News stories from Saturday January 28, 1978
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- President Carter has invited President Anwar Sadat to Washington next weekend for detailed discussions of the next steps in the Middle East negotiations. Administration officials said that Mr. Carter, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and others wanted to have a long and relaxed series of talks with Mr. Sadat to determine whether Egypt was willing to proceed with drawn-out and intricate negotiations. Mr. Sadat is expected to arrive Friday and go immediately to Camp David, where the talks will be held. [New York Times]
- Another examination of atmospheric data taken in northern Canada from the track of a disintegrating Soviet satellite with a nuclear power package aboard confirms a first finding by a Canadian-American search team that there may have been emitted radiation. That finding had been repudiated when it was thought it had been due to a mechanical error of detection instruments. The new examination also turned up a second source of radioactive contamination that is presumed, like the first, to be emanating from fragments of the space vehicle. The first source was placed at Baker Lake. The second has been traced to Fort Reliance on the eastern tip of Great Slave Lake.
The failing Soviet satellite was kept in view at all times by computers of the North American Air Defense Command within the 9,500-foot-high granite Cheyenne Mountain in the Colorado Rockies. The staff knew that the vehicle was unstable, losing altitude and a potential hazard. But in the final 18 hours they could still not be sure where the satellite would re-enter earth's atmosphere. Despite the center's technological virtuosity, "we're practicing an imperfect art," said Capt. David Tohlen of the Air Force, the chief orbital analyst, who babysat with the satellite in its final hours.
[New York Times] - Federal prosecutors were given strong evidence by a former aide of Representative Daniel Flood, Democrat of Pennsylvania, that linked another Pennsylvania Democratic Congressman, Joshua Eilberg, to improper manipulation of federal aid, sources close to the investigation said. Because the evidence was obtained independently of an investigation that David Marston, the former United States Attorney in Philadelphia, had begun in the same case, it suggests that Mr. Eilberg might have become the subject of a federal investigation even if Mr. Marston had not started an inquiry. [New York Times]
- A preliminary injunction against the government's auction Tuesday in New York of oil drilling rights in the Georges Bank fishing grounds in the North Atlantic was issued by Judge Arthur Garrity of Federal District Court in Boston. He ruled in favor of Massachusetts and a coalition of environmental and commercial fishing groups which sought to delay the sale until stricter environmental safeguards were enacted. The government and 11 oil concerns are expected to appeal on Monday. [New York Times]