News stories from Saturday May 12, 1979

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

James Leonard has been appointed as senior deputy to Robert Strauss, President Carter's new special negotiator for the Middle East. Mr. Leonard, a career diplomat, has been Andrew Young's chief deputy at the United Nations. He will have a key role in the Middle East negotiations that begin May 25. [New York Times] A plan for basing the MX missile in tunnels in the Southwest has been revived by the Defense Department. Defense officials said the idea, dropped a year ago. was revived at a White House meeting last week, and is now one of three final alternatives under consideration. The others were said to be the shell-game basing plan, using underground silos, or scrapping the MX in favor of a new submarine-launched missile. [New York Times] The dangers of nuclear fallout during the years the United States was conducting atomic weapons tests in Nevada was a matter of concern secondary to the demands of national security in those cold war years, and an extended effort to downplay that concern is revealed by once-secret documents made public under the Freedom of Information Act. [New York Times] Vacation plans of millions of Americans are uncertain because of the growing concern over the likelihood of gasoline shortages and service station shutdowns. Auto trips will be shorter as more families vacation closer to home. Many people apparently will leave their car at home and travel by bus, train and plane, whose bookings are far ahead of last year. [New York Times] Barbara Hutton died of a heart attack in Los Angeles. She was 66 years old. The heiress to the Woolworth store fortune had been married seven times. In recent years she lived in seclusion in a penthouse apartment at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. [New York Times] Gasohol fuel for cars will be introduced in the New York metropolitan area on Monday and will be initially available at a Pilot Petroleum filling station in Shirley, Long Island, and later at 20 other stations operated by the company in Suffolk County. The mixture of alcohol and gasoline generally costs a few cents more a gallon than premium unleaded gasoline, but reportedly increases mileage by 5 percent. A state experiment in the use of gasohol will also begin soon. [New York Times] The Liberal Party threatened to "censure" Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan publicly and deny him endorsement because he again sponsored a tuition credit bill for parents of private school students. The break came after a year-long, increasingly sharp correspondence between the Senator and the Liberal Party's state chairman, the Rev. Donald Harrington. [New York Times] The U.S. and China agreed to initial a trade agreement, according to members of a visiting American trade delegation headed by Secretary of Commerce Juanita Kreps. It is expected that the agreement, a major step in the normalization of relations with China, will be concluded on Monday, and will be initialed in Canton by Mrs. Kreps. [New York Times] Egypt proposes to ask the American people to pay for the 50 American-made jet fighters it had ordered because Saudi Arabia, angry over the Israeli-Egyptian treaty, may back out of its agreement to pay for them. President Anwar Sadat said he could no longer depend on the Saudi promise, and that he would ask the American people to raise the purchase price of $525 million through a public subscription. His appeal to Americans, Mr. Sadat said, would be "proof to all the Arabs and to all the world that we intend to continue on our way towards peace." [New York Times]