Busy day in the world, this July 17, 1978
Starting with news that Israeli-Egyptian peace talks this week will be moved to an ancient castle in southeast England because of a security threat m London, State Department officials said Sunday They said an official announcement was expected. The two-day meeting between Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and the Egyptian and Israeli foreign ministers was originally scheduled to take place in a central London hotel suggested Leeds Castle. They said British Prime Minister James Callaghan suggested the shift to Leeds Castle in Kent in view of the possibility of a Palestinian bid to sabotage the resumption of Middle East peace negotiations The sources said British authorities had been concerned about security since the assassination of former Iraqi Prime Minister Abdel-Razak Naif outside a London hotel two weeks ago. A final decision was awaiting approval by the Israeli and Egyptian foreign ministers, Moshe Dayan and Mohammed Ibrahim Kamel, the sources added They said Callaghan had suggested several alternate sites if Leeds Castle is not acceptable The two-day meeting of foreign ministers will be chaired by Secretary o! State Cyrus Vance in the latest American effort to revive the flagging Middle East peace effort.
Meanwhile; two reporters were accused by the Soviet Committee on Radio and Television of slander in connection with articles they wrote quoting sources who said a televised confession by a Georgian dissident may have been fabricated. The two American newsmen accused of slandering the Soviet Union are out of the country and will not appear at a hearing Tuesday in a case US officials say is an attempt to intimidate foreign reporters. The charges against Craig Whitney of the New York Times and Hal Piper of the Baltimore Sun strained US-Soviet relations which were further shaken last week by the harsh sentences meted out against two prominent Soviet dissidents.
Finally; ethical and legal dilemmas posed by so-called “test-tube babies” will surface in court today when a Florida couple seeks damages from a doctor they claim destroyed their progeny. John and Doris Del Zio, of Fort Lauderdale, seek $1.5 million from Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center and Dr. Vande Wiele, its former chief of obstetrics and gynecology, charging that a laboratory-fertilized embryo was “maliciously and arbitrarily” destroyed in 1973, three days before it was to be implanted in Mrs. Del Zio s womb. LESLEY BROWN, a British housewife, is waiting to give birth within the next few weeks in Oldham,. England, to a child fertilized in a laboratory.
If Mrs. Brown carries successfully to term, it is believed it will be the first case of a laboratory-fertilized human egg being carried to birth. The Del Zios say they would have had the first such child, but for a doctor’s decision to destroy the fertilized egg because of his qualms about the morality of the procedure.
In pretrial papers in the law suit, the Del Zios said they suffered severe mental and physical pain as a result of Dr. Vande Wiele’s action. The medical center and Dr. Vande Wiele contend that whatever was in the test tube that was destroyed was destroyed because the procedure was “scientifically unsound” and had not been approved by the Columbia’s human experimentation committee. A DOCTOR connected to the defense in the suit said Saturday that, while there were similarities between the experiment involving the Del Zios and the one in England, “comparing them is like comparing a Model-T Ford with a 1978 Porsche.” In his analogy, the British experiment was the Porsche.
And while the Middle-East summit was unfolding, that’s just a small slice of what happened on this July 17, 1978 as reported on The CBS World News Roundup.
