News stories from Saturday May 22, 1976

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

Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter are expected to recoup from recent campaign setbacks in Tuesday's six primaries -- the most ever held on a single day. The primaries are grouped in two regions. In the South, in Tennessee, Kentucky and Arkansas, and in the Northwest, in Nevada, Oregon, and Idaho. A total of 176 Republican and 179 Democratic delegates are involved. The results in Oregon are expected to provide the biggest political reverberations. The state offers President Ford what may be his only chance to avert an embarrassing shutout and gives the Democrats who are struggling to stop Jimmy Carter a chance to demonstrate anew his vulnerability outside his own region. [New York Times] West Point officials have quietly modified confinement procedures and made it easier for cadets to consult lawyers in recent weeks, apparently in response to growing pressure over the administration of the honor code. The biggest change could come in the next academic year, however, if penalties other than expulsion are adopted for violation of the controversial code. A confidential survey of the code by officers and cadets, which was completed last June, recommended "discretion," or "a range of sanctions" for violations, according to Col. Harry Buckley, director of the Office of Military Leadership and chairman of the study group. [New York Times] A growing number of court actions, including a $2.3 million judgment against a Beverly Hills, Calif., cocktail lounge early this month, are holding bars and restaurants legally responsible for the customer who gets drunk, then gets into a car and injures or kills someone, or even himself. Bar owners say the court decisions have created for them a situation similar to the "malpractice crisis" facing doctors in many states. [New York Times] Carmine De Sapio, the former Tammany Hall leader, reportedly has been indicted on charges of perjury by a special grand jury. Persons who knew about the indictment said that the charges followed testimony given to the jury in an inquiry by Maurice Nadjari, the special state prosecutor, into who disclosed information about a vital wiretap being used to investigate a possible connection between high-ranking Democratic officials and judicial corruption. The sealed indictment was said to have been handed up late last week. Mr. De Sapio, who was convicted in 1969 on a federal charge of conspiring to commit bribery, was said to have made arrangements to surrender Monday at the offices of Mr. Nadjari. [New York Times] Morris Ernst, the lawyer who argued and won the landmark federal court case in 1933 that exonerated James Joyce's "Ulysses" from charges of obscenity, died in New York City, where he lived. He was 87 years old. Mr. Ernst was known for the diversity of his legal interests, but his major specialty was literary and artistic freedom. It was as a foe of official censorship that he argued the "Ulysses" case. Another one of his notable legal victories was the 1937 Supreme Court ruling that upheld the constitutionality of the Wagner Act as applied to the press and established the right of newsmen to organize, a right that eventually encompassed workers in all the news media. [New York Times] Leftist Moslems and rightist Christians in Beirut were divided on the offer by President Valery Giscard d'Estaing of France to send French troops to Lebanon as a peace-keeping force. The Moslems, in a statement issued by their leader, Kamal Jumblat, rejected the offer, while the radio of the Phalangists, the main organization of right-wing Christians, reported the offer with such satisfaction and urgency that it seemed as if the French were already on the way. Mr. Jumblat said that he was "astonished" by the French President's statement and he called for the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon so that they would not become "a justification for interventions by other foreign powers, French or otherwise." It is taken for granted in Beirut that neither France nor any other power can send a force to Lebanon on a peace-keeping mission if any of the major factions in the civil war objected. [New York Times] A peasant army organized recently by the Ethiopian government reportedly began trickling into Eritrea to fight the guerrillas who are demanding secession from Ethiopia. A vanguard, armed with rifles, swords and axes, was said to have been taken by bus and truck to the Eritrean border, where it began making forays, but there were no reports of clashes between the guerrillas, who are predominantly Moslem, and the peasant soldiers, who are Christian. It was estimated that nearly 50,000 men have been mobilized and that 20,000 to 25,000 have already been taken to a base camp in Adrigat, 15 miles from Eritrea. [New York Times]