News stories from Sunday July 20, 1975

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

The Apollo and Soyuz spaceships circled the earth separately on their sixth day in space. The Apollo astronauts, who will stay in space until Thursday, used their ship as a scientific observatory, while the Soyuz crew prepared to land in Central Asia tomorrow at 6:51 A.M., Eastern daylight time. The landing will be televised in the United States and the Soviet Union. [New York Times] Four cancer research centers, working with federal grants, have been unable to confirm assertions that the contraband drug laetrile can cure cancer or inhibit malignant growths, according to previously undisclosed findings of animal studies. The researchers said in interviews that the findings had provided no scientific justification for testing laetrile as a possible cancer therapy. [New York Times] The conventional American jury of 12 men and women who must either reach a unanimous verdict or no verdict at all is becoming less relied on in the judicial system. Across the country the jury of 12 is being replaced with smaller juries, sometimes with the concept of majority rule, or sometimes with both. The number of persons making up the smaller jury is increasingly eight, and often as few as six, and the verdict, mostly in civil cases, is being decided more and more by a vote in which the majority prevails. The new juries have become controversial. [New York Times] Half a million people in the heart of Paris watched the end of the three-week-long Tour de France bicycle race, the first time that the final leg was ridden inside urban Paris. President Valery Giscard d'Estaing was at the finish line. The racers made 27 laps between the Arch of Triumph and the Louvre, and when it was over, a new national hero, Bernard Thevenet, got the winner's yellow jersey and two kisses from President Giscard d'Estaing. It was the first time in eight years that a Frenchman had won the race. [New York Times] King Khalid of Saudi Arabia, ending a five-day state visit to Egypt, formally endorsed Egypt's threat to block renewal of the mandate of United Nations forces in Sinai unless there was tangible progress toward a settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The mandate expires Thursday. In a joint communique, Egypt and Saudi Arabia endorsed the appeal by 40 Moslem countries and organizations for the expulsion of Israel from the United Nations. King Khalid also pledged $600 million in credits to the Egyptian Central Bank. [New York Times] An official of Iran's national airline, Iran Air, said in Teheran that the proposed $300 million financial aid package to Pan American World Airways had been turned down. He rejected "any reappraisal," indicating that the negotiations that began last September had fallen through completely. [New York Times] Jose Lopez Rega, the controversial right-wing strongman of the Argentine government, left the country Saturday night in apparent exile as a result of a presidential palace intrigue involving cabinet ministers and the armed forces. Well-informed sources, including a cabinet minister, said his departure would soon result either in the resignation of President Isabel Martinez de Peron, or a government in which she would be little more than a figurehead. [New York Times]