News stories from Saturday December 27, 1975

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

Hundreds of workers were trapped in a major coal mine in northeastern India when an explosion caved in the walls and the water from a nearby reservoir rushed down the shafts. The men were believed to have died. Official sources in New Delhi said that 250 to 300 miners had been trapped in the mine near Dharibad, but other reports reaching New Delhi said at least 700 miners may have been trapped. Ten hours after the explosion, rescue attempts by the national and state governments brought forth only four bodies and no survivors. [New York Times] More than five years after the start of the federal government's affirmative action program undertaken to increase the hiring of more women and minority-group faculty members by colleges and universities, the accomplishments are small and the effort remains immersed in the controversy in which it began. The United States Office of Civil Rights has approved affirmative action plans for only 31 of the nation's 1,300 eligible institutions. In addition, there has been virtually no monitoring of approved plans to assure compliance. No college or university has lost its federal funding -- as the law provides -- for failing to comply, and Washington officials say they do not have specific data on the impact of affirmative action plans where they have been approved. [New York Times] Congress, which some legislators believe is lacking in original thought, has become a co-sponsor of a proposal that would establish an institute in which academicians would advise members of Congress. The plan, which has been approved by Senate and House party leaders, would set up a nonpartisan group separate from the federal bureaucracy to assemble the best academic minds in the nation to offer independent analyses of problems, opinions, and policy options. To emphasize the independence of the group, which would he called the Institute for Congress, the experts would serve only short terms to prevent the establishment of an entrenched bureaucracy, and their pay would come from private foundations rather than from federal funds. [New York Times] In recent years, oil companies have had to go farther out into the Gulf of Mexico and into deeper water to look for oil. Seventy-two of the world's 305 offshore drilling rigs are now digging wells in the Gulf. Since 1954, 13,000 holes have been drilled in federal tracts. Over the years an offshore city has been built from Florida to Mexico and up to 150 miles out to sea. Its population of more than 10,000, which includes dozens of women, lives, eats, and sleeps for a week at a time on more than 400 rigs and platforms that poke up out of the Gulf. [New York Times] China freed a Soviet helicopter and its three crewmen who were seized when they flew into Chinese territory, reportedly in the area of China's atomic testing ground in Sinkiang Province on March 14, 1974. Hsinhua, the Chinese press agency, said that the fliers and their helicopter had been freed "after investigation by the Chinese public security organs," and that the Chinese authorities now "consider credible the Soviet crew members' statement about the unintentional flight into China." Moscow had insisted that the helicopter had strayed into China accidentally in bad weather while on a medical mission. Peking had charged that the helicopter was equipped for reconnaissance and had landed more than once inside China during its flight. [New York Times] Angola's civil war -- like no other issue since the Biafran secession from Nigeria -- is cracking the facade of solidarity that black African leaders have sought to maintain. The leaders generally regard the threat of Balkanization as a major threat to the stability of the African nations and their ideological differences have usually been subordinated to a show of third-world solidarity. With the growing involvement by the great powers in Angola, the differences among the African nations are rising swiftly to the surface. Alliances that had been emerging are becoming strained and the meeting of the Organization of African Unity, which is due to convene Jan. 8, to discuss the Angola situation, will most likely be conducted in a supercharged atmosphere. [New York Times]