News stories from Sunday July 25, 1976

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

The 30 Mississippi delegates to the Republican National Convention, torn between President Ford and Ronald Reagan, who had put heavy pressure on them, decided not to endorse either candidate until the convention opens next month in Kansas City, Mo. The delegates, at a caucus in Jackson, also voted to reaffirm the unit-rule tradition under which all 30 of the state's votes would be cast for one of the presidential candidates. But the leader of President Ford's campaign said he still might not observe the rule. [New York Times] New York delegates to the Republican National Convention are still seeking favors from the Ford administration in exchange for their support of President Ford and it seems that their demands are increasing despite a presidential order against vote-trading by all delegates. "It's becoming bizarre," said Richard Rosenbaum, the Republican state chairman and Mr. Ford's chief delegate scout in the state. [New York Times] The kink in Viking 1's soil-scoop arm has been straightened out and the lander will start gathering soil samples on Mars on schedule Wednesday. Responding to a new set of commands radioed from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, the lander extended the arm 14 inches, farther than it had done before, and released a metal pin that was jamming some of its operations. The arm then regained its full maneuverability. [New York Times] Questions have been raised about the safety of the X-ray technique called mammography -- which is used to detect breast cancer -- particularly for women aged 35 to 50 who, some specialists believe, could develop cancer from radiation. The National Cancer Institute has been advised by scientific consultants that routine screening of women in that age group be stopped unless there are symptoms of the disease. But for women over 50, who are most susceptible to breast cancer, the detection benefits of a routine X-ray examination are believed to outweigh the risk of cancer from X-ray screening. [New York Times] "Blacks are saying: 'Detroit's ours now. Let's rebuild it.'" Cornelius Watts, a well known black resident of Detroit, said. That feeling is part of a fundamental change in the city. In the last two or three years, Detroit "tipped": its population became majority black, making it the city with the biggest black population in the country. Detroit still has most of its historic ethnic diversity, but blacks dominate. In numbers, depending on whose estimate is accepted, they make up 52 to 60 percent of Detroit's population. Finance and industry are still white-controlled, but blacks have assumed much of the city's political leadership. [New York Times] A new cease-fire agreement in Lebanon failed to take hold -- it was to have become effective at 7 A.M. -- when troops of an Arab peace-keeping force were attacked by shells and machine-gun fire as they tried to expand the neutral zone between right-wing Christian and leftist Moslem forces. The relentless rightist siege of the Palestinian camp at Tell Zaatar also made the cease-fire unworkable. Attempts to rescue the women, children and elderly men who were believed to have been trapped when an underground shelter there collapsed were hampered by heavy shelling. It was reported that only 20 children had been brought out. As many as 500 people were reported trapped. [New York Times]