News stories from Saturday April 22, 1978

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

Aldo Moro's fate remained unknown. The deadline set by Red Brigades terrorists for the execution of the former Prime Minister of Italy passed with no word from his kidnappers. Earlier Pope Paul VI made a dramatic appeal for Mr. Moro's life. The terrorists had not been in touch with Caritas, the Catholic welfare organization, which had asked them in a public appeal to telephone its offices in Rome or Switzerland and state their precise terms for Mr. Moro's release. The Italian government has refused to take on negotiations with the kidnappers. [New York Times] The United States is not prepared to deal effectively with terrorist incidents around the world despite repeated assertions to the contrary by the Carter administration, according to specialists in the field, who say the assertions are exaggerated. A Defense Department report to Congress early this month said the United States had 6,072 specialized troops in 18 units capable of responding to terrorism. But high-ranking officers said that in fact only one detachment had received what could honestly be called anti-terrorist training and that it would not be ready for action until summer. [New York Times] The dream of becoming a doctor or a lawyer has drawn students into battles for high grades as well as prompting their parents to resort in some cases to bribery and academic payoffs. Publicity about this situation, raising anew many questions about admissions practices that have long been under fire, has surrounded controversies over preferential admissions at schools in Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago and elsewhere. Court records show that covert payments made to schools by the parents of prospective students total millions of dollars a year, while covert bids of as much as $250,000 have been made for a place in the freshman class of the Loma Linda School of Medicine in California. [New York Times] The funeral industry has been examined in a countrywide study that found that certain business practices were curious, if not illegal, and that funeral costs were probably highest in the Northeast, especially in New York. Critics of the $4 billion industry have become increasingly vocal and their complaints have been heard by the Federal Trade Commission, which is expected to recommend stricter regulation of undertakers. The necessity for embalming -- which one industry critic says is only "an essential moneymaking tool for funeral directors" -- is also at issue. [New York Times] An American airliner arrived in Helsinki from Murmansk after picking up the passengers and most of the crew of the South Korean plane that was forced to land on a frozen lake Friday by a Soviet jet interceptor. The pilot and navigator of the Korean plane were detained by the police at Murmansk. Two of the 97 passengers were killed and 16 others injured by bullets from the Soviet interceptor according to one of the passengers who said that no one was hurt in the impact of the emergency landing. It was not established why the plane, en route from Paris to Seoul, was forced to land or why it was over Soviet airspace. [New York Times] An American-Soviet announcement in Moscow said that differences had been narrowed in negotiations for a new agreement limiting strategic arms and that both sides would intensify efforts to conclude such an accord "at the earliest possible time." The joint communique, issued at the end of three days of talks, including a meeting between Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet leader, underscored the view of the two sides that modest progress had been made toward the settlement of major problems. Mr. Brezhnev called for "energetic efforts" to overcome the remaining obstacles. [New York Times]