News stories from Saturday March 13, 1976

Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:

Howard Callaway, President Ford's national campaign chairman, went on "temporary" leave pending resolution of charges that he had intervened with government officials last year in efforts to expand a ski resort he controls on federal land in Colorado. Mr. Ford said he had "full faith" in Mr. Callaway. Mr. Callaway said he was confident of "complete exoneration" of suggestions that he had acted improperly in obtaining approval from the Agriculture Department for the expansion of his Crested Butte resort to the adjacent Mount Snodgrass in west-central Colorado after the Forest Service tentatively disapproved the expansion. [New York Times] A congressional coalition representing liberals, blacks and organized labor introduced legislation that would require the government to set policies that would provide jobs for people who want to work. The proposed legislation was based on the Employment Act of 1946 which established "maximum employment production and purchasing power" as national goals but it would go far beyond that law by requiring the President and Congress to set specific numerical goals each year for employment, production and purchasing power and spell out the policies that would seek to achieve them. [New York Times] A study by the National Science Foundation that has been sent to Congress and President Ford has found that the world dominance by the United States in science and technology has declined over the last 15 years. The Soviet Union, West Germany, France and Japan have been improving their inventiveness, support for science and worker productivity faster than the United States, the study says. [New York Times] Public school administrators throughout the country are growing more unwilling to award a diploma to high school graduates until the students can demonstrate a minimum competency in basic skills. A new emphasis on basic learning and an effort to get the most for each educational dollar are forcing a re-evaluation of graduation standards. What was to have been a small, two-day conference in Denver to discuss procedures for measuring minimum competency standards grew into a gathering of representatives from 32 states eager to compare notes. [New York Times] A growing awareness that hazards in work may damage the reproductive process of women and apparently, to a lesser degree, men has confronted government, business and labor with an array of new and difficult ethical, legal and constitutional questions. Chemicals and other hazards, it is indicated by studies, in such places as hospitals, beauty parlors and factories may account for an increasing number of the tens of thousands of miscarriages and birth defects in the United States each year. [New York Times] Two-thirds -- 66 of the 99 members of Lebanon's Parliament -- signed a petition tonight calling for the resignation of President Suleiman Franjieh, but the President refused, rousing fears of a confrontation between him and the badly splintered Lebanese army. Mr. Franjieh rejected earlier in the day an informal appeal from Parliament that he resign. He replied that he would do so if two-thirds of the members formally sought his resignation, but after the petition was signed he told a delegation headed by Parliament's deputy speaker that he had no intention of quitting. [New York Times] The government of President Park Chung Hee of South Korea has forced the dismissal or resignation of more than 400 university professors in recent weeks. The ousters, made under provisions of a new academic "tenure" law, have been officially described as the weeding out of "idle" and "incompetent" instructors from South Korea's 31 public and 67 private universities. But many people in and outside the academic community believe that the dismissals were another step by the government to sever contacts between South Korea's 220,000 students and government opponents in the faculties. [New York Times] Concern is spreading in Europe about the willingness and ability of the United States to sustain a coherent foreign policy as leader of the West. This will be a major issue, according to senior European officials, when government heads of the Common Market nations meet in Luxembourg April 1, as it was in Nice last month in a meeting between President Valery Giscard d'Estaing of France and Chancellor Helmut Schmidt of West Germany. [New York Times] Only hours before the statute of limitations expired, Tokyo's chief prosecutor formally charged Yoshio Kodama, the key figure in the Lockheed aircraft bribery scandal in Japan, with failure to pay more than $2.8 million in national income taxes. They were the first legal charges placed against those implicated in the bribery scandal, which has shaken the conservative government and stalled normal parliamentary business for about six weeks. [New York Times] The hundred-acre field in southeast England where William, Duke of Normandy, defeated Harold, King of England, in the Battle of Hastings in 1066 is for sale by the family that owns it and if it is not sold privately it will be offered at auction. The battlefield is part of a 573-acre estate that also includes two parking fields for the thousands of tourists who visit the historic area annually. The present owners cannot afford the estate's upkeep and it is said that inheritance taxes would force its sale eventually. An auction has been scheduled at the Mayfair Hotel in London June 24. [New York Times]