News stories from Saturday September 21, 1974

Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:

After cracks were found in the pipes of three boiling water reactors within the last 10 days, the Atomic Energy Commission has ordered 21 of the 50 nuclear reactors that produce commercial electric power in various parts of the country to close down in the next 60 days so that inspections may be made. The defective pipes were discovered in two reactors in Illinois and in one in Connecticut. In another development related to nuclear power plants, a leading safety expert announced that he was resigning his job with the atomic commission "in order to be able to tell the American people about the potentially dangerous conditions in the nation's nuclear power plants." [New York Times] Stephen Bingham, the radical lawyer who disappeared three years ago amid charges that he had helped plot an attempted prison escape by the black revolutionary author George Jackson, is alive, is continuing his political work underground, and has no intention of turning himself in. Mr. Bingham, interviewed last month in a Canadian city, is a member of a prominent Connecticut political family. He left no doubt that he favored a total restructuring of American society and that his thinking had evolved into clear-cut Marxism-Leninism. [New York Times] In the aftermath of Watergate, members of Congress from New York, Connecticut and New Jersey say they are having trouble raising campaign funds, have become more cautious about handling money and are more conscious of the need for integrity. Many of the members say that the Watergate scandal is a major reason why the New York delegation is losing one-fifth of its House members -- 8 of 39. "They lost heart in the entire political system," said Benjamin Rosenthal, Queens Democrat. [New York Times] The nation's teachers' organizations have become one of the best-financed special interest groups in the country and have vastly increased this year the amount of money they are giving to political candidates. Reports of contributions filed under federal law, and interviews with officials of various organizations, indicate that teachers may spend more than $2 million before the November election. [New York Times] After a decade of robust growth, the Southern economy is beginning to falter. Prices and unemployment are rising more rapidly in the South than in the country as a whole. Many of the same factors that have hurt business in other parts of the country are present in the South but economists say some special conditions have exacerbated the Southern economy. One of these is the diminishing supply of cheap labor. [New York Times] The Honduran government announced that at least 3,800 bodies had been found and another 5,000 people were missing in the aftermath of a hurricane that struck Central America Thursday. Over 60,000 Hondurans were homeless and vast areas of the Caribbean coastal region were flooded, Many towns and villages remained cut off and whole communities were reported wiped out. But an international effort began to aid the victims, including an airlift of United States military and civilian aircraft bringing supplies. [New York Times] Despite an impassioned protest by Israel, the United Nations General Assembly, in an unusual Saturday meeting, decided to hold a full-fledged debate on the "Palestinian question" during its current session. Israel objected on the ground that the debate would increase Middle East tension. [New York Times] In an address to a trade union conference In Damascus, President Hafez al-Assad of Syria warned there could be no peace in the Middle East so long as Israel continued to occupy Arab territory and Palestinians were dispossessed. He said Syria was now stronger than before the war with Israel last October, and that she was seeking more military and economic power. His stress on peace was in keeping with Syrian attempts to refute Israeli charges that Syria was preparing for another war. [New York Times] The Ford Foundation is considering a reduction in its annual grants of as much as 50 percent, because of inflation and a decline in its income, which comes mainly from investments in stocks and bonds. McGeorge Bundy, the foundation's president, said that a cut of 50 percent of its $220 million annual grant program was one of several alternatives he had presented to the foundation's trustees for review at their quarterly meeting this week. Another alternative, he said, is the dissolution of the foundation by distributing its assets, which have fallen to $2 billion from $3 billion in market value fn the last year. [New York Times]