The Portuguese Junta de Salvação Nacional announced that it would govern Portugal until further notice, but that it would restore democracy and, further, it would pursue a policy to end Portuguese rule of Mozambique, Angola and its other colonies. It was in fact the Portuguese corporatist state's efforts to retain its colonies by force which had led to its junior military officers becoming disaffected, leading to the coup, and a return to democracy, through the Movimento das Forças Armadas.
The junta also released most political prisoners in the country.
I should have noted the coup in yesterday's entries, but I failed to.
Angola and Mozambique would of course slip into civil war.
The West German Bundestag narrowly passed a law allowing abortion in the first trimester, but it was soon suspended by the German supreme court and then found to be unconstitutional. Contrary to what Americans commonly think, abortion was much more restricted in Europe than in the US up until recently, and proposals here to return to the bizarre Roe v. Wade standard would return the US to a far more bloody condition than exists in Europe.
The Ethiopian government arrested members of the government and military that were associated in some fashion with the February 25 coup.
April 26, 1974: The Yankees' Friday Night Massacre
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