News stories from Sunday October 19, 1975
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- The Ford administration is seeking to have ready tomorrow a food stamp reform bill acceptable to both moderate and conservative Republicans in Congress -- and one that will help the party in the 1976 elections. The administration is working to reconcile provisions of two widely different measures to revise the controversial and politically sensitive $6 billion program. [New York Times]
- A bipartisan group of Senators, seeking cuts in the defense budget, contends that the House-passed appropriation exceeds congressional budget guidelines by almost $1 billion. The group of four Democratic and three Republican Senators said that Congress must trim the defense budget to demonstrate "fiscal responsibility" and make its new budget procedures work. [New York Times]
- New York City's narrow escape from default has prompted a number of mayors across the nation to renew and intensify their demand that the federal government come to the city's rescue.
State Controller Arthur Levitt, in an interview, said that New York City's fiscal chaos was due to lack of planning, "by piling debt on debt" and an "inflationary psychology."
[New York Times] - The global fertilizer shortage is now ended. But continuing high prices have caused a drop in fertilizer usage -- and hence in potential food production -- in the poorest nations. During the shortage, from 1972 to 1974, manufacturers increased prices for some common fertilizers by up to 1,000 percent and profits are still soaring. [New York Times]
- Indignation over Northern economic supremacy, which has troubled Southerners for years, is a dominant theme of the present campaign for Governor of Mississippi. Both major party candidates, Cliff Finch and Gil Carmichael, have pledged to raise the state's low industrial wages, which are now paid largely by companies with headquarters in the North. [New York Times]
- An undercover informer and witness for the federal authorities said that, because of threats to his family, he had been forced to play a major role in a plot to discredit government investigations of organized crime activities in northern New Jersey. [New York Times]
- China's Foreign Minister, Chiao Kuan-hua, in a speech welcoming Secretary of State Kissinger to Peking, warned him publicly for the first time of the danger of the American policy of detente with the Russians. Mr. Kissinger responded diplomatically that American-Chinese relations "would threaten no one" and then made clear that Washington would stand up to Moscow if the security of third countries was threatened. [New York Times]
- Three years after delegates of 113 nations gathered in Stockholm at a United Nations conference to combat global environmental problems. they have a mixed view of the results. They believe that much has been accomplished but acknowledge that progress so far represents only minuscule gains on ever-accelerating problems. [New York Times]
- Some nations have a mixed reaction to a successful American program that uses space platforms to survey the world for mineral resources and any environmental changes. A United Nations committee has been asked to recommend that the project be put under international control. [New York Times]