News stories from Saturday July 9, 1977

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

The 799-mile Trans-Alaska Pipeline, two-thirds full of oil, remained shut down after an explosion in a pumping station that killed a technician and injured five other men. The explosion occurred at Pump Station No. 8, where the pipeline was buried to traverse a wilderness area 33 miles south of Fairbanks in central Alaska. Its cause was said to have been the ignition by a gas turbine engine of vapors from oil suddenly spilled from a valve. [New York Times] President Carter might change his energy plan as a result of discussions he had over the weekend with more than 40 of the nation's governors. This was reported by several of the governors attending the meeting in Washington and was confirmed by James Schlesinger, the President's energy assistant. He told reporters that it was a "valid inference" that changes might follow the meeting. [New York Times] Growing numbers of workers are being offered a chance to retire early and many are taking it. The trend cannot be measured precisely because statistics are scarce. Actuaries, economists and union researchers disagree on the numbers, and even definitions of retired persons are debatable. But there are enough figures to indicate that something important is happening and there is no question about its potential impact. [New York Times] The proposed American neutron bomb was denounced by a Soviet political commentator as inconsistent with President Carter's stand on human rights. He said that it could also jeopardize Soviet-American talks on strategic arms limitation. The commentary by Yuri Kornlov was distributed by Tass, the official Soviet press agency. [New York Times] The confrontation between Britain and Guatemala this week over Belize might have led to war, or might have turned into something preposterous: Guatemala has been threatening an invasion of Belize to reclaim it as territory illegally taken by the British in the early 19th century. The big question was why Britain was putting all that money, prestige, pride and honored military tradition into one last defense of the Empire. [New York Times] A top-secret plan to protect both government and private calls from eavesdropping by foreign powers, corporations or criminal groups is being completed by the Carter administration. The administration is alarmed by widespread Soviet eavesdropping on telephone conversations across the United States, knowledgeable sources said. One extremely touchy aspect of the problem, administration officials say, is that the National Security Agency has also been monitoring some domestic long-distance telephone calls by Americans. The legality of the agency's surveillance has never been clearly decided. [New York Times]