News stories from Saturday February 12, 1977
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- President Carter said that he would cut the level of defense spending recommended by former President Ford in January, but that the revised budget would still contain a "substantial increase" over the previous fiscal year. Mr. Carter spoke as reporters followed him about in Plains, Ga., where he had returned for the first time since his inauguration. In a stroll down Main Street, which was clogged with tourists, Mr. Carter gossiped, grinned, shook hands and spoke to people who greeted him as well as to reporters. He displayed what one observer said was his "unusual and nearly idiosyncratic style." [New York Times]
- The Carter administration is proposing that the government spend $15 billion in the next fiscal year to finance jobs and training for the unemployed, but no one is certain about how many will get jobs. Administration officials, including Secretary of Labor Ray Marshall, believe that well over 2 million people, most of whom would otherwise be out of work, could be placed in jobs or training if Congress approves the President's recommendations, which are being challenged. [New York Times]
- Henry Ford II, in an interview in Detroit, delivered many opinions, in his typically blunt way, on the American economy. He said, among other things, that big business must come clean with the public and admit its mistakes and faults if it want to repair its severely damaged credibility among consumers. One of those mistakes, Mr. Ford said, is misleading advertising. He recently referred to some of his company's advertising as "junk." He will be 60 in September, and indicated that he might retire before the mandatory age of 65. [New York Times]
- Rose Bird, a former law teacher, was appointed Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court by Gov. Jerry Brown, who also named a black man, Wiley Manuel, an Associate Justice. Miss Bird, 40, helped draft the state's historic Agricultural Labor Relations Act. Mr. Manuel, 49, has been a Superior Court judge in Oakland. [New York Times]
- Chief beneficiaries of a federal program that was meant to help revive the old cities of the North will be small towns, suburbs and Southern and Western cities if the federal-aid law is not changed, according to a government-sponsored study. The study by the Brookings Institution found that of the 20 "worst-off" cities in the country, all but two would get less federal aid in 1980 than they got a decade earlier under previous grants replaced by the new program. [New York Times]
- Oil spills by ships flying "flags of convenience" that bring much of this country's oil have prompted national concern. Senate hearings are underway and Brock Adams, the new Transportation Secretary, has announced a set of safety rules which have been under study a long while. The Coast Guard has had the authority to make and enforce safety regulations since 1972 but has not done so. [New York Times]
- A sex discrimination suit by women employees of the National Broadcasting Company reportedly was settled out of court for $2 million. Neither side would comment, but it was learned that the settlement included back pay for some of women. [New York Times]
- Moscow defended its current campaign against dissidents in an editorial in Pravda that was directed by implication to the Carter administration, but did not mention the President. Pravda said the dissidents were pawns in a coordinated Western assault on detente and socialism. "These unconcealed enemies of socialism," the editorial said of the dissidents, "exist only because the are supported, paid and praised by the West." [New York Times]
- Archbishop Makarios, the President of Cyprus, and Rauf Denktash, the ethnic Turkish leader, announced that negotiations on the future of the divided island would resume next month. The agreement was reached following a meeting also attended by Secretary General Kurt Waldheim of the United Nations. [New York Times]
- The end of martial law in the Philippines was linked by President Ferdinand Marcos to the course of American policy set by President Carter in Asia, especially to the outcome of the difficult negotiations over the future of the American naval and air bases in his country. [New York Times]