News stories from Saturday November 24, 1979
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- Ayatollah Khomeini's attack against the United States continued. He accused President Carter of "ignoring all human international values," and charged that the United States and Israel were involved in seizure of sacred Moslem mosques in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. He called on Moslems to "rise up and defend Islam." [New York Times]
- The administration is irritated by rumors that American military moves are imminent or under way to rescue the 49 hostages in Teheran. A formal protest was made to Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin of the Soviet Union about a report by Tass, the Soviet press agency, that American "commandos" had been sent to Saudi Arabia in preparation for action in Iran. The State Department said the report was "untrue and completely inaccurate." [New York Times]
- Higher oil prices were threatened by Saudi Arabian leaders, who are said to be angry over an alleged failure by United States companies to pass lower Saudi oil prices along to American consumers. [New York Times]
- In a major assault, Saudi government troops seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca and apparently ended its occupation by religious radicals who seized it five days ago, according to diplomatic sources. Causalities were believed to be heavy. Witnesses reported that parts of the mosque were in flames. Hours earlier, King Khalid received authorization from 32 Moslem leaders to use force to subdue the gunmen. [New York Times]
- A Pakistani official expressed regret on behalf of his government over the attack on the American Embassy in Islamabad last Wednesday. Gen. Mujib ur-Rahman, Secretary of Information in the Military Secretariat, said that his government had accepted responsibility for rebuilding the embassy complex and that the work would be done at "maximum speed." [New York Times]
- The Pentagon was inaccurate in asserting that combat zones sprayed with a toxic defoliant were cleared of American personnel until about six weeks later, the General Accounting Office reported. Hundreds of Vietnam veterans have asserted that they were exposed to the defoliant, called Agent Orange, and that as a result they and their families have suffered damage ranging from festering sores to cancer and birth defects. [New York Times]
- An experiment to revitalize cities is being pressed in St. Paul (Minnesota), where representatives of the federal, state and city governments and the private sector will seek a negotiated accord on integrating public and private aid programs on the local level. [New York Times]
- The Kennedy campaign strategy in Texas is counting on John Connally to help Senator Edward Kennedy to score an upset over President Carter in the state Democratic contest on May 3. The Kennedy strategy counts on intense interest in the Republican presidential primary, in which conservative Texas Democrats would vote for Mr. Connally, a former Governor, and take votes away from Mr. Carter. [New York Times]
- Two men accused of murder will be tried simultaneously by two juries in a Manhattan courtroom. The two juries were ordered, in a decision believed to be without precedent in American jurisprudence, by state Supreme Court Justice Edward Greenfield, over the objection of defense lawyers, on the ground that some of the evidence is admissible in the people's case against one defendant, but not admissible in the other case. Justice Greenfield decided against separate trials for the defendants, which have usually been held in similar cases, because, he said, "We must use innovative procedures to save court time and public expense," which is the objective of a special program devised by the state's chief judge, Lawrence Cooke, to clear up the backlog of cases in the civil term of the state Supreme Court. [New York Times]