptible increase in military clashes in the last year, and angry propaganda attacks have been reinstituted despite a no-slander pledge made when the talks were disclosed in July, 1972. In the last few weeks there have been signs that North Korea may be trying to downgrade the talks even further. [New York Times]