News stories from Saturday July 8, 1978
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- Friends and enemies of atomic power are challenging the federal agency responsible for regulating nuclear power. Supporters of atomic energy contend that the agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, has become too strict in its plant regulations. Critics say that It is too lax in the areas of health and safety. [New York Times]
- An F.B.I. informant's role in bombing a church in Alabama in the 1960's is under renewed investigation by state authorities. Investigators say that they have indications that the paid informant in the Ku Klux Klan might have been an agent provocateur who participated in and helped plan the bombing. The informant, Gary Rowe, has failed two polygraph tests. Four girls died in the bombing. [New York Times]
- The Bakke decision has caused division and confusion greater than the initial reaction to the Supreme Court's announcement indicated. Interviews with community, state and national leaders across the country, after they had time to study the decision, found that with some exceptions minority leaders took it as a setback for educational and economic equality. White leaders generally approved the decision. [New York Times]
- Two missions to Moscow were canceled by Washington to protest the trials of two Soviet dissidents, Anatoly Sharansky and Aleksandr Ginzburg. The cancellations were announced by Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. He said, however, that he would still go to Geneva on Wednesday for arms limitation talks with Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. [New York Times]
- Japan is disappointed in American leadership in the seven-nation economic meeting that will be held in Bonn on July 16-17. This was indicated in an interview with Kiichi Miyazawa, head of Japan's Economic Planning Agency, who is a powerful force in the country's economy. He said President Carter seems to be going to Bonn "empty handed," and expressed concern that Congress might turn protectionist after the elections this fall. [New York Times]
- Fire destroyed 1,000 art works in Rio de Janeiro's Museum of Modern Art, its entire collection of paintings, sculpture and engravings. [New York Times]
- The guns were silent in Beirut for the third day, except for an occasional explosion or burst of gunfire from snipers. People began to reappear in some of the more sheltered quarters of east Beirut as the fighting between Syrian peacekeeping forces and Christian militias died down. A team of the International Committee of the Red Cross established operations in the area. [New York Times]
- A new President of Italy was elected by an overwhelming majority, assuring continued formal cooperation between the governing Christian Democrats and the Communists. The new President, Sandro Pertini, an 81-year-old Socialist, received 832 votes of the 995 cast in the 1,011-member Electoral Assembly. [New York Times]