News stories from Saturday November 25, 1978
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- Nearly 900 People's Temple members are now believed to have died in Guyana last weekend, United States officials said, and they indicated that the total might rise. They gave no explanation for the increase in their estimate of nearly 800 dead, announced Friday. Combined with the number of Temple members known to have survived the mass deaths, the new figure exceeds the Guyanese government's estimate that 915 temple followers had officially been registered.
The deaths in Guyana of nearly 900 Americans have been described as mass suicides, but the question of whether any coercion was used on any victim could only be determined at this point by autopsies. But during the week since the deaths were discovered, no autopsies have been performed by American doctors, according to officials at Dover Air Force Base, where the bodies have been flown.
[New York Times] - Two new cabinet departments and the dismantling of the Commerce Department are said to be among proposals expected from President Carter's reorganization staff within the next month. But the President, high administration officials emphasize, has not seen the plans and they have not been reviewed or approved by the Budget Director. Thus, the advisers may have to limit their proposals. [New York Times]
- Years of accounting manipulation, guesswork and misleading statements to Congress by the Army Corp of Engineers to justify construction of the $2 billion Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway are shown in an examination of thousands of confidential memorandums and other government documents. The papers were made public during the course of a lawsuit to block the barge canal through Mississippi and Alabama, the corps' most extensive project. [New York Times]
- Relations with the Soviet Union are improving, according to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. He said in an interview that there is still a possibility of concluding a strategic arms limitation treaty in the remaining weeks of this year. He put the treaty at the top of the list of future priorities. [New York Times]
- An acerbic poster in Peking turned from criticism of Mao Tse-tung to demands for democracy for the Chinese people. It compared China unfavorably with the capitalist United States, which, despite its comparative youth has developed rapidly "because it has no idols or superstitions," the poster's young authors said. [New York Times]
- The election of a hard-line white supremacist as the leader of South Africa's governing National Party in populous Transvaal Province dimmed prospects for wider rights for blacks. Andries Treurnicht will head a party apparatus that controls nearly as many seats in the all-white national Parliament as the other three provinces combined. He is now the country's second most powerful leader after Prime Minister P. W. Botha. [New York Times]