News stories from Saturday January 19, 1980
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- Alleged plotters of a coup against Iran's revolutionary government were arrested in Tabriz, according to the director of the local jail. He said 25 air force men had been arrested following recent clashes in Tabriz between government supporters and militants of the opposition Moslem People's Republican Party. A report on the arrests in the evening newspaper Kayhan said that 50 officers and noncomissioned officers at the air base had been involved in a plot and that up to 30 men were being sought. [New York Times]
- Social Security funds will be bolstered against inflationary pressures with money borrowed from the trust funds established for disability and hospital care benefits if Congress provides President Carter with the authority he will seek in his budget message. Administration and congressional sources said they expected that the message will contain no other major Social Security proposals and that the administration's attempts last year to trim certain Social Security benefits will not be renewed. [New York Times]
- Justice William O. Douglas died in Washington at the age of 81. The champion of individual liberties served 36 years on the Supreme Court, longer than any other Justice, and retired in 1975 after months of struggling with the debilitation of a stroke. [New York Times]
- Corrective actions against abuses in the Immigration and Naturalization Service are expectd to be announced over the 10 days by Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti. One of the steps expected is the appointment of a permanent special investigator to oversee prosecution of corruption and other wrongdoing within the agency. [New York Times]
- The government will buy up much of the 2.5 million tons of grain owed to the Soviet Union under a long-term trade agreement but which longshoremen have refused to load. President Carter ordered the move to relieve the congestion the blocked grain has caused along the routes from farm to dock, and to protect the growers' prices.
A farm diversion program, which would pay wheat and corn farmers to leave part of the land idle, is "unlikely," Secretary of Agriculture Bob Bergland told reporters at a meeting in Washington.
[New York Times] - John Connally's net worth is at least $5 million, according to a detailed study of his finances. The study by The New York Times indicates that he has assets of at least $9 million and liablities of about $3.9 million and that the major source of his wealth is ranch property and livestock. He is probably the wealthiest Republican in the race for President. [New York Times]
- Further surgery for President Tito of Yugoslavia is necessary, his physicians said, because of "further deterioration of the condition of his left leg." Their announcement appeared to confirm reports that amputation would be required to solve a circulation problem that failed to respond to surgery on Jan. 12. They said that President Tito's general condition was good. [New York Times]
- An antituberculosis vaccine widely used in developing countries has been found to be ineffective in the largest study of it ever conducted, causing dismay among international health groups. Two strains of the vaccine, called BCG, were tested over a period of seven years on 360,000 people in southeastern India. [New York Times]