Another busy day on Planet Earth.
Starting with the government to disclose the Consumer Price Index for May Friday, and administration officials are expecting it to show a continuing large rise. Barry Bosworth, director of the Council on Wage and Price Stability, predicted last week that the report will show prices rising about 0.7 percent to 0.8 percent for the month. This is an improvement over the 0.9 percent increase in April. However, it would still mean inflation was running at a rate of eight percent to 10 percent per year. The administration is still predicting an inflation rate of about seven percent for the year.
However, Federal Reserve Chairman G. William Miller said Thursday that inflation this year will probably be more than seven percent. At a Senate committee hearing, he said the best that could be hoped for next year is about 6.5 percent. In the first five months of the year, the inflation rate was running at an annual rate of about 10 percent, near the levels of the 1974-1975 recession. The biggest causes have been the basic necessities: food, housing, energy and medical costs.
And vice-President Walter Mondale heard shouts of “go home Mondale” as demonstrators confronted him today shortly after his arrival in Israel on a four-day peace-seeking mission. The incident occurred at the Wailing Wall, Judaism’s most sacred shrine. The demonstrators, estimated by police to number from 20 to 50, were in a group of several hundred spectators on hand for the Mondale party’s arrival. Earlier, in Tel Aviv, Mondale hailed a “special bond” between the United States and Israel. His trip is aimed at demonstrating American commitment to the Jewish state and to urge concessions to restart peace negotiations with Egypt. In a 25-minute airport ceremony, Prime Minister Menachem Begin greeted Mondale as “a friend of our country” from a nation “with whom our people and our land are so deeply linked.’ Begin looked pale and thin next to the tanned Mondale. Begins’s aides deny reports that he is in poor health.
Begin has a history of heart trouble. At the wall, the demonstrators, calling themselves “Israelis for Israel-True Peace,” shouted at Mondale as he and his wife Joan and daughter Eleanor made their way to the wall. One man held a sign reading, “Jewish blood is more important than Arab oil.” The three, accompanied by Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek, entered the men’s section of the segregated praying area. More than 100 black clad Orthodox Jews were praying inside as the Sabbath neared, and many shouted angrily at the intrusion.
Mondale is the first incumbent vice president to visit Israel.
Finally – Actor Bob Crane, who began a radio announcing career in Bridgeport, Conn., and went on to star as the wise-cracking Colonel Hogan of the hit television series “Hogan’s Heroes,’ was found beaten to death Thursday in an apartment near a theater where he was performing. Authorities said Crane, 49, died of at least three blows to the head from a heavy instrument and apparently had been killed in his sleep. There also was an electrical cord around his neck. The actor’s body was found on a bed in an apartment near the Windmill Dinner Theatre where he had been starring in “Beginner’s Luck” for nearly a month. “We heard nothing at all,” said Jean Reed, manager of the Winfield Apartments. “Our first indication of any problem was when one of our workmen saw all the police.” Ms. Reed said Victoria Ann Berry, an actress, entered the apartment and found the body at about 2 p.m. after Crane had failed to appear at a scheduled luncheon address to the Phoenix chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Crane, noted for his natural acting style, launched a short-lived motion picture career after “‘Hogan’s Heroes” went off the air and co-starred with Elke Sommer in “The Wicked Dreams of Paul Schultz.” His most successful movie appearance was in ‘Return to Peyton Place.” His other movies included “Mantrap” and “Superdad.” On television, he starred in “Arsenic and Old Lace” with Helen Hayes and Lillian Gish.
And that’s just a taste of what happened on this June 30, 1978 as reported by The CBS World News Roundup.
