News stories from Sunday May 1, 1977

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

The state police arrested about 2,000 demonstrators opposing a nuclear energy plant under construction in Seabrook, N. H. The demonstrators had been warned that arrests would be made if they did not go away. They had been encamped, mainly in a parking lot near the construction site, since Saturday afternoon, saying they would remain there until construction plans for the nuclear plant were dropped. [New York Times] A proposed new federal criminal code, successor to earlier attempts at revisions and reorganizations of federal criminal law that failed, will be announced today by Senator John McClellan, Senator Edward Kennedy and Attorney General Griffin Bell. The new proposal would modify or eliminate provisions that had been attacked as threats to civil liberties. Its key feature is an effort to devise uniform standards for sentencing that would make punishment predictable. [New York Times] In his series of forthcoming television interviews with David Frost, former President Richard Nixon insisted that he had not sought to cover up a crime in his response to Watergate but had merely tried to politically contain the situation, according to preview articles in Time and Newsweek. The first program on Wednesday night will focus on Watergate and the others will deal with foreign and domestic policies and other aspects of the Nixon administration. [New York Times] Only a slight after-tax gain, at best, for most corporate profits is expected by leading economic forecasters this spring. Profits are down in steel, coal and other major industrial categories. Estimates of gains for 1977's first quarter over the fourth quarter of 1976 ranged from only two-tenths of a percent to 4.1 percent. [New York Times] A huge rally in Battery Park in lower Manhattan in support of Jews seeking rights in the Soviet Union was attended by a Carter administration spokesman and Howard Baker, the Senate's ranking Republican. Both addressed the crowd of more than 200,000. It was the first time that a President had designated a high-ranking aide to represent him at solidarity demonstrations sponsored in the last six years by the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry. [New York Times] China and the United States are negotiating to settle financial claims that could be the first step to normal trade relations. The talks were begun without publicity in Washington several weeks ago and were disclosed today by administration officials. The issues go back to December 1950 when the United States, because of Chinese intervention in the Korean War, blocked dollar bank accounts and other Chinese assets in this country whose value is now estimated at $80 million, In retaliation, the Chinese seized all American public and private property in China. [New York Times] Egyptian pilots will he sent to Zaire by President Anwar Sadat to operate the air force and help crush the Katangan invasion in the southern province of Shaba. President Sadat, who mentioned the growing presence of the Soviet Union in Africa, said he was acting also to protect the Sudan and the "sources of the Nile." [New York Times] A giant May Day rally in Istanbul turned into a gun battle with ultra-leftists pitted against the police and trade unionists. At least 39 people were killed and about 200 injured. The rally was organized by one of Turkey's two big labor organizations, the leftist group known as DISK. Firing by rooftop snipers began when the labor group's chief addressed a crowd of 150,000 jammed into Istanbul's Taksim Square. [New York Times] Cambodia Is a desolate country two years after the Communist victory. This is the general impression given in interviews with refugees arriving in Bangkok, who tell of crop failures, spreading hunger and disease, and no money anywhere. The purges that took hundreds of thousands of lives following the Communist capture of Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975, have apparently ended for the most part. [New York Times] Some kind of regulation of shoe exports from South Korea will be the subject of talks scheduled to start tomorrow in Seoul between American negotiators, acting under President Carter's orders, and South Korean shoe manufacturers. "These talks are a matter of life and death for us," said Kim Rack Kyeong, executive director of the Korean Footwear Exporters Association, whose members last year shipped 52 million pairs of shoes to the United States. American shoe manufacturers and union want the exports cut back. [New York Times] A shadow over the entire Swiss banking system has been cast by growing scandal at the Swiss Credit Bank, where mismanagement of funds now estimated at $880 million is alleged. Ernst Kuhrmeir, former manager of the Credit Bank's important branch in Chiasso in Switzerland's Ticino region near the Italian border, had been offering customers up to 8 percent interest, while his competitors could offer only a fraction of that amount. [New York Times]