News stories from Sunday March 27, 1977
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- More than 550 of the 643 people aboard two 747 jumbo jets were believed to have been killed when the planes collided and burst into flames on a foggy airport runway in the Canary Islands. It was the worst disaster in aviation history. The planes were a Pan American charter flight from the United States and a KLM Royal Dutch Airlines jet carrying tourists from the Netherlands.
A passenger on the Pan Am 747 that collided with the other 747 said that he had been thrown to the runway by an explosion but had somehow escaped injury. James Naik of Cupertino, Calif., said that the passengers were to have started a cruise from the Canary Islands to Casablanca, Sicily and Athens. The tour had been organized by his company, the Royal Cruise Lines of San Francisco, of which he is the controller.
Most of the 378 passengers who boarded the Pan Am 747 in Los Angeles were from that city, but others came from elsewhere on the West Coast and a few were from Hawaii, a spokesman for Royal Cruise Lines said. "They were all veteran travelers who were taking this trip because it was different than most cruises," he said. The booking agent would not give the names of the passengers.
[New York Times] - Bruno Hauptmann made a detailed claim of innocence in the 1932 kidnap-murder of Charles Lindbergh, Jr. in a long letter to his mother, which she did not receive, and which was suppressed for years. The letter was made public today. It had been among the papers of the late Col. Mark Kimberling, warden of Trenton State Prison, and later was kept by Colonel Kimberling's wife until she died. [New York Times]
- Employment prospects may brighten in the next few months. A national survey of 5,000 business executives made quarterly by Manpower Inc., a large employment agency, found that hiring intentions for the second quarter were at their highest level in more than a year. About one-third of the employers polled said they planned to hire more workers. The construction industry and durable goods manufacturers are expected to be among the principal sources of the new jobs. [New York Times]
- Before he announced his decision last week to increase dairy prices, President Carter had been informed by the Agriculture Department that it would cost the public about $925 million to give the dairy producers $1 billion in additional income. It was the President's opinion, a principal aide said, that the public would tolerate the higher dairy prices if they thought they were fair and equally shared. [New York Times]
- The biggest wheat surplus in almost two decades is expected to result from the harvest this spring in the winter wheat belt that runs from Ohio to Washington state. But storage space is lacking. Railroad and elevator officials in Kansas City, Mo., the principal receiving point for winter wheat, are planning an embargo when the harvest starts in mid-May. "Unless China starts scooping up grain pretty soon or some disaster befalls the wheat belt before June," a Kansas City trader said, "we will have unprecedented bottlenecks here and in lesser terminals." [New York Times]
- Possible tax violations by two former Democratic Congressmen, Richard Hanna of California and Cornelius Gallagher of New Jersey, have become the focus of the Justice Department's investigation into alleged influence-buying activities by agents of the South Korean government, according to sources close to the inquiry. The Justice Department is hoping to put enough pressure on the two men to persuade them to testify against current Congressmen who have been linked to the Korean lobby. [New York Times]
- A jury acquitted Lewis "17X" Dupree of murdering police officer Philip Cardillo in a Harlem mosque in 1972. It was Mr. Dupree's second trial on the charge. The first ended in a mistrial last November, with the jury split 10 to 2 in favor of conviction. That trial was one of the longest and most costly in the history of New York state. The acquittal verdict was reached after five days of deliberations. [New York Times]
- Secretary of State Cyrus Vance spent his first day in Moscow with advisers for what he called a "fine-tuning" of the American proposals for talks on strategic arms limitation that he will begin tomorrow with Soviet leaders. He is expected to present the Russians with at least two options: a substantial reduction in the ceiling agreed to at Vladivostok in November 1974, or a new agreement that would set aside for later negotiations disputed new weapons systems such as the American cruise missile and Soviet long-range bomber. [New York Times]
- Jagjivan Ram, after showing an initial aloofness, joined the cabinet of Prime Minister Morarji Desai of India. He made it clear that he had been persuaded to join by Jaya Prakash Narayen, regarded as the spiritual leader of the country's governing alliance. [New York Times]