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News stories from Saturday June 23, 1979
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- A move to ease the energy crisis through a joint effort by the industrialized nations is the chief objective of President Carter's trip to Asia and the Pacific areas. Joint oil conservation measures will be discussed at an economic summit meeting in Tokyo on Thursday and Friday, the principal event in the 12-day journey. [New York Times]
- Gasoline prices reached a record high of $1.50 a gallon in the New York metropolitan region. Long lines formed at the few service station that were open on the "driest weekend that the New York area has ever had" for motorists, the New York Automobile Club said. There were reports of price gouging and of fistfights between customers and service station attendants who sought to limit purchases.
The causes of the gasoline crisis are being explained by federal and industry officials besieged by angry and puzzled motorists, who are demanding to know why, among other things, the shortage is so much worse now in the East, particularly in and around Washington and New York. The answer, according to government and private experts, is that there is a serious nationwide shortage that has become even more acute in some areas as a result of complex and rigid federal allocation requirements intermingled with panic buying. [New York Times]
- Giving legal status to Mexicans who cross the border illegally to work in the United States has been proposed by Gov. William Clements of Texas. But dozens of farm workers who had walked 50 miles to meet with Mr. Clements and the Governors of Arizona and New Mexico were excluded from a meeting of the Southwest Border Regional Commission, at which the Clements plan was discussed. [New York Times]
- Special inspections of DC-10 engine mounts and related equipment when an engine fails in flight have been recommended by the National Transportation Safety Board to the Federal Aviation Administration. But the F.A.A. has declined to issue a formal order to airlines operating DC-10's, saying that the issue would be amply dealt with when the grounded domestic DC-10's are returned to service. [New York Times]
- "The immediate and definitive replacement" of the Somoza regime in Nicaragua by a broadly based democratic government was agreed to in a resolution announced by the United States and 16 Latin American countries. The resolution was approved at the concluding session in Washington of an emergency meeting of the Organization of American States, called at the request of the United States to discuss the Nicaraguan crisis.
Nicaragua's guerrillas denied that Cuba is participating in their fight to overthrow the Somoza dictatorship, as has been charged, by the United States, which has proposed a peacekeeping force to halt the war. "Washington has to talk about Cuba in order to justify military intervention in Nicaragua," said Sergio Ramirez Mercado, a member of the provisional rebel government, which has temporary headquarters in Costa Rica. [New York Times]
- Early collapse of Afghan's government, headed by President Noor Mohammad Taraki, has been predicted by observers of the growing rebellion that has shaken the pro-Soviet Taraki regime. Mr. Taraki's ability to control the military and the lack of coordination in scattered rebel assaults have kept him in power, according to sources in Pakistan and Kabul, but now the army's continued loyalty is doubted because of rising desertions and casualties. [New York Times]
- Senator Robert Byrd will go to Moscow next week to discuss the new strategic arms treaty with Soviet leaders. The Senate majority leader said that he will inform them that the Senate is under no obligation to support the treaty, despite Leonid Brezhnev's warnings. [New York Times]
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