News stories from Sunday March 20, 1977
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- Joseph Califano, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, said that Federal Bureau of Investigation agents were going to be put "full blast" on Medicaid and Medicare fraud investigations until the department's own anti-fraud office is operating. [New York Times]
- The effects of a 3 percent cut in electric power is being tested by nearly all of California's major utilities, which are seeking ways to save fuel and reduce the need for plant expansion. The experiment is believed to be the first in the country. The idea behind it is that certain types of use, such as baseboard heating and incandescent lighting, would work just as well at a lower voltage. Lights would dim slightly, but the energy planners are guessing that consumers will not notice. [New York Times]
- The annual seal hunt is under way along the eastern Labrador coast and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and so is the recurrent controversy over a practice of centuries. Conservationists -- scorned by the local population as bleeding hearts and do-gooders -- are making their biggest effort to stop the hunt and arouse world opinion against it by harassing the sealers and bringing dozens of reporters in helicopters to record the slaughter. [New York Times]
- In India, returns from the sixth national election indicated that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was soundly defeated for her parliamentary seat and that her Congress Party was trading the opposition -- the Janata and the Congress for Democracy. But many parts of southern India, where the Congress Party was expected to do better, were still to be heard from. Sanjay Gandhi, the Prime Minister's son, was defeated in a rural constituency east of New Delhi.
The two villas in New Delhi from which Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay virtually ruled India were quiet. No crowds jammed the street or the nearby square as they had on many occasions to demonstrate support for Mrs. Gandhi. A policeman on duty laughed when he was told that Sanjay had lost the election.
[New York Times] - A House hearing will be held tomorrow on a far-reaching plan that would link the federal government with 400 professional and commercial groups that set standards for tens of thousands of widely used materials and products. The plan is opposed by four members of Congress who say it would harm consumers and small businessmen and stifle technical innovation. [New York Times]
- A legendary cache of gold bullion believed by some people to be buried near the top of Victorio Peak on the Army's White Sands Missile Reservation in New Mexico is being sought by a Florida treasure-hunting concern. The tale of buried treasure began in 1937 when the late Milton (Doc) Noss, a chiropodist, said he discovered a cavern filled with gold bullion and jewels and other precious articles. [New York Times]
- Americans would be barred from participating in the Arab boycott of Israel under controversial and long-delayed legislation that is expected to be considered by the House Foreign Relations Committee starting Monday. The influential Business Round Table and the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith recently worked out common "parameters" for the anti-boycott measure and then submitted them as principles on which most of their constituents agreed. These have been endorsed by the Carter administration. [New York Times]
- The use and abuse of offshore tax havens will be examined in the federal trial of Harry Margolis, starting tomorrow in Palo Alto, Calif. The tax lawyer is charged, among other things, with conspiring to defraud the government of $1.4 million in taxes. The government says that he and a number of other tax specialists twist the tax law in favor of wealthy clients. The case is the fruition of a 10-year government inquiry called Operation Haven. [New York Times]
- Nationwide municipal voting in France put the leftist opposition in control of more than three-quarters of the country's large cities. But in Paris, Jacques Chirac, the former Prime Minister and a neo-Gaullist, won the city's mayoral election. [New York Times]
- Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel acknowledged in a radio interview that a personal bank account maintained illegally in Washington four years after he ended his term as Ambassador there had been held jointly by himself and his wife. His wife, Lea, said last Tuesday that she had violated Israeli foreign-currency restrictions by keeping $2,000 in a Washington bank. Mr. Rabin, who is seeking re-election to Parliament, said "the responsibility was mine as much as hers, both formally and morally." [New York Times]
- At its meeting in Cairo, the Palestine National Council adopted a declaration calling for "an independent national state" on "national soil" and authorized Palestinian attendance at a peace conference on the Arab-Israeli issue. Western diplomats said that the declaration was more "constructive" than previous positions. [New York Times]