News stories from Sunday August 9, 1981

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

Supportive action for the controllers was continued with an announcement by the Canadian Air Traffic Controllers Association that its members would no longer handle non-emergency flights to and from the United States because of what the union called unsafe conditions. At an emergency meeting in Ottawa, the union announced that beginning at 7 A.M. Monday scores of flights to or from the United States would not be processed because of what the union said were nine instances of "evasive action" taken by aircraft in Canadian airspace. Two controllers' unions in France announced that as of noon today, no flights to the United States would be cleared for departure. [New York Times] The air traffic controllers probably had some legitimate grievances, Secretary of Transportation Drew Lewis said in a television interview, but he said he would not negotiate with the controllers' union leader even if he ended the strike. A Transportation Department spokesman said later that when Mr. Lewis said the controllers had legitimate concerns, he was referring to a broad range of problems, including a need for better communication with employees. He said the government attempted to deal with these problems in the contract controllers had rejected. [New York Times] Full price decontrol of natural gas produced in the United States has unanimously been recommended by President Reagan's energy advisors. It would raise consumer prices much more sharply than under the partial decontrol now taking effect. The recommendation by the cabinet Council on Natural Resources and the Environment calls for phasing out controls on all natural gas by Jan. 1, 1985, according to a senior administration official. [New York Times] A new G.I. education bill that would benefit young men recruited into the ground combat divisions of the military services is planned by the Reagan administration. Lawrence Korb, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower, said in a discussion of the administration's plans to increase armed services enlistments that the G.I. Bill that is to be sent to Congress early next year would be intended to attract young men into the Army and Marine Corps rather than the Navy and Air Force. [New York Times] Four forest fires were out of control in northern California, consuming 8,500 acres of parched trees and brush, including 5,000 acres in Mendocino County and part of the Sequoia National Forest. Homes were threatened in the Sonora area, southeast of Sacramento. A fire swept across 1,200 acres of the Salmon National Forest in northeastern Idaho. [New York Times] Gypsy moths feasted in record numbers in the Northeast this year, eating the leaves from nine million acres of trees from Maine to Maryland, according to estimates by foresters. That acreage is twice the amount defoliated last year, they said. Next year might be as bad or even worse. [New York Times] Offspring from frozen mouse embryos in the embryo bank of the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Me., will be thawed and gestated in foster mothers whenever they are needed for research, possibly a hundred years from now. There were many reasons relating to science, cost, safety and convenience for establishing the bank, which contains about 100,000 embryos. Embryos thawed after eight years at minus 196 degrees centigrade have grown into normal mice. [New York Times] One of the toughest Soviet attacks on the Reagan administration followed the report over the weekend that the United States would proceed with the full production of neutron weapons. Tass, the official Soviet news agency, said the American move was "a step designed to bring the world closer to nuclear catastrophe," and that the Soviet Union would respond in the manner required by its own security interests. [New York Times] West Germany responded cautiously to the Reagan administration's plans to produce neutron weapons. A government spokesman said that the decision was an "exclusively American affair." Influential members of Chancellor Helmut Schmidt's Social Democratic Party who believe that the administration is not taking disarmament efforts seriously indicated there would be increased resistance to support of its armaments policy. [New York Times]