News stories from Sunday January 4, 1976

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

Whether the controversial 1,350-mile-an-hour Concorde should be allowed to provide flights to and from the United States will be discussed at a crucial hearing tomorrow in Washington at which Transportation Secretary William Coleman will preside. Mr. Coleman has promised a decision by Feb. 4. Meanwhile, the supersonic Concorde, built by British-French interests, will begin its first scheduled passenger service on Jan. 21 with flights between Paris and Rio de Janeiro and London and the Middle Eastern sheikdom of Bahrain. [New York Times] One of the longest shutdowns in domestic aviation history ended when striking stewards and stewardesses at National Airlines accepted a 46-month contract that provides substantial pay increases. National, which connects Florida with the Northeast, the West and London, announced that some flights would resume tomorrow and full service would gradually be resumed in about two weeks. [New York Times] The administrator of a government program that provides low-cost crime insurance in central city areas considers the program unsuccessful and will recommend that Congress scrap it. The federal crime insurance program was established in 1971 when it became apparent that private companies would not provide insurance at reasonable rates. Only a small number of federal policies have been sold, and J. Robert Hunter, acting federal insurance administrator, said: "This is the kind of thing you have to get out and sell, but nobody's going door to door." [New York Times] Recent government studies have found that members of the armed forces either deliberately or inadvertently fail to pay tens of millions of dollars in income taxes owed to their home states. Tax authorities suspect that non-compliance runs as high as 50 percent. Many military people, particularly officers, avoid state income taxes by maintaining legal residence in states that either have no income tax or exempt military pay. [New York Times] Six Southern states are attempting to ease overcrowding in prisons -- their prison population is growing faster than prisons can be built -- by releasing inmates early or by accelerating parole. Georgia is making the most extensive use of early release programs, and Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia are experimenting with some form of accelerated release or parole. [New York Times] The 1976 presidential campaign got underway in New York in 40 motel meeting rooms and political clubhouses across the state, where supporters of Senator Henry Jackson of Washington gathered to propose candidates for delegates to the Democratic vonvention. Meetings were held from Riverhead to Niagara Falls, and gave the Jackson backers a head start on most of the Senator's rivals. Terry O'Connell, Mr. Jackson's state coordinator, said: "The reason that we did it all in one day is, frankly, to demonstrate that we're around." [New York Times] A senior administration official said that the United States planned to ask the Soviet Union whether an ambiguous Pravda editorial, which has puzzled the White House and the State Department, meant that Moscow was now ready to help bring about an end of all foreign interference in Angola. Pravda proposed an end to "foreign armed intervention in Angola" -- which has also been proposed by the United States -- but in its overall context the editorial seemed to suggest that the Russians, and by extension, the Cubans, were not the ones guilty of "intervention." [New York Times]