News stories from Saturday August 12, 1978

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

Thirty Florida fishermen were jailed in the Bahamas and one boy fishing with them was hospitalized in serious condition with a bullet wound. Bahamian officials seized U.S. boats about 25 miles from Bimini in the first skirmish this year of the off-and-on Bahamian "lobster war." The island nation's government has declared its coastal waters off limits to foreign fishermen, and has recently placed armed patrol boats in service. [Los Angeles Times] John Warner, a millionaire farmer and Elizabeth Taylor's sixth husband, was nominated by acclamation by Virginia Republicans as their candidate for the U.S. Senate. Warner, 51, will replace Richard Obenshain, who was killed in an airplane crash Aug. 2. Warner was narrowly defeated by Obenshain at the party's state nominating convention in June. He will face Democrat Andrew Miller in the November contest for the seat being vacated by William Lloyd Scott, a Republican, who did not seek re-election. [Los Angeles Times] The administration notified Congress that it plans to sell another $744 million in arms to seven countries under its arms sales ceiling for this fiscal year. The notification seemed partially designed to get the proposals before Congress, which has 30 days to disapprove them by majority vote of both houses before the legislators recess for Labor Day. The proposed sales include $263.5 million worth of equipment for Iran, $217.7 million for Taiwan and lesser amounts for Israel, South Korea, Pakistan, Spain and Thailand. [Los Angeles Times] Americans agree with President Carter that Russian violations of human rights principles should not disrupt negotiations for a new arms limitation treaty, an Associated Press-NBC News poll shows. Public support for a new strategic arms limitation treaty has increased in recent weeks despite recent Soviet prosecutions of dissidents and continued suspicion about Russia's good faith in abiding by agreements, according to the poll. [Los Angeles Times] Saudi Arabia, at the urging of the Carter administration, has endorsed next month's Camp David summit. Crown Prince Fahd issued a statement saying that with President Carter as negotiator the summit could be a ''big step toward a just peace." Meanwhile, Kuwait opposed the meeting of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Foreign Minister Sabah Ahmed Jabir Sabah said his country was not pinning any hopes on the Sept. 5 meeting and called for a resumption of the U.N.-sponsored Geneva Middle East peace talks. [Los Angeles Times] No warning to newsmen is necessary when the records of their long distance telephone calls are subpoenaed in a criminal investigation, a U.S. appellate court ruled in Washington, D.C. The court ruled 2 to 1 against the Dow Jones Co., the Knight newspaper chain and 12 reporters who had cited five instances in the early 1970's in which investigators had obtained phone company records without prior notice. In a dissenting opinion, Judge J. Skelly Wright said the decision infringed on First Amendment guarantees of a free press because it could lead to disclosure of a reporter's confidential sources without prior review by a judge. [Los Angeles Times] A posse of more than 100 lawmen in jeeps, on horseback and on foot sealed off five square miles of desert near Casa Grande, Ariz., on the trail of an escaped killer, Gary Tison, 42. Tison fled into the desert after a shootout at a police roadblock that killed one of his three sons, who had helped him and another convict escape from the Arizona State Prison July 30. The two remaining sons and the other escapee were captured after the shootout. All were charged with killing three persons during their flight. Authorities feared more bodies would be found. [Los Angeles Times] A busing plan for the Columbus, Ohio, school system was delayed by Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist. Under a plan ordered by a lower court, 37,000 of Columbus' 89,628-students were to be bused to achieve integration. Rehnquist said the lower court might have failed to follow desegregation principles set forth by the high court. The stay will be in effect until the Supreme Court decides whether to review the Columbus plan after it reconvenes Oct. 2, The Columbus school year begins Sept. 7. [Los Angeles Times] "Everything is going just fine" for three Albuquerque men attempting to become the first to reach Europe by balloon. They radioed their control center this evening that they were 7,000 feet above the ocean just off the southeast corner of Newfoundland, traveling at about 20 m.p.h. under mostly fair skies. The three, Maxie Anderson, 44, Ben Abruzzo, 48, and Larry Newman, 31, hope to reach the coast of France in about four days if the good weather continues. Anderson and Abruzzo reached Iceland last year before being forced down by bad weather. [Los Angeles Times] Faced with mounting Republican opposition, President Carter agreed to drop the nomination of Samuel Zagoria to a Republican seat on the Federal Election Commission. Some congressional Republicans had opposed Zagoria's nomination because they said Carter had promised the GOP leadership, Sen. Howard Baker Jr. of Tennessee and Rep. John Rhodes of Arizona, that the post would be filled only after "full consultation" with them. Baker and Rhodes had suggested three other persons for the post, but the White House had said they were unacceptable. White House officials said Baker and Rhodes had agreed to submit additional names. [Los Angeles Times] A Washington, W.Va., firm is being forced to move its Ohio River plant because the ground on which it stands is laced with radioactive thorium that has been known to explode when disturbed. A spokesman for the L. B. Foster Co. said the firm will remove its buildings from the site, which once held a plant that made nuclear fuel rods. Last March, workmen were digging a foundation for a pipe-making machine in a Foster building when the ground erupted like a volcano, sending a ball of flame 30 feet to the ceiling, according to plant manager Walt Pavlo. [Los Angeles Times] The Agriculture Department has announced new guidelines for the use of herbicide 2,4,5-T, the so-called "chemical grandchild of Agent Orange." Agent Orange was used by the military to defoliate the jungles of Vietnam. Asst. Secretary Rupert Cutler said that under the guidelines, 2,4,5-T may not be sprayed from airplanes within a quarter-mile of year-round streams in national forests or within a mile of permanent dwellings, The herbicide, which contains dioxin, has been used for several years to clear fence rows and utility rights of way. [Los Angeles Times] Diana Nyad says she will be off and swimming tomorrow afternoon, starting her often-delayed marathon journey from Cuba to Florida. "It seems that the weather is very good, the best we will get," she said. Miss Nyad, 28, plans to swim inside a cage designed to protect her from sharks. A boat tows the cage, but Miss Nyad will be on her own. [Los Angeles Times] The crowd of 10,000 at Southern Illinois University's festival at Edwardsville, III., gave repeated standing ovations to folksingers Peter, Paul and Mary, reunited in concert for the first time in a decade. "What was interesting in coming back is that we have changed, grown," Mary Travers said. "We're more gracious with one another and more adaptable to one another's idiosyncrasies." Miss Travers, Peter Yarrow and Paul Stookey were setting out on a 17-city tour. Except for political benefits, one last spring and another in 1972, they have not appeared together since 1970. [Los Angeles Times] Cornelia Wallace dropped out of the governor's race in Alabama, saying that she had been unable to collect sizable campaign contributions without an endorsement from her former husband, Gov. George Wallace. Lacking the contributions, Mrs. Wallace, 39, who was divorced from the governor Jan. 4, said she did not have enough money to keep campaigning for the Sept. 5 primary. [Los Angeles Times] Former astronaut Jack Swigert suggests that the space shuttle program could help dispose of some of the nation's nuclear waste. Swigert, campaigning in Colorado for the GOP nomination to the U.S. Senate, told a Rotary Club meeting in Denver that the space shuttle could carry a rocket loaded with nuclear waste into orbit, from where the rocket could blast off into outer space, or perhaps into the sun. Swigert said he did not believe the nuclear waste would create any hazards in colliding with the sun's radioactive material. [Los Angeles Times]