News stories from Sunday January 22, 1978
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- Congress is not likely to approve much more than half of the revenue-raising tax revisions proposed by President Carter, said Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill in a television interview, "I would say that if the President gets through 60 percent of the reforms in the House, he does pretty well," Mr. O'Neill said. He doubted that more than 50 percent of the reforms would be passed by the Senate. Business and financial leaders, meanwhile, criticized Mr. Carter's tax proposals for business, with some expressing outright hostility. They seemed particularly unhappy about the possibility of having corporate tax bills actually go up when the tax reductions and revisions were combined with the recent increase in Social Security costs. [New York Times]
- Medical research may be set back by India's ban on the export of rhesus monkeys after April 1. India banned the sale of the monkeys following reports in the Indian press that they were also being used in military weapons testing in the United States, contrary to an agreement with India. Last year, American scientists used 12,000 rhesus monkeys in experiments. Nearly all were from India. [New York Times]
- Several large banks in Miami and New York are being investigated for alleged violations of the Bank Secrecy Act which in the past year has been actively enforced by the Treasury Department for the first time since its enactment in 1970. The act, officially titled the "Currency and Foreign Transactions Reporting Act," requires banks and other financial institutions to report to the I.R.S. detailed information on each unusual cash transaction over $10,000. At the time of its enactment it was hailed as a major weapon against white-collar crime. In addition to the bank investigations, the government, under congressional prodding, has within the last year brought a number of indictments and levied some large civil fines under the act. [New York Times]
- The United States intelligence community has been reorganized extensively by the administration. The changes place tighter restrictions on clandestine operations and shift some responsibilities in the vast intelligence bureaucracy. Top administration officials said the reorganization, already in effect in some areas, would be announced Tuesday by President Carter in an Executive Order. Some government officials experienced in counterespionage said the new procedures, far stricter than any previous regulations required, were foolish, inflexible and unrealistic. [New York Times]
- Jurisdictional "turfing," involving disputes between government departments over control of overlapping programs, has apparently intensified in the year-old Carter administration. There are two major reasons: The President has given his cabinet members increased authority over their departments, and his emphasis on reorganizing the government has opened the way for new debates over how best to consolidate overlapping jurisdictions. [New York Times]
- Israel's cabinet agreed unanimously to postpone sending a delegation back to Cairo despite efforts by the United States to persuade the government to resume the talks. Prime Minister Menachem Begin said in a statement to reporters that Egypt had begun "a campaign of grave vilification against the state and government of Israel." Egypt had also made demands "that are totally unacceptable to Israel," Mr. Begin said. [New York Times]
- Egypt and Israel were expected by Secretary of State Cyrus Vance to resume negotiations within a week or 10 days. The talks would take place either directly between Egyptian and Israeli officials in Cairo or Jerusalem or through a kind of "shuttle" mediation by Alfred Atherton, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs. Mr. Vance also was asked by President Anwar Sadat to inform President Carter of Egypt's wish to purchase large amounts of American arms, matching the arms commitment to Israel. [New York Times]
- Combat planes may be sold to Egypt under a proposal to the White House by officials involved in interagency planning for arms sales. The officials said the administration is leaning toward allowing Egypt to purchase a still to be determined number of F-5E fighter planes this year. [New York Times]