News stories from Saturday July 28, 1979

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

Failure of hydraulic systems in DC-10's or other flight-control difficulties in the planes have been found in more than 60 incidents compiled by the National Transportation Board in its inquiry into the DC-10 crash in Chicago last May 25. The incident tabulation is one of the key documents that will be presented Monday at the opening of the official hearing on the crash. [New York Times] Control tower tapes were impounded at Kennedy International Airport by federal aviation officials in an investigation of reports of a near collision Friday night between a Lot Polish Airlines jet and Braniff International plane on a Kennedy runway. The investigators will also study recordings of conversations between the two pilots and the control tower. [New York Times] The flow of refugees increased after President Carter's decision to send the Navy into international waters near Indochina to look for "boat people," according to refugees picked up by an American ship in the Gulf of Siam. The Seventh Fleet is on a special alert for refugees from Vietnam. The U.S.S. Wabash, a fleet tanker, rescued about 65 of them. [New York Times] The government's liability for arms contracts canceled by Iran may amount to billions of dollars, the General Accounting Office says in a report scheduled for publication on Monday. The congressional agency found many financial management problems in the Defense Department's foreign military sales. The report says the Defense Department has failed to charge foreign governments for hundreds of millions of dollars worth of weapons. [New York Times] Pan American's proposed merger with National Airlines took a big step forward with the announcement by Pan Am that it was acquiring a substantial block of National shares from Texas International Airlines. Texas, a competitor with Pan Am in the merger proposal, said it was withdrawing, subject to certain conditions. [New York Times] A decline in book sales has been linked by spokesmen for the publishing industry to inflation and general unease over the economy. Sales of both paperback and hardcover books are off. Paperback sales declined 10 to 15 percent in the first five months of 1979 compared to the same months last year, the first break in paperback sales since that staple of the book industry began growing swiftly after World War II, the Association of American Publishers said. It also estimated that 15 percent fewer hardcover copies were sold in the first five months of this year. [New York Times] The desert is encroaching on grazing and mining land in the West because of overgrazing and misuse of the land by livestock and mining interests. Overpopulation and overuse of underground water sources are other reasons why arid, marginal land is becoming a desert. The effects of this loss can be clearly seen on 170 million acres of Western rangelands in 11 states administered by the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service. [New York Times] Machines are replacing farmhands in California with greater frequency, helping to cut labor costs. New kinds of efficient machines are increasingly being used in the gathering of delicate fruit and vegetable crops. One of the new mechanical harvesters is picking ripe tomatoes in the Salinas Valley for Eastern markets. [New York Times] The likely causes of the fuel shortage that struck the New York area nearly three months ago have been examined by government and oil company officials and motorists without definite conclusions about why it affected the area worse than the rest of the country. Questions were raised about whether the region is still paying the price of the 1978 blizzard and whether stringent zoning restrictions have discouraged the construction of service stations, requiring what one oil executive said was a Taj Mahal. [New York Times] Charan Singh was installed as India's new Prime Minister and head of a three-party coalition government. He said in a nationwide broadcast that he would "continue to follow the policy of non-alignment which will not lean on any superpower." His 15-member cabinet was drawn from three political groups: his Janata Party, the Congress Party and the Socialist Party. The other major group supporting the coalition, the rival Congress-I Party of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, was not represented. [New York Times]