News stories from Sunday May 29, 1977
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- A fire and blinding smoke in a huge nightclub in Kentucky killed at least 160 persons and injured 130. The toll may be considerably higher. Efforts to bring out bodies from the ruins were interrupted by rain. The fire broke out in the kitchen of one of the dining rooms of the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate, Ky., one of the largest nightclubs in the Middle West. The club's dining rooms had a total capacity of 5,000 people. Fire officials said 3,500 to 4,000 people were in the club when the fire started. [New York Times]
- Gasoline price and supply controls will be ended by the administration next fall. The Federal Energy Administrator, meanwhile, said his agency was making an effort to establish a more effective mechanism for enforcement of remaining price controls and for cleaning up a backlog of cases of alleged overcharging. This tendency to push in opposite directions -- decontrol and compliance -- shows an ambivalence that has plagued enforcement of oil price controls since they were instituted in 1973. [New York Times]
- Goddard Lieberson, president of Columbia Records, died of cancer at his home in Manhattan. He was 66 years old. Mr. Lieberson revolutionized the record industry with the introduction of long-playing records and was influential in the popularization of country and rock music. [New York Times]
- When this holiday weekend is over, ambulances will have been called upon to rescue about 20,000 people seriously injured in motor vehicle accidents and another 40,000 who were emergency cases, but some people will get much better initial care than others. In 1973, it was estimated that more than 60,000 Americans died each year as a result of emergency treatment that was "inadequate, inept or simply too late." Emergency medical systems have improved considerably since then, but deficiencies still exist that undoubtedly cost tens of thousands of lives. [New York Times]
- Some new ambassadors named by the Carter administration have been busy with a series of meetings with concerned businessmen. For 20 years, the non-profit New York-based organization called the Business Council for International Understanding -- backed by the country's leading corporations -- has been introducing American diplomats to what the council calls the hard realities of American corporate interests abroad. [New York Times]
- The confrontation between the Dutch government and South Moluccan extremists In the Netherlands who seized hostages a week ago continued, and a government spokesman said "we still don't know when it will end." The Moluccans have released the 106 children they held as hostages, but are still holding four teachers and 56 people on a train in the Assen area, where they rejected for the second time an appeal for the release of a pregnant woman. [New York Times]
- A potential revolt in Likud over the choice of Moshe Dayan as Israel's new foreign minister was thwarted by Menachem Begin. Mr. Begin temporarily deferred action on Mr. Dayan's nomination in an effort to placate a new political party that Likud hopes will help it form a broad-based majority coalition government. [New York Times]
- "No serious forward movement," Leonid Brezhnev said, had been achieved in Geneva toward a new treaty limiting strategic nuclear arms. As he has done before, Mr. Brezhnev blamed the United States for the impasse and said that the Carter administration was still seeking an advantage. His remarks were prerecorded and broadcast in France as prelude to his visit there June 21. [New York Times]