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Tuesday, Sept. 22, 1970
University Daily Kansan
News Capsules
By United Press International
Capital: Airlines
WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Nixon administration offered Monday to provide the airlines with insurance policies against damages to their craft caused by hijackers. Transportation Secretary John A. Volpe said at a White House briefing the commercial rates had risen too sharply for the airlines to handle and the government was taking the action under terms of a 1958 law that authorized "war Risk" insurance.
St. Louis: UAW Blacks
About 50 black members of Local 25 of the United Auto Workers left for Detroit, hoping to persuade UAW president Leonard Woodcock to allow them to present grievances at the negotiating sessions with General Motors. The group charged that although the St. Louis Chevrolet plant is located in the inner city, where 60 per cent of the population is black, only about 20 per cent of the employees are black.
BILOXI—Deep South governors accomplished a rules change that will improve by one vote their chances of pushing a strong antibusing resolution through the Southern Governors Conference. Without debate, the conference voted to change its rules so that a resolution can be adopted by a two-thirds vote instead of a three-fourths vote previously required. The change was adopted by a show of hands, with 11 apparently voting for and three not voting. An attempt by the conference to pass a strong antibusing resolution last year failed by just one vote.
Mississippi: Antibusing
Capital: Ralph Nader
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Consumer champion Ralph Nader asked the Transportation Department to order Ford Co. to recall four million cars made between 1965 and 1969 and replace lower controls arms on them. He said the arms were potentially unsafe. Ford recently pulled back 85,000 cars used by police departments after the National Highway Safety Bureau found cracks in the lower control arms, but said the cracks probably resulted from the abnormal stress of police driving. Nader said the bureau's testing was inadequate and that Ford had cases in its files where cars not subject to abuse also had experienced lower control arm failure.
Oregon: Chicago 7
EUGENE—John Froines, one of two defendants in the "Chicago 7" conspiracy trial to be acquitted, announced he was resigning from the University of Oregon faculty to work with the Black Panthers "and other people of the Third World." "America has forced me to stop my scientific work," Froines told a news conference. "Instead of creating a scientist it has created a revolutionary." He said he would go to New Haven, Conn., to work for the release of Black Panther chairman Bobby Seale, charged with homicide.
Capital: Martha Mitchell
WASHINGTON, D.C.-Martha Mitchell, wife of the attorney general, says America's professors and educators are a bunch of "sidewalk diplomats" who are destroying the country. In the course of a telephone call to a reporter to express her irritation over a story about her husband, Mrs. Mitchell said, "The academic society is responsible for all of our troubles in this country. They (professors) are totally responsible for the sins of our children." She said she was calling from an upstairs bathroom telephone so that her husband would not hear her talking.
Plan Stalls;
Command
Changed
PHNOM PENH (UPI) — The Cambodian high command announced Monday that the commander of the government task force encircled by Communist troops north of Phnom Penh for a week has been replaced. At the same time, military sources reported a new "serious" Communist threat south of the capital city.
Only scattered ground fighting was reported during the past 24 hours in Cambodia and South Vietnam. But B52 bombers continued to pound Communist targets in Cambodia, South Vietnam and Laos.
Cambodian Prime Minister Lon Nol flew in a borrowed American helicopter to Skoun, 35 miles northeast of Phnom Penh, for an on-the-spot study and briefings from field commanders of the stalled 4,000-man Cambodian task force.
A SHORT TIME later the high command said Brig. Gen. Phan Moeung, commander of the Third Military Region, had replaced Brig. Gen. Neak Sam.
Sam had commanded the task force since it moved out of Skoun for Kompong Thom two weeks ago in the biggest Cambodian operation of the war.
Nol was an army general before he took over as head of government in March and was credited with planning the strategy that resulted in the recapture two weeks ago of Srang, 26 miles south of Phnom Penh, from the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces.
CAMBODIAN reinforcements were reported pouring north to help break the trap sprung by the Communists around the task force about 14 miles north of Skoun. Nine Cambodian battalions have been stranded on Highway 6 for a week and have been harassed nightly by Communist mortar fire.
Military officials at Skoun said there now are 14 battalions involved in the operation, whose aim was to clear Highway 6 to Kompong Thom, 85 miles northeast of Phnom Penh. Kompong Thom has been surrounded by Communist forces for more than two months.
MILITARY sources in Phnom Penh, at the same time, said Communist forces had begun new offensive actions around the Kirirom plateau, 56 miles southwest of the capital, the scene of some of the heaviest fighting in the Cambodian war.
The sources said units of an estimated 5,000-man Communist force in the mountains had moved out into the lowlands. They said the movements appeared coordinated with operations north of Phnom Penh.
Three Major New York Banks Signal Slice in Interest Rates
NEW YORK (UPI)—Three big New York banks Monday cut their prime interest rates a half-point to $7 \frac{1}{2}$ per cent, sparking a round of rate cuts across the country.
Morgan Guaranty Trust Co, fifth largest bank in the nation, led off the move, followed quickly by Chemical Bank, New York Trust Co., which ranks sixth. Late in the day, Chase Manhattan Bank, third largest followed suit.
Bank of America, the world's largest bank, said it is looking at the market factors and has the situation under assessment, but it hadn't made a decision yet.
Although many big and small banks around the country stood pat at 8 per cent, the spotlight already was shifting to interest rates not directly affected by
prime rate moves, such as mortgages and consumer loan rates.
The prime rate cuts make the cost of borrowed money cheaper to the largest, most creditworthy business borrowers and, while many other business loan rates are scaled upward from the prime rate, consumer loan rates change only about a tenth as frequently as prime rates. Morgan Guaranty said it had also reduced its brokers loan rate a half point.
In Washington, Robert H. Pease, president of the Mortgage Bankers Association, said the prime rate cut will make mortgages more attractive investments and the action "will be reflected, in time, in lower mortgage interest rates."
The Federal Home Loan Bank Board reported Monday that conventional home mortgage
An official of one New York bank said consumer loan rates do not move in harness with business loan rates, but a cut in consumer loan rates nevertheless can't be ruled out.
Stock prices went up early in the day with news of the prime rate cuts, but gave way under selling induced by concern over the Middle East situation.
rates averaged a record 8.51 per cent last month, up from 8.49 per cent in July. Please said the prime rate cuts "signal the growing availability of money to lend."
The main significance of the prime rate cuts, which were not followed immediately by many other big banks, is that they signal a turning point and a sign that inflationary pressures have been deflated.
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