News stories from Saturday January 19, 1974

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

President Nixon, in a radio address, told the American people that if their voluntary cooperation in conserving energy continued, there would be no heating hardships this winter and no gasoline rationing in the spring. He said the energy shortage was "genuine," and that the public effort to conserve the use of oil and other energy had been "far more important than anything else" in avoiding damaging shortages. [New York Times] President Nixon's new budget will all but abandon last year's highly controversial device of impounding funds for programs approved by Congress. This was disclosed in an interview with Roy Ash, director of the Office of Management and Budget. He made an exception for grants under the Water Pollution Act for sewage treatment plants, where the President has already announced his decision to allot more money in the new budget than was allotted this fiscal year, but again to withhold part of the amount authorized. [New York Times] The Nixon Administration has decided to ask Congress for almost $99 billion in new spending authority for defense, including $92.6 billion in the new budget and $5.9 billion in supplemental funds for the previous year. The new total package, up 15% from the $84.2 billion approved last year, is certain to set off serious debate in Congress -- which is precisely what Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger is known to desire. [New York Times] The National Committee for an Effective Congress predicted that President Nixon would be impeached as a result of legal and political developments this year in the Watergate case. Russell Hemenway, the committee's director, in a 20-page statement prepared for newsmen, said that the committee was "the largest source of liberal money in the country." The statement described Congress as an inherently weak institution, many of whose members "seek to make themselves innocuous and indispensible parts of the political architecture, a function performed previously by the hat racks". The statement also said that, by spring, "for most Congressmen it will take more courage to vote against impeachment than for impeachment" of the President. [New York Times] Cars, buses and trucks skidded and crashed, pedestrians slipped and tumbled through the night and into the morning on a coating of ice that glazed the roads and sidewalks throughout the New York City metropolitan area. The National Weather Service, which described it as the worst ice storm of the season, said that the entire Northeast had been hit and predicted possible icy conditions for tomorrow. [New York Times] France set the franc free for a period of six months, allowing it to float in value according to market pressures. The move broke up the Common Market's monetary agreement, leaving all European currencies free, as the pound and the lira and the Irish pound have been since last March. In announcing the decision, Finance Minister Valery Giscard d'Estaing said it was "a parenthesis" in the Common Market's effort to reach a monetary union and that France was still committed to that goal. [New York Times] The South Vietnamese government announced today that Chinese MIG's had bombed three islands in the disputed Paracel group in the South China Sea and had followed up with the landing of Chinese troops on the islands, which are claimed by both Peking and Saigon. [New York Times] President Anwar Sadat of Egypt toured Arab capitals in an attempt to get the most important Arab leaders to underwrite the agreement signed by Egypt and Israel Friday on the disengagement of their forces along the Suez Canal. [New York Times] Five Soviet citizens, including a senior diplomat and two other members of the Soviet Embassy staff, were expelled from China on a charge of espionage activities. A Chinese Foreign Ministry note, made public by the official Chinese press agency, said the facts of the case showed the "utter hypocrisy of the Soviet authorities' official claim that they want to normalize the relations between the Soviet Union and China." [New York Times] The Defense Department has begun developing a new missile warhead that can be maneuvered to avoid defenses or eventually could home in with high accuracy on such enemy targets as missile silos. The new warhead is known as MaRV for "maneuverable re-entry vehicle." It represents the third generation in a family of multiple warheads that the United States has developed for its strategic missiles. [New York Times]