News stories from Sunday June 24, 1979
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- President Carter will seek joint action between the United States and Japan, the world's biggest oil importers, on the energy crisis in talks in Toro on Monday and Tuesday with Prime Minister Masayoshi Ohira in advance of the economic summit meeting to be held there Thursday and Friday. [New York Times]
- A 33 per cent increase in oil's base price is expected to follow this week's meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, according to energy experts in Washington who have grown increasingly pessimistic as the meeting approaches. They had hoped that the increase could be held to about 20 percent.
OPEC might face an antitrust suit. A preliminary injunction for price fixing and other antitrust violations will be considered tomorrow by a federal judge in Los Angeles in a case filed last December by the International Association of Machinists. The injunction could order the United States or the major oil companies to prevent any OPEC price increases from being passed on to the American market.
[New York Times] - Gasoline was remarkably hard to find in the New York metropolitan region. More than 95 percent of the region's filling stations were closed. This was a greater percentage than on Saturday, the Automobile Club of New York said, and made the "driest weekend" worse.
California's gasoline lines dwindled in recent weeks, and many service stations that had been closed evenings and weekends are back to normal hours. Since odd-even buying days were ordered by the state early in May, panic has eased and motorists have been conserving gasoline. This seems to be overcoming cutbacks in the state's monthly allocation.
[New York Times] - The clean water program is opposed by an increasing number of communities. The huge sewage treatment plants being built under the government's multibillion dollar water cleanup are not welcome. Citizens groups demand instead less ambitious but effective alternatives to their sewage problems, including lagoon land treatment methods and on-site septic systems using new technology. The federally financed plants are also opposed on the ground that they have been "encouraging foolish and bad land use." [New York Times]
- Grounded DC-10 planes will be flying in two weeks "if everything goes right," government officials said. Their forecast followed a report from a consultant who was said to have proposed a rigorous new program of engine mount inspections pending improvements in the DC-10's. [New York Times]
- Most blacks would vote for Senator Edward Kennedy if he challenged President Carter for the Democratic Party's 1980 nomination, Benjamin Hooks, executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said. Mr. Hooks told reporters gathered in Louisville, Ky., for the organization's annual convention that Mr. Kennedy would get more than 60 percent of the black vote in the primaries because "there is so much distrust of Mi. Carter in the black community today." [New York Times]
- Traces of radiation dating to the 1920's have been found in Orange, N.J. by state officials at the site of the defunct United States Radium Corporation plant, some of whose employees had developed radium poisoning. [New York Times]
- Nicaragua's President ignored a call for his resignation from the Organization of American States and vowed to continue to fight the Sandinist guerrillas seeking his overthrow. [New York Times]
- Demands for increased help for Indochinese refugees are growing among private agencies and Jews and Christians moved by the similarity in the refugees' plight and the situation of the Jews in the 1930's and World War II. The United Nations is planning an international meeting on the refugees, but others are demanding immediate assistance, among them Elie Wiesel, chairman of President Carter's Commission on the Holocaust.
Cambodian refugees are waiting to be rescued after thousands were forced to return to their country by Thailand. They are huddled in a forest scattered with land mines at the foot of the cliffs on the border with Thailand. Many have died and the rest are starving, according to a refugee who made his way back to Thailand. The survivors are hoping, the refugee said, that the world will come to their aid.
[New York Times] - Israel's Defense Minister has been dropped, at his own request, from the team negotiating with Egypt and the United States on Arab self-rule on the West Bank and in Gaza. [New York Times]