News stories from Saturday January 16, 1971
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- U.S. Steel announced selected price increases averaging 6.8%. President Nixon was gratified that the increases were substantially less than Bethlehem Steel's 12.5% increase. [CBS]
- Undersecretary of State John Irwin will go to the Mideast to negotiate agreements with Iran, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait regarding American and foreign oil companies. President Nixon granted eight U.S. oil companies immunity from antitrust laws so that they can negotiate as a bloc. [CBS]
- Presidential adviser Henry Kissinger has resigned from the Harvard University faculty in order to continue serving President Nixon. [CBS]
- U.S. jets dropped napalm along Highway 4 in Cambodia. Cambodian and South Vietnamese forces attacked the enemy in Pich Nil Pass. Communists are expected to put up a fight. [CBS]
- Seventy-five federal guards are securing foreign missions in New York City during the police strike. New York City garbage workers have threatened a slowdown unless progress is made in contract talks. [CBS]
- Former President Lyndon Johnson was released from a San Antonio hospital in good condition. [CBS]
- The Swiss ambassador to Brazil was released unharmed by terrorists after the Brazilian government freed 70 political prisoners. [CBS]
- With renewed violence in Northern Ireland, Premier James Chichester-Clark postponed the departure for his U.S. visit. Fire bombings in Belfast were attributed to the IRA. [CBS]
- Discontent remains in Polish labor groups despite changes in the government following December's riots. Workers in Gdansk want a 30% pay raise and better housing. The new government has frozen food prices for two years, after a recent 15% increase. [CBS]
- Former Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall was arrested for shoplifting; he claimed that it was an absent-minded mistake. [CBS]
- Pro football commissioner Pete Rozelle defended local television blackouts in court. A judge said that the blackout violates antitrust laws but he has no jurisdiction to lift it. [CBS]
- Merle Haggard's song "Okie From Muskogee", the theme song for the so-called silent majority, indicates that Muskogee, Oklahoma, is no longer sin city for soldiers on leave. Muskogee partially reflects the song's lyrics, but the city really has not changed much.
The police vice squad confiscated marijuana and other drugs in recent raids. The attempted crackdown on vice has caused controversy; the shop of a supporter of the crackdown was burned, and police security was intensified. Police chief George Kennedy noted that enforcement of vice laws has been lax in the past. Mayor Elmo Madewell claims that the underworld in Muskogee is no larger than in other cities of the same size. Vice squad member Danny Vinzant says that Muskogee is hardly a perfect, All-American town. Residents agree that Haggard's song is inaccurate.
[CBS]