News stories from Thursday August 17, 1978
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- President Carter, in an apparently unprecedented move, vetoed a $37 billion weapons authorization bill because it contains funds for a $2 billion nuclear carrier that Carter opposes. Carter also asked the nation and the world to pray for success at the forthcoming Middle East peace summit to be held next month at Camp David, Md. [Chicago Tribune]
- The House Assassinations Committee zeroed in on testimony by James Earl Ray that he was framed for the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Under intense questioning by congressmen, Ray was repeatedly confronted with evidence in sharp contrast to his own testimony. The heated session, carried live on television, also produced evidence that Ray stalked King across the South before the civil rights leader was slain in Memphis in 1968. [Chicago Tribune]
- American news coverage of the first anniversary of Elvis Presley's death is an attempt to detract public attention from strikes by Memphis police and firemen, the official Soviet news agency Tass said. [Chicago Tribune]
- Negotiations to end a strike by Memphis police and firemen were deadlocked, and Mayor Wyeth Chandler rejected AFL-CIO President George Meany's call for binding arbitration. Union officials said they had reached agreement with the city on wages but that the unions are insisting on a one-year agreement, while the city wants a two-year pact. [Chicago Tribune]
- The House voted overwhelmingly to refuse funds for construction of another Senate office building -- one which critics have described as an American Taj Mahal. However, the House vote broke with the tradition of allowing each branch of Congress to tend to its own housekeeping chores, and the rejection is not expect to stand. [Chicago Tribune]
- The Civil Aeronautics Board, stripping air travel of yet another layer of red tape, issued new charter flight rules ending the requirement for passengers to buy tickets in advance and allowing more liberal discount prices. [Chicago Tribune]
- Clairol, the nation's largest maker of hair dye, announced that a suspected cancer-causing ingredient has been removed from its products to avoid putting cancer warnings on labels and in beauty salons. Dr. John Menkart, Clairol Senior Vice President of Technology, said a reformulation of his firm's 200 shades of dyes has been completed. The Food and Drug Administration, which proposed putting the warnings, identified the suspected cancer-causing chemical as 4-methoxy-m-phenylenediamine plus its sulphate. [Chicago Tribune]
- The latest cancer evidence against the meat preservative nitrite is considered so damning that food safety experts of the Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration have drawn up a plan to ban the chemical completely. Nitrite is used in more than 9.1 billion pounds of bacon, hot dogs, lunch meat, cured fish, and other products each year. Based on a study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, consuming 8 ounces of nitrite-cured meat a day exposes a person to a lifetime cancer risk of between 1 in 740 and 1 in 3,320. [Chicago Tribune]
- Three jubilant American balloonists, conquerors of the Atlantic, eased their Double Eagle II into a Normandy wheat field, where it was attacked by an ecstatic crowd seeking souvenirs of the first successful Atlantic balloon crossing. The three then were whisked to Paris to see their wives. [Chicago Tribune]
- The biggest fear of self-styled Croatian freedom fighter Stepjan Bilandzic has been the threat that West Germany will turn him over to Yugoslav authorities in exchange for four German terrorists the Yugoslays are holding. But Bilandzic's wife pleaded for two Croatian terrorists to end their siege in the West German consulate in Chicago. The terrorists were demanding that West Germany release Bilandzic, but his wife said her husband "wants justice, not bloodshed." [Chicago Tribune]
- Afghanistan's rulers have smashed a plot to overthrow the new leftist government and arrested the defense minister and chief of army staff, Kabul Radio said. The arrested defense minister, Abdul Khadir, is a former air force officer who spearheaded a bloody coup last April 27 that ousted President Mohammad Daoud and brought in the new government of President Noor Mohammad Taraki. [Chicago Tribune]
- Rosalynn Carter says the public doesn't always see her husband, the President, the way he really is. In fact, the First Lady, who turns 51 Friday and has been married to Jimmy Carter for 32 years, says he's just the opposite of what many people say he is. "They think he's incompetent -- he's not incompetent. They think he is indecisive -- he is not indecisive. He's very strong, he's very determined, he knows what he wants, and he doesn't back down," she told a New York audience recently. But he is a realist, she says: "He knows that in politics, you have to compromise." [Chicago Tribune]
- Hawkers as well as fans are clogging the streets around Elvis Presley's mansion this week on the first anniversary of his death. And some of the fans are complaining that the peddlers are making a mockery of the rock and roll king's memory. But souvenir seller Daniel Brant thinks otherwise: "You think we're bloodsuckers, huh? Well, Elvis' motto was 'taking care of business.' If he were alive and could see the upsurge of activity around here, he'd take advantage of it. I don't think he'd have any disdain for what we're doing." [Chicago Tribune]
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Stock Market Report
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 900.12 (+5.54, +0.62%)
Arms Index is the ratio of volume per declining issue to volume per advancing issue; a figure below 1.0 is bullish. | |||||||||||||||
| Market Index Trends | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Date | DJIA | S&P | Volume* |
| August 16, 1978 | 894.58 | 104.65 | 36.13 |
| August 15, 1978 | 887.13 | 103.85 | 29.78 |
| August 14, 1978 | 888.17 | 103.97 | 32.32 |
| August 11, 1978 | 890.85 | 103.96 | 33.55 |
| August 10, 1978 | 885.48 | 103.66 | 39.75 |
| August 9, 1978 | 891.63 | 104.50 | 48.79 |
| August 8, 1978 | 889.21 | 104.01 | 34.30 |
| August 7, 1978 | 885.05 | 103.55 | 33.35 |
| August 4, 1978 | 888.43 | 103.92 | 37.92 |
| August 3, 1978 | 886.87 | 103.51 | 66.37 |