News stories from Sunday June 11, 1978

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

A mobile missile-launching system's development has been held back by the administration because it is worried about costs and the system's ultimate effectiveness. It has concluded that the weapon's ability to survive an attack is doubtful and that further studies are needed before full-scale development proceeds. [New York Times] Environmentalists fear anti-inflation efforts may erode clean air and water standards and health safeguards in the fight against inflation and that there have been signals from Carter administration officials that this will happen. A number of officials deny it. [New York Times] The nation's major spaceport at Cape Canaveral is building, converting and renovating for a new era when it will operate more like an airport. Unlike previous space vehicles, the Kennedy Space Center's space shuttles are designed to be reusable. They will be launched like a rocket, orbit the earth like a spacecraft and return to runway landings like a giant glider. Test flights will start in 1979. [New York Times] Strip-mining operations have not been seriously affected by strict enforcement of environmental laws that took effect on May 6 despite the industry's predictions to the contrary. The protection regulations of the Federal Surface Mining and Regulations Act have been vigorously applied by an understaffed inspection force. [New York Times] The union's survival is at stake after the 14-month strike at the Adolph Coors Company in Golden, Colo., the nation's fifth largest brewer. The first motions were argued last week at a hearing on the company's petition to the National Labor Relations Board to decertify Brewery Workers Local 366 as the bargaining agent for Coors' production and maintenance employees. [New York Times] Charges of improprieties in police hiring and favoritism in testing of minority applicants by the Dayton Civil Service Board will be investigated by the United Civil Service Commission starting tomorrow. The inquiry will focus on charges of civil service abuse made by a former civil service examiner while being questioned in connection with a robbery-slaying. [New York Times] Six telescopes are combined in a revolutionary astronomical instrument near completion on Mount Hopkins, a 8,500-foot peak near Tucson, Ariz. The instrument, which uses lasers to keep its telescopes aligned and computers to process its observations, is looked on by some astronomers as the prototype of a "next generation" telescope, now under study, that would be far more powerful than any in existence. [New York Times] Moscow sharpened its attacks on the Carter administration, calling the President's speech last Wednesday on Soviet-American relations "a series of categorical demands." and said that the United States was "working up anti-Soviet hysteria." [New York Times] Prime Minister Raymond Barre is confidently going ahead with a harsh economic adjustment plan for France despite predictions of a social upheaval voiced after the left lost elections in March that it had expected to win and increasing hostility from unions. His program, which is intended to open the economy to competition at home and from abroad, has recently brought a spurt in inflation and some major bankruptcies. [New York Times] President Anwar Sadat's moves against his critics have rapidly muted formal political opposition in Egypt, but they have made him visibly defensive about the implications. While his political position at home has been strengthened, his image abroad as a statesman above petty political battles has been damaged. [New York Times] Israel's withdrawal plans for the last of its troops in southern Lebanon have caused confusion in Jerusalem. The commander of the United Nations peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon said that the Israelis intended to "hand over" the sensitive border area that they occupied in March to rightist Lebanese Christian militiamen rather than United Nations troops. But a spokesman for Defense Minister Ezer Weizman said that "so far as I know we're going to return to UNIFIL," the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. [New York Times] The issue of secrecy in government is under intensive parliamentary scrutiny in Canada following a court case involving the stringent Official Secrets Act. The simmering issue came to a boil when a prison term was given to a communications engineer who had been charged with possessing and mishandling classified documents related to his work for NATO. [New York Times]