News stories from Saturday April 12, 1980
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- A vote against the Moscow Games was taken overwhelmingly at a meeting of the United States Olymnpic Committee in Colorado Springs. The vote of 1,604 to 797 was on a resolution calling for a boycott by American athletes unless President Carter determines by the end of May that the boycott is no longer in the national interest. [New York Times]
- President Carter has appealed to Western Europe for a general break in diplomatic relations with Iran by a "specific date" if the hostages are not released. In a television interview with West European television stations. Mr. Carter said the United States had urged the allies to make a common effort by a specified date to increase pressure on Iran. Administration officials would not divulge the deadline, set in messages sent to the allies on Tuesday. [New York Times]
- Power was restored in Puerto Rico after an outage that affected the the entire island. Officials could not explain the cause of the failure, but they backed away from earlier statements that the system had been sabotaged. The outage coincided with the kidnapping of a utility executive. [New York Times]
- Deterioration of highways has followed a general decline in gasoline tax revenues. Maintenance money is provided chiefly by gasoline taxes, a fund that has been shrinking as fuel consumption has declined and inflation has increased. In Pennsylvania, one of the states whose highways and bridges are crumbling for lack of care, potholes are a major political issue. [New York Times]
- Much of New England's water mains may have been contaminated with an industrial solvent suspected of causing cancer. Substantial concentrations of tetrachloroethylene, a solvent used to thin the resins that bond the mains' vinyl lining to the concrete shell, were discovered in two water systems last winter and further recent investigation has convinced health officials that all of the 1,000 miles of vinyl lined water pipes may be contaminated. [New York Times]
- Liberia's President was killed in a coup by army enlisted men who said they were reacting to "rampant corruption" in the country. President William Tolbert was replaced by a 28-year-old master sergeant, Samuel Doe, who said in a radio broadcast that the army would be in charge until a decision was made on a future government. A later announcement referred to Sergeant Doe as head of state, and he reportedly was being addressed as "Mr. President" by his associates. [New York Times]
- The transit system was running again as New York City's transit employees returned to work. But bitter disagreements continued over the cost of the settlement and the outlook for the 50 cent fare. Some dissident union leaders said they were dissatisfied with the settlement and predicted that the membership would reject it in a mail ballot expected to take more than two weeks.
Mayor Koch warned municipal unions that they could not expect a wage settlement similar to the transit workers'. Mr. Koch, who called the transit settlement excessive when it was announced and criticized Governor Carey's "unilateral" role in reaching it, said: "I believe that kind of settlement would put us into bankruptcy." Victor Gotbaum, head of the largest municipal union, said in response that he expected the city employees' contract to be "related" to the transit workers'. "It's going to be in the same ballpark," he said.
[New York Times]