News stories from Saturday May 6, 1978
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- South Africa was condemned by the United Nations Security Council for its military raid into Angola. The Council called for the withdrawal of the troops and implicitly warned that a future attack could lead to sanctions. The condemnatory resolution was proposed jointly by seven members -- Bolivia, Gabon, Nigeria, India, Kuwait, Mauritius and Venezuela. [New York Times]
- Afghanistan's new leader insisted that he had no intention of moving the country into the Soviet Union's orbit. "We are not the satellite of anyone, as some say," Prime Minister Noor Mohammad Taraki said at a heavily guarded news conference in Kabul attended by two dozen foreign reporters. Mr. Taraki, a 61-year-old former journalist, speaking in fluent English, appealed for the friendship and aid of "all the world's nations, including the United States:" [New York Times]
- The Soviet Union and West Germany announced a 25-year economic agreement, affecting industry, technology and commerce. Leonid Brezhnev and Chancellor Helmut Schmidt signed the agreement in Bonn. The accord calls for the co-development of industrial plants and manufactured goods, of natural resources, including sea bed mining projects, the production of energy, and cooperation in banking, insurance, transportation, and service industry projects. The agreement has an initial 10-year phase, renewable for three five-year periods. The Soviet leader, who is on a state visit to Bonn, and Mr. Schmidt also issued a joint statement calling for disarmament measures. Mr. Schmidt hailed the economic agreement as a historic event, but West German newspapers and industrial leaders were not so enthusiastic. [New York Times]
- The Carter administration is seeking to apply the brakes on the soaring cost of medical care, which is putting serious strains on the economy and posing sharp policy problems for the administration. The total cost of health care, including hospital, doctors' and dentists' bills, drugs and other expenditures, will approach $200 billion this year, a nearly threefold increase since 1970, according to government estimates. Only food and construction generate more spending than the health industry, but there has been no proportionate improvement in health care in relation to the spending. [New York Times]
- Cities around the country are planning publicly financed convention centers providing meeting and exhibition space for visitors, They are considered as essential as garbage collection was in the 1890's and as popular as skyscrapers were in the 1920's. The convention center craze is playing in New York, Peoria, San Jose, Tulsa and Hartford, as well as San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta and Boston. Almost every city either has one, is building one, is expanding one, plans one or wishes for one. This is a cause of great cheer for the construction industry. [New York Times]