News stories from Sunday January 8, 1978

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

Frequent rain and snow since late fall in the Far West appears to have broken the drought that afflicted an area from eastern Washington to central California. Farmers are planning near-normal plantings in the spring and some ski resorts have had snow for the first time in two years. Water rationing is expected to be eased in northern California, and Washington and Oregon, where the drought was not so severe as in California, indicated that their hydroelectric power systems are no longer threatened. [New York Times] A decision against a computer to monitor taxpayers, opposed as a threat to privacy and civil liberties, has been made by the Carter administration. The $850 million earmarked for the controversial computer will go instead to improve the existing data processing system of the I.R.S. [New York Times] An effort to break the natural gas pricing impasse will be undertaken by Senator Henry Jackson, Democrat of Washington, according to Energy Secretary James Schlesinger. He indicated that the basis for discussion would be the compromise formula to which some key legislators agreed before Christmas, but which Mr. Jackson, chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, opposed at that time. [New York Times] Central bankers abroad seem to be increasingly skeptical about the ability of the United States to stop the dollar's steep decline. As the world's central bankers gathered in Basel, Switzerland, for their monthly meeting at the Bank for International Settlements, the belief is apparently spreading that the American government now hopes -- through the intervention measures announced in Washington last week -- to talk the dollar up just as it earlier appeared to talk it down. In this view, by announcing the intention to draw on a $21 billion foreign currency swap network, supplemented by a new agreement of unspecified size with West Germany and its own reserves, the United States can improve confidence enough so that the measures will need to be little used. Under the swaps, central bankers make available to each other, on relatively short-term basis, currencies with which to support their monies in the open market. [New York Times] Radio City Music Hall might be saved despite its huge deficits, said Lt. Gov. Mary Anne Krupsak. She announced the formation of a "rescue committee," including representatives of government, business, labor and cultural groups. After a meeting with those representatives she indicated that she would hold further meetings Tuesday in Albany to formally institute the proposals. [New York Times] J. Paul Getty posthumously may spend more on art than anyone in history. When he died in 1976 he bequeathed about $710 million, the bulk of his estate, to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, Calif. His trustees have begun to decide how the money will be spent, in a way, they say, that will not disrupt world art markets. At their disposal, when probate is completed, is expected to be an annual income of $50 million from an endowment that will total about $845 million with other gifts from Mr. Getty. The Getty museum's endowment will be almost six times that of the nation's richest museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. [New York Times] Tongsun Park's American lawyer said that he would recommend to his client and to the South Korean government that Mr. Park testify before joint closed-door sessions of the three congressional committees investigating charges that South Korean agents attempted to bribe United States officials. William Hundley, a Washington lawyer, is in Seoul to help Mr. Park prepare for an interrogation by the Department of Justice. [New York Times] Israel's cabinet rejected plans for establishing new settlements in Israeli-occupied areas of Sinai, a few days before Israeli-Egyptian negotiations are to start. But the cabinet Secretary, Aryeh Naor, said ministers had agreed to extend agricultural lands and to encourage additional settlers to move to existing Israeli communities in northern Sinai and at the southern tip of the Sinai on the Red Sea. It also was reported that 30 members of the ultra-nationalist Gush Emunim, or Faith bloc, had moved into Israeli-occupied Arab lands near Shiloh on the West Bank to form the nucleus of a controversial new Israeli settlement. [New York Times] The Carter administration is optimistic about the possibility that Israel and Egypt can reach agreement on a set of principles guiding further Middle East negotiation when their political talks begin in Jerusalem on Jan. 16. President Carter said, "I don't know of any differences" over the principles between President Anwar Sadat and Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Mr. Carter's national security adviser, said there was "an identity of views" between Mr. Sadat and Mr. Begin "over the broad outlines of an eventual accommodation, and particularly an identity of views regarding the general approach toward a negotiating process." [New York Times]