News stories from Sunday May 15, 1977

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

The government's entire intelligence network might be concentrated under a single authority known as "director of National Intelligence." The Senate Intelligence Committee has completed an inquiry that could reshape the intelligence community and set the pattern of congressional oversight for years to come. The committee is considering a plan to give a director of National Intelligence control of the National Security Agency and other intelligence groups now under the jurisdiction of the Defense Department. [New York Times] The money and capital markets seem to believe that interest rates are headed higher this spring and summer, but the specialists also believe that the relatively moderate amount of financing to be done in that period can easily be absorbed. There is an ample supply of investment funds. If the Federal Reserve pauses in its efforts to encourage higher short-term interest rates -- many traders thought it had on Friday -- the supply-demand balance should dip toward higher prices. [New York Times] New Jersey is expected to become one of the nation's major users of nuclear energy in the next 15 years. The first unit of one of the world's largest nuclear generating plants will go into operation in about three weeks at Hancock's Bridge, near Salem. Eight more units are scheduled to go into operation at Hancock's Bridge and elsewhere in the state at intervals in the next decade and a half. [New York Times] Crop failures are not likely to bring about a food crisis this year in any major part of the world for the first time in five years. There will be no serious hunger problem, food officials and agricultural experts say, because worldwide wheat supplies are the largest ever recorded and, with other grains, are expected to increase this year. [New York Times] Vaccination against measles in early infancy may be a key to the persistent outbreaks of measles among older children. The disease is still a national health threat despite the vaccines introduced 14 years ago. The efficacy and the duration of protection of the vaccine when it is administered under certain conditions, especially to a child under the age of one year, is being questioned. [New York Times] Enough favorable signs have been detected by the Carter administration to keep up its diplomatic efforts tor a Middle East settlement, but not enough to make it seem that a solution can be easily achieved. The main question that the White House and the State Department will soon have to deal with, according to administration officials, will be whether the largely intangible "atmospheric" indicators would warrant proceeding further, with plans for a Geneva meeting on the Middle East and an all-out involvement in drafting a peace accord. This might be decided in a few weeks after President Carter meets with the next Israeli Prime Minister. [New York Times] Unemployment may be their biggest problem at home, but many European companies, some with government ties, are eliminating employment opportunities for compatriots through automation and the setting up of plants abroad. This was the principal finding of a survey of major business investments and acquisitions around the world by the Conference Board, a private research group. [New York Times] Foreign companies, especially from Canada, are moving into New York, New Jersey and other declining industrial areas of the Northeast. In some areas they are offsetting a decline or providing a new base of industry with potential for expansion, according to the Conference Board. The rate of foreign investment, said David Bauer, a Conference Board economist, is still a trickle compared with the outflow of industry from the region "but it is providing an important buffer. [New York Times] Several thousand descendants of 18th and 19th century Scottish emigrants, in Scotland for the International Gathering of the Clans, found the affair was not to everybody's liking. Social critics pointed out that clan chiefs and landlords spurred emigration by evicting tenants so that they could use more land to raise sheep. [New York Times] Bella Abzug won the New York City mayoral nomination of the Democratic Party's "reform" faction. At the convention of the New Democratic Party Coalition in Manhattan, supporters of Representative Edward Koch prevented Mrs. Abzug in the first three ballots from getting the 60 percent of the vote needed for nomination, but on the fourth ballot she polled 61.9 percent to 32.2 for Mr. Koch. [New York Times]