News stories from Saturday July 31, 1982
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- Tighter rules on lead in gasoline will be proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency, according to a high-ranking agency official. Early this year, the agency proposed relaxing or eliminating the rules on the ground that they were a burden to industry. The new proposals would remove 31 percent more lead from the air than would be accomplished by current regulations over the next eight years, the official said. [New York Times]
- The nation's air traffic volume is back to 83 percent of the level before the illegal walkout a year ago by 11,400 members of a controller's union, indicating that the control system is in much better working condition following the strike than had been expected. But the underlying labor-management struggle is still alive and several uncertainties cloud the outlook for the admninistration's plan to rebuild and refine the system. [New York Times]
- Fewer overseas visitors are in the United States this year, reversing a trend of steady increases over two decades. Federal officials and private tour brokers say the decline has largely been a result of the falling value of most major foreign currencies against the dollar, which this year has reached 10-year highs against the British pound, the Italian lira and the French franc. [New York Times]
- Free medical care for poor people would no longer be the obligation of some hospitals under rules being prepared by the Reagan administration. The proposed revisions would abolish the requirement for hospitals to post notice of the availability of free care and would eliminate the requirement for hospitals to provide "individual written notice" of such care to all patients. [New York Times]
- Jews, Catholics and Protestants in the New York metropolitan area have joined this summer to resist what they call such "destructive cults" as the Unification Church of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon. Leaders of the three faiths have met several times since June to find ways of counteracting the sects they regard as harmful. [New York Times]
- Carrying out the P.L.O. withdrawal from west Beirut will be discussed in final negotiations that were expected to begin within 24 hours, Foreign Minister Fuad Butros of Lebanon said. He said the negotiations would involve the P.L.O., the Lebanese government and Philip Habib, the United States special envoy, acting through Lebanese intermediaries. [New York Times]
- Substantial cuts in Soviet forces have been offered by the Soviet Union in response to an American proposal at the talks in Geneva on reducing strategic nuclear arms, according to Reagan administration officials. They said that the Soviet proposal was unacceptable because it fell far short of President Reagan's proposal for reductions in long-range or intercontinental missiles, but that neither side had formally rejected the proposals being put forth. [New York Times]
- South Africa's black trade unions are steadily expanding their membership and making themselves felt as a force in South African industry despite police surveillance and the jailing of organizers. The unions are also starting to regroup themselves in an effort to eliminate jurisdictional disputes that have hurt their early organizing efforts. One of their problems is how to define their relationship to the white-dominated political system and the underground black movements that seek to overturn it. [New York Times]
- A bus accident in France killed 53 persons, including 44 children on their way to an Alpine vacation camp. The crash, near Beaune in the Burgundy wine region, involved another bus and two cars. It happened at the start of France's biggest vacation weekend, when up to 10 million drivers are on the roads. [New York Times]