News stories from Saturday December 23, 1978

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

Guyana turned a blind eye to the mass immigration of the Rev. Jim Jones's followers and a deaf ear to warnings that their Jonestown camp was out of control. Interviews with Guyanese and United States officials and with private citizens and survivors of Jonestown indicate that the immigration of some 800 people in 1977, in violation of an agreement with Guyana, set the conditions for deterioration at Jonestown. [New York Times] Violent crime and thievery has tarnished the gilt-edged new prosperity of the South and West. The F.B.I.'s national crime reports tend to confirm what some criminologists have suspected: that the rate of serious crime has eased in much of the East and Middle West, but has risen in much of the Sun Belt and the West. [New York Times] Mysterious nuclear particles called neutrinos that have neither electric charge nor mass, but emit beams, can be used to send messages directly through the earth, according to scientists at Western Washington University, who have experimenting with them. The neutrino beams may provide the base for a new global communications system, they believe, and the leader of the group has speculated on the possible use of such a system by extraterrestrial civilizations. [New York Times] "A free trade zone" for international banking in New York City has been endorsed by the Carter administration, thus supporting an economic development priority of Governor Carey, who says that the zone would enable New York City to compete with overseas banking havens. One of the advantages to banks in a free trade zone would be the exemption of their international operations from state and city taxes. The Governor also says that the zone would create about 6,000 jobs. [New York Times] The U. S. and the Soviet Union did not reach agreement on a new strategic arms limitation agreement despite three days of negotiations in Geneva that the American side, at least, had expected finally to bring about an accord. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, speaking also on behalf of Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, said both sides had agreed in principle on a meeting between President Carter and Leonid Brezhnev, but when and where the meeting will take place still has to be worked out. [New York Times] China's Communist Party pledged at a plenary meeting to devote itself largely to economic development beginning next year and expanded its Politburo with the addition of four members associated with the party's moderate wing, the Chinese press agency, Hsinhua, said. The decisions appear to be victories for the party strategists grouped around Deputy Prime Minister Teng Hsiao-ping. [New York Times] An American oil executive was killed in Iran by gunmen, who also wounded an Iranian oil official in separate attacks near Ahwaz in the oil-producing center in southwest Iran. The American was Paul Grimm, 56, acting general manager for the Oil Services Company of Iran, the exploration and production unit of the Western oil consortium under contract to the state monopoly. The wounded Iranian was identified as Malek Bouroozardi, described as "a senior Iranian official." [New York Times] The chance of fighting between Chile and Argentina over the possession of islands near the Beagle Channel lessened with the acceptance by both sides of a papal envoy who will be attempt to ease the dispute. Pope John Paul II is sending Antonio Cardinal Samore to Buenos Aires and Santiago. [New York Times]