News stories from Saturday November 29, 1975

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

President Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger left for China today to try to preserve what remains of the Peking-Washington relationship and the leverage on the Soviet Union that it provides. Mr. Kissinger and other administration officials have acknowledged privately that whatever leverage Washington has derived is weaker today. [New York Times] President Ford, on his way to China, visited a trans-Alaska oil pipeline construction site and hailed the project as a weapon in the struggle to "liberate" the United States from "unreliable" foreign sources of oil. "America's interests are linked to Asia," Mr. Ford told a crowd at Eielson Air Force Base in Fairbanks. He also engaged in some broad and narrow domestic politicking at the start of his overnight stopover. [New York Times] Elliot Richardson, whom President Ford recently proposed as Secretary of Commerce, said that he hoped Mr. Ford would be nominated for the presidency in 1976 but that he would probably support Ronald Reagan if Mr. Reagan got the nomination. He said that he expected to play a role in the coming campaign. "I see no overriding reason why the Secretary of Commerce should stay out, as there is for the Secretary of Defense or of State," he said. Mr. Richardson, who is Ambassador to Britain, made his remarks in Paris where he went to make a speech to the American Club. He is expected to return to Washington tomorrow to prepare for Senate confirmation hearings that will start Thursday. [New York Times] An expanding government investigation of the grain industry has found that corruption in the grain industry has already hurt the interests of farmers and threatens to damage the economy. Many of the overseas buyers who are responsible for the $12-billion-a-year revenues of the United States grain trade are seeking other sources, after complaining for years that they were not getting their money's worth. In the important soybean trade they are giving more and more of their business to Brazil. [New York Times] The Chinese have no illusions that President Ford's visit will lead to substantial improvements in relations between Peking and Washington. When Mr. Ford arrives in Peking on Monday he will encounter a leadership that is more dubious about, if not disappointed with, its relations with the United States than at any time since President Nixon's epochal visit in 1972. [New York Times] New Zealand's governing Labor Party was ousted by the National Party in an upset victory in the general election. The right-of-center Nationalists, who entered the election with 32 seats in the 87-seat House of Representatives, were assured of 53 seats when the votes were counted. But absentee ballots may raise the total to 55 seats, the same number that the left-of-center Labor Party had before the election. Robert Muldoon, leader of the National Party, will become Prime Minister. [New York Times] The Canadian Radio-Television Commission is expected to announce a new policy next month aimed at insuring that most commercials broadcast in Canada are produced there, even when the advertisers are United States corporations. The measure is being opposed by the 30,000-member American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, which has asked the State Department to intervene in Ottawa. The union believes that if the measure is adopted American companies may produce a single commercial for both countries in Canada. This will mean less or no work for many of the union's members who make their living performing in television and radio commercials. [New York Times]