News stories from Sunday July 3, 1977

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

Permission from the White House to give shelter in the United States to 15,000 stranded Indochinese who fled Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos is being sought by the State Department. Officials said the White House was sympathetic to the urgent request, but had not made a response, apparently in deference to influential members of Congress who oppose further entry of Indochinese without specific legislation. The Attorney General could use his emergency parole authority to admit the refugees, but in practice this is not done without the consent of Senate and House leaders. [New York Times] Major setbacks were suffered by the women's rights movement and the civil rights groups fighting racial discrimination in the year just completed by the Supreme Court. Both movements had their worst defeats in several years, but the Court expanded the reach of the First Amendment's free speech guarantee and gave additional constitutional protection to the rights of aliens and illegitimate children. [New York Times] Buddy Cochran, a 30-year-old mechanic from Americus, Ga., was held on $190,000 bail after his sports car ran into a crowd at a Ku Klux Klan rally at Plains, Ga., Saturday night. About 30 persons were injured. [New York Times] The nation's No. 1 sulfur dioxide polluter, the Tennessee Valley Authority, is now facing citizen suits in addition to a long-standing federal suit seeking to prevent the T.V.A. from "emitting sulfur oxides in violation of state emission limitations." The Environmental Protection Agency, whose legal battle has been ineffective, is considering joining citizen suits filed in federal courts in six cities in Tennessee, Alabama and Kentucky. [New York Times] Federal aid programs shortchange New York and other states of the Northeast and Middle West, according to a study released by a coalition of Congressmen from them. It showed that aid is based on raw per-capita income figures, without adjustment for higher living costs and taxes in these states and that New York ranked behind several Southern states. [New York Times] Foreign businesses are giving the Southern economy an increasingly international tone. Two of the world's largest foreign banks have opened offices in Atlanta, planning has begun for linking the Deep South and European markets by air, Georgia has opened its third overseas trade office, and its Governor has completed his sixth trip abroad in search of more industry. [New York Times] The long-stalled Geneva trade negotiations might be revived by President Carter's special trade negotiator, Robert Strauss, who will visit the European Common Market Commission in Brussels on July 12. His visit will start an intensive drive by the Carter administration to insure that Western leaders live up to their repeated promise to make "substantial progress" in the negotiations despite protectionist pressures here and abroad. [New York Times] The oil price split in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries ended with the announcement by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates of a 5 percent price Increase for their oil. The decision had been expected since nine OPEC members announced last week they were canceling a 5 percent increase planned for July 1. The increase by Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, effective July 1, removes a threat to OPEC's unity. [New York Times] Moscow sharpened its criticism of President Carter's decision to develop the cruise missile in preference to the B-1 bomber. An article in Pravda, the official Communist Party newspaper, accusing the United States of "beginning a new round of the arms race," indicated the alarm with which Moscow regards the prospective deployment of the missile. [New York Times] A new constitution for Canada that would modify the country's political institutions and possibly improve relations between its French-speaking and English-speaking people seems to be gaining support all over Canada in response to the campaign in Quebec for independence. [New York Times] Turkey's Prime Minister, Bulent Ecevit, resigned when his 10-day-old center-left government was defeated in its first parliamentary vote of confidence by a coalition of rightist parties, 229 votes to 217. The return of a shaky right-wing coalition under Suleyman Demirel, a former Prime Minister, seemed probable. [New York Times]