News stories from Saturday June 2, 1979

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

A tumultuous welcome for the Pope was displayed in Warsaw, at the start of the first visit by a Pope to a Communist country. Pope John Paul II met with Polish Communist leaders and later said mass before 290,000 people in Warsaw's Victory Square. [New York Times] Oil industry profits are not excessive, according to many financial analysts. But those same analysts maintain that oil profits are ample enough to carry an excess or windfall profits tax. The experts say that when the industry's business of finding and extracting oil is analyzed separately, exceptional profits are in fact quite common. And it is that operation that stands to profit further from decontrol. [New York Times] Price markups by service stations in New York city have been reported in a new study by the Consumer Affairs Department. The study contends New York stations have doubled and in many cases tripled their markups on gasoline since September, often in violation of federal price guidelines. [New York Times] President Kennedy's assassination was probably the result of a conspiracy, according to the final report of the House Assassinations Committee. The report also says the committee cannot rule out the possibility that organized crime figures or Cubans may have played a part in the President's death. [New York Times] Illegal aliens are asserting themselves in Western states such as California. They are fighting for rights and for unions in the garment industry, an industry that systematically exploits their labor, investigators say. [New York Times] Fights over Howard Hughes's estate continue and bitter court cases, with preliminary arguments hinting at fraud charges to come, must be argued and won before Mr. Hughes' relatives divide his assets. [New York Times] Debates on governmental red tape are flourishing as federal officials accuse state and local governments of creating regulatory burdens while states and municipalities deny the accusations, many of which come from the Carter administration. [New York Times] The Liberal Party repudiated Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan for his support of tuition tax credits for parents of private-school students, but Governor Carey, Mayor Koch and City Councilman Henry Stern, the party's only elected public official, quickly defended the Senator. [New York Times] Unprecedented criticism in Iran of Islamic leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini, was expressed by the liberal, secular National Democratic Front which accused him of "dictatorship" in an open letter. The letter was the latest and strongest step in what appears to be a mounting campaign by moderate, liberal, leftist and secular groups against Islamic dominance of the country. [New York Times] An Islamic leader was murdered. The Imam of Gaza, Sheik Hasham Huzandair, was stabbed to death and a guerrilla group in Beirut said the killing was in reprisal for the Imam's support of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. The murder took place in the Israeli-occupied Gaza strip. [New York Times] The U.S. expects only modest gains in other areas at issue when President Carter and Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet leader, meet to sign the arms limitation treaty in two weeks. Reporters were told that it is uncertain whether Mr. Carter will be able to secure any understanding from the Soviets on problems such as South Africa and the Middle East. [New York Times]