News stories from Saturday January 17, 1970

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

Senate Democrats and the Nixon administration are expected to begin the second session of the 91st Congress with a confrontation over domestic spending. The Democrats intend to pass a $19.7 billion appropriations bill for the departments of Labor and Health, Education and Welfare that the President has threatened to veto as inflationary. [New York Times] Informed sources in Washington said that the administration's program for fighting pollution would emphasize incentives to private industry rather than large outlays of federal funds or an expansion of federal regulatory and enforcement powers. If true, such a program could face charges of inadequacy from environmentalists. [New York Times] The Interior Department and the Justice Department are accused of depriving Indians of their water rights in a report published by a joint congressional subcommittee on economy in government. The laboriously-documented report, written by an Interior Department expert on Indian water resources, concludes that the Indians have suffered "irreparable damage." [New York Times] Linwood Holton became the first Republican governor of Virginia in 84 years at an inauguration at Richmond. He stressed racial tolerance and environmental upgrading in a 15-minute inaugural address in a slight drizzle in front of Virginia's Capitol. Mr. Holton has already appointed a Negro educator from Roanoke as one of his executive assistants. [New York Times] Officers of the Biafran army returned to the dense forests and marshlands of the territory that was Biafra to help Nigerian army patrols coax holdout Biafran soldiers from the bush. The officers were said to be carrying leaflets proclaiming a general amnesty for everybody in the territory. [New York Times] A widespread feeling that nothing has really changed has resulted from the confusion following the first draft lottery drawing, campus interviews showed. College students with low priority numbers, having little confidence that they are absolutely free from the draft, have not been leaving the shelter of their student deferments. And men with high priority numbers have not been enlisting in the armed forces or reserves in droves. [New York Times] Puzzling shifts in the lines drawn on new Soviet maps, in which coastlines, towns, rivers and other features wander as much as 25 miles from their true locations, have been spotted by government cartographers in Washington. Their theory is that Russian map makers are practicing deliberate deception. [New York Times]