News stories from Saturday February 18, 1978
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- Fearing that intervention would only prolong the strife, the Carter administration decided to postpone until next week any of several plans to compel an end to the 75-day coal strike. Secretary of Labor Ray Marshall said that no basis existed for further efforts to bring together the United Mine Workers and the Bituminous Coal Operators Association for renewed bargaining. Mr. Marshall added: "As we have emphasized all along, none of the options available to us is preferable to a negotiated settlement. But we believe that all of the options are preferable to a prolonged stalemate." [New York Times]
- The Justice Department has received evidence indicating that Representative Daniel Flood may have attempted to improperly manipulate several federally funded projects, including a $55 million addition to Philadelphia's Hahnemann Hospital, for the benefit of two Pennsylvania contractors who are his political supporters, sources familiar with the investigation said. The sources said that the evidence links Mr. Flood to Edward Dixon and John Dixon who are brothers. The investigators are trying to find out whether the Dixons have had a concealed connection with a company that holds a construction management contract for the Hahnemann project. [New York Times]
- Terrorists killed the editor of Al Ahram, Egypt's principal newspaper, in the lobby of the Nicosia Hilton Hotel in Cyprus. Two men, one believed to be a Palestinian and the other an Iraqi, shot Youssef el-Sebai, the editor, then took about 30 hostages to the airport to give them leverage in bargaining for a flight out of the country. They left behind more than half the hostages when they flew out of the country in a Cyprus Airways jet that later landed in the tiny African state of Djibouti. [New York Times]
- The Belfast police arrested 20 Irish Republican Army suspects in the bombing of a crowded restaurant Friday night in which 12 people were killed. Gerry Adams, a former commander of a Provisional I.R.A. brigade in Belfast, was among those arrested; he had been released from prison last fall. On Friday, members of the army's Provisional wing also shot down a helicopter, killing the commander of a British Army unit stationed in Armagh. [New York Times]
- Leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization, tempering their passionate desire to destroy Israel, have come with most of their followers to accept the idea of a miniature Palestine that would be built on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This state would be born of diplomacy, not war. But this consensus is unstable, a team of New York Times reporters has found. [New York Times]