News stories from Saturday April 21, 1979

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

Rhodesia's election ended with a turnout put at about 65 percent of the 2.9 million eligible voters. The bi-racial transitional government said that the vote was a convincing indication of black support for an internal constitutional accord and was a clear rebuff to black guerrillas. Shortly before the election was over, the Election Directorate announced a total turnout of voters of 1.8 million and said that all voters, except 106,000, were black. [New York Times] The 152 new federal judgeships created last year are being slowly filled, as Democratic Senators and judicial panels make diverse recommendations. President Carter has strongly urged merit selection and the inclusion of women and minority members, but early recommendations for appointing the largest number of new federal judges in history suggest that political considerations still play a major role in the choices. [New York Times] Drug and pesticide residues were found in an estimated 14 percent of the meat and poultry samples tested over a two-year period by federal agencies, the General Accounting Office said in a report criticizing the agencies for not following up on the tests. [New York Times] Blacks will no longer be called 'minority' by black social workers, who are urging other blacks to do the same. They said at a meeting of the National Association of Black Social Workers in St. Louis that the grouping of women, Hispanic-Americans, veterans and the disabled, among others, as minorities had destroyed the meaning of the term and had made these other groups competitors for grants. [New York Times] Discrimination against black doctors persists in big white-controlled hospitals in Birmingham, Ala., and is often so subtle that it is unprovable, black physicians say. When a highly regarded black surgeon recently decided to leave Birmingham because he could not operate at the hospital of his choice, the city's 35 other black doctors banded together as they had in the era when Birmingham was regarded as the Deep South's most rigidly segregated city. They have revitalized the Mineral District Medical Society, an all-black organization. [New York Times] The tugboat operators' union refused to allow some of its striking members to obey a court order to resume taking New York City garbage to a Staten Island landfill. The order was issued Friday by state Supreme Court Justice Albert Williams, on behalf of the city, which said a health emergency had been caused by the garbage that has piled up during the strike by the tugboat operators, who normally carry the garbage out to sea. [New York Times] A food crisis in Cambodia seems near. The possibility of a widespread famine is causing increasing concern among diplomats and others who follow events in Indochina. Reports from refugees of the fighting between the Vietnamese army and Cambodian troops loyal to ousted Prime Minister Pol Pot have increased their fears. [New York Times] Bomb damage to historic buildings in Rome is more extensive than was first believed after the terrorist explosion early Friday morning. Many cracks were found in the walls of the Palace of the Conservators and the Capitoline Museum, both flanking the badly damaged Palace of the Senators on the Capitoline Hill. [New York Times]