The Charlotte News
Thursday, October 30, 1958
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Havana that Cuban rebels under Fidel Castro this date launched what they called a final blow to overthrow the Government of El Presidente Fulgencio Batista and to disrupt the following Monday's presidential election. The rebel high command had declared open season for shooting any or all of the 10,000 candidates for national, provincial and municipal offices. It ordered guerrilla fighters, militiamen and partisans throughout Cuba to fire without warning upon all railway and highway transport. Cubans had been warned that they risked their lives if they went to the polls. Rebel broadcasts also said that sabotage of communications in eastern Oriente Province would be rapidly extended throughout Cuba. Sr. Castro called what he termed representatives of workers' organizations to his mountain headquarters to give the exact hour for a general revolutionary strike. He predicted that the walkout, along with shooting attacks and sabotage, would topple the Batista regime. He fixed dawn this date as the deadline for candidates to withdraw from the election or be shot. Thus far, four congressional candidates had been slain. Sr. Castro claimed that 11 candidates for City Council had withdrawn at Alto Songo near it Santiago de Cuba. With the exception of Oriente, however, calm had prevailed in Havana and elsewhere in the country. More than 2,000 new soldiers had been sworn into the Army. El Presidente promised that the armed forces and national police would maintain order at all costs and guaranteed Cubans the right freely to express their will at the polls. A heavy vote appeared likely despite the rebel threats. The Government had announced that more than 90 percent of 2,870,000 Cubans eligible to vote had picked up their registration cards. The four presidential candidates continued their vigorous campaigns, all promising if elected that they would find a way to end Sr. Castro's 23-month rebellion, reestablish peace and bring the nation greater prosperity. Translated to English: "Elect us and we shall engage in less graft and corruption with fewer organized crime figures at the casinos. Trust us."
In Geneva, it was reported that Moscow Radio had broadcast this date a pledge of Soviet efforts to assure success of the Big Three nuclear test ban negotiations opening the following day, implying that the U.S. would drag its feet.
In Berlin, Communist East Germany claimed this date that 340,616 people had left West Germany and West Berlin during the previous four years to resettle in the satellite nation.
At the Atomic Test Site in Nevada,
nuclear weapons testing this date reached the end, at least for the
time being, based on the President's declared one-year moratorium to
begin the following day, provided that the Soviets would reciprocate
by continuing their moratorium begun the prior March and that
adequate inspection systems could be implemented to enforce the
moratorium. How long the suspension of testing would last would
depend on the outcome of the talks currently taking place in Geneva
between the U.S., Britain and the Soviet Union. Two shots were
scheduled to end the testing program which had begun on the Nevada
proving ground in 1951. The test was scheduled to end with the
largest weapon ever fired underground by the U.S., and a somewhat
less powerful blast from a balloon positioned at 1,500 feet. Those
would be the 19th and 20th shots of the current series and would
bring the total number of tests since 1951 to 89 at the test site.
The end of testing brought sadness to Atomic Energy Commission
scientists and officials, the technical director of the Defense
Department participation in atomic tests having said: "Lots of
us who have been in it a long time sure hate to see today be the
end." When the last of the Los Alamos, N.M., scientific
laboratories tests of weapons had been detonated on Wednesday night,
"Taps" had been played over a loudspeaker at News Knob
observation point. The series had operated on the most stepped-up
schedule of any ever conducted at the test site, to beat the
suspension deadline. Three weapons were exploded on two separate
days, the first time that had ever been done at the site. Five shots
had been scheduled for Wednesday, but two had to be held over until
this date. An AEC official remarked: "In ordinary times, they
could take a long time to get one shot ready—in this series a
week is crammed into a day." Wednesday's busy program had
started with a small weapon of less power than 1,000 tons of TNT,
detonated atop a 50-foot tower. Then had come another 50-foot tower
shot of about the same power and the third blast was much heavier,
equal to something under 20,000 tons of TNT, detonated from a balloon
positioned at 1,500 feet in altitude. (Incidentally, for a younger audience who never endured a weekly test of one of the air raid sirens, with which we had become first acquainted on the previous Saturday, August 23, at noon, atop the pharmacy about a block from our new residence, some 160 miles from the perimeter area of the swamp where we had been on regular sentry duty during the day against encroachment by the basilisk, now only a couple of miles, by the crow's flight, from the Western Electric plant where they were, or soon would be, designing and building the guidance systems for the missiles, we ran across this presentation
In Seoul, South Korea's Vice-President, Chang Nyun, charged this date President Syngman Rhee's Administration with being "laden with accumulated corruption" and called for its ouster at the next election.
In Nicosia, Cyprus, three Greek Cypriots, convicted of firing on a group of Turkish Cypriots the previous August during the height of Greek-Turkish communal clashes, had been sentenced to death this date.
In Tunis, Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba this date asked French Premier Charles de Gaulle to pave the way for Tunisian-Moroccan mediation of the Algerian rebellion by releasing the top Algerian rebel leader who was imprisoned in Paris.
In London, BOAC this date said that
its Comet IV airliners would begin daily Atlantic passenger jet
service on November 14. BOAC announced that the London to New York
In Lincoln, Neb., it was reported that the presentation of evidence would begin this date in the first-degree murder trial of Caril Ann Fugate, 15, charged with being an accomplice to Charles Starkweather, 19, in a murder rampage the previous late January in which ten persons had been slain in Nebraska and Wyoming, Mr. Starkweather having been convicted of first-degree murder in May and sentenced to die in the electric chair, currently scheduled for December 17. Caril had been specifically charged as an accomplice of Mr. Starkweather in the same murder of which he was convicted, that of 17-year old Robert Jensen of Bennet, Neb., who, along with his 16-year old girlfriend, Carol King, had picked up the couple along the side of the road as they were hitchhiking after experiencing car trouble at a nearby farm, where they had also slain the farmer whom Charles had previously known. It was alleged that Caril held a shotgun on the young couple as Mr. Jensen drove the car, being directed by Mr. Starkweather, finally telling him to turn off the road at an abandoned storm shelter, to which Mr. Starkweather had allegedly directed the couple at gunpoint and then shot both to death. Mr. Starkweather, in a pretrial statement read into the record of his trial, had admitted the shooting of Mr. Jensen, though he had made a lot of contradictory statements regarding the killings. Caril maintained that she was not an accomplice but rather had been a hostage of Mr. Starkweather, and her attorney told the jury in opening statement that she was an immature person cowed by an armed and desperate killer. The prosecutor countered with the contention that Caril had ample opportunity to escape from Mr. Starkweather but instead had voluntarily accompanied him. She had, upon the last murder along the side of the road in Douglas, Wyo., voluntarily surrendered to a law enforcement officer who had happened onto the scene, after which a high-speed chase of Mr. Starkweather had ensued, until he, too, was finally captured by police. Caril was expected to testify in her own behalf. Mr. Starkweather had not testified. The hunt for the couple had begun after the bodies of Caril's mother, stepfather and half-sister had been found in their home. Caril maintained that she had not known of those deaths until she and Mr. Starkweather had been captured in Wyoming—despite the fact that the deaths were headline news in the Lincoln Star and that the couple had returned to Lincoln after the killings in Bennet, sleeping in the car overnight and then taking over the home of a well-to-do couple, eventually killing both along with their deaf maid. The prosecutor contended that Caril had known all along what had happened at her home. The jury was comprised of seven men and five women—whose names, addresses, occupations and pictures are published in the Lincoln Star, in case you wish to contact them.
Perhaps, if she is convicted, Zorro will rescue her. If not, perhaps, Hoss, once again playing the prodigal
As we have fallen behind, there will be no further notes on the front page or editorial page for this date, as the notes will be sporadic until we catch up.
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