This week fifty years ago, President Kennedy assessed his first year in office, expressed concern over the drop in graduates in the Sciences in colleges around the country and disappointment that the Test Ban Treaty was a failure.

Other topics covered in this first Press Conference of 1962 were Berlin, the Indonesia/Dutch dispute, the issue of Trade, the Food For Peace Program, Civil Rights, The Common Market and proposed Medicare Legislation. A question was raised as to whether there were troops engaged in combat in Vietnam, and the answer was no.

A fascinating glimpse into the Kennedy Years from January 15, 1962.

For this week, ending on May 11th in 1975, news was about the last Americans and press evacuated from Cambodia. The stories now coming out about the atrocities and the takeover by the Khmer Rouge. In South Vietnam, the Tsunami of refugees was still on, with stories of over-flowing boats and chaos and confusion.

So confusing, that the story came out of the last two Marines, killed in Vietnam were still somewhere in a Saigon hospital morgue, waiting to be picked up. Reports also came in that Laos was facing a Communist takeover, based on the elections recently held.

And that was the picture from Southeast Asia.

Meanwhile, it was reported Senator George McGovern was visiting Cuba and talk of the OAS preparing to drop sanctions against the Castro government, sometime during the Summer.

Egypt was moving to finally clear the Suez Canal of wrecked ships leftover from the 1967 War.

And on this week it was 30 years since VE day, and many comparisons were being drawn between the end of that conflict and the one just recently ended in Vietnam.

All in a week, ending May 11, 1975 as reported on The World This Week from CBS Radio.

Update: With a mass outpouring of donations and kind words overnight, we've come within a few hundred dollars of our goal. We'll end the fundraiser after today and give what we have to the building owners and hopefully the crisis will be over tomorrow. I can't begin to express my gratitude and admiration for all of you who have made donations. Your contributions have all made a huge difference and I am so blown away by the responses. It is sometimes difficult to know, working on posts all day and usually with only the computer screen as an audience, to tell if any of the historic materials I've been offering these last few years have been seen or have been of any help to anyone. The past 10 days of this fundraiser have proven there are a lot of you out there and that makes this decades-long quest for archiving and preserving history completely worth it. I'll be here as long as you're here. If you are still interested in making a contribution, I'm still in heavy appeal-mode for the rest of the day. As always, any amount you feel comfortable with is enormous to me. My deepest and most heartfelt thanks to you all.

This May Day in 1961 had ominous tones for the future - although at the time it didn't sound that way. The news for this day was the crisis in Southeast Asia, specifically the dispute between Laos and Cambodia. Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia had proposed a 14 nation Political Conference to the King of Laos in an effort to diffuse the situation. The proposal was rejected and Sihanouk then called for ceasefire talks to begin.

Meanwhile, President Kennedy was being apprised of the situation in South Vietnam via a recently concluded Military fact finding mission to the area.

On the Domestic front - Commerce Secretary Luther Hodges was quoted as saying the Communist Economic offensive was a matter of grave concern to the Free World, with obvious hints towards the situation in Latin America. Elsewhere - it was reported the Unemployment figures in the U.S. were regarded as "intolerable" by Capitol Hill.

On an upbeat note - Scientists at Cape Canaveral were weighting weather conditions for a scheduled launch of he first manned-Space flight by the U.S. - the flight was slated to go on May 2nd, if all signs were good.

And Jordan's King Hussein announced via Radio Aman that he was engaged to "the woman of his dreams" - a commoner who also happened to be the daughter of a British Army Officer. Hussein also added that yes, she was a Muslim - so not to worry.

And that's what this May 1st was mostly about in 1961 as reported by NBC News On The Hour.

Pretty much a week of turmoil, that week of May 11th in 1975. May 11th came on a Sunday that year and news from this broadcast of The World This Week was filled with stories of evacuation, mayhem, confusion and anger.

The evacuation of Cambodia was nearing completion with Khmer Rouge forces closing in on Phenom Penh, the Capitol of Cambodia. Journalists escaping told stories of forced evacuations of Phenom Penh, leaving the city virtually empty, but the roads leading from the city clogged with sick and dying. Other refugees, this time feeling South Vietnam, were heading to the U.S. - and stories of mass panic and desperate attempts to escape were filling the news on an hourly basis. Egypt was busily clearing the Suez Canal of sunken ships, remnants from the 1967 War with Israel, with the hopes of re-opening the Canal as soon as the wreckage was cleared. And this week in 1975 marked the 30th anniversary of the end of the War in Europe - VE-Day.

If you can, please do. If you can't, keep coming back anyway.

President Nixon delivered one of his rare press conferences during Prime Time on December 10, 1970. As press conferences went, there were no startling revelations and it all went pretty much to plan, including two announcements:

Pres. Nixon: “I will announce tonight however, two I think important additions to the Administration. The first, Mister Rumsfeld is coming into the White House as a Counselor to the President on a full time basis and Mister Frank Carlucci will take over as the Director of OEO. He is his deputy and has done an outstanding job in that particular position and I believe in promoting a man who has done such a job to the top spot. Mister George Bush, the Congressman who was defeated in his bid for the United States Senate, I talked to yesterday and I’m very happy to report that he has agreed to take a top position in the Administration. That will be announced tomorrow at Mister Ziegler’s eleven o’clock conference. Mister Bush will be there.”

Funny how those two names keep popping up. The gifts that just keep on giving.

(Handed a rather overflowing plate in 1961)

With all the recent reflection on Presidential 100 days and crisis management, I was reminded just how much the Kennedy Administration had been handed in the area of Foreign policy and crisis management in their first 100 days.

Senator J. William Fulbright was Chairman of Senate Foreign Relations Committee, overseeing a host of hotspots, including the Congo, Berlin, Laos (in fact the whole Southeast Asia region) and Cuba. Ironically, five days before this Meet The Press was recorded, the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion took place - a bungled attempt at toppling the Castro regime on the part of the CIA causing a big black eye in our policy towards Latin America in general.

The deck was pretty stacked and there was no shortage of fires to put out. Fulbright was a big advocate of education and foreign assistance as a means of overcoming the increasing Communist influence in these regions. He was no advocate of armed conflict, particularly in SouthEast Asia, citing the French excursion and terrain as reasons to avoid it. His solution to funding the campaign of education and Foreign Aid was probably tainted by those two most lethal words in politics, "higher taxes".

This Meet The Press, from April 30, 1961 features Fulbright answering a battery of questions from Lawrence Spivak and Company.

Lively.