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Thursday April 20, 1978
. . . where the 1970s live forever!

News stories from Thursday April 20, 1978


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

  • Italy's Red Brigades distributed a photograph of Aldo Moro that purported to show that the former Prime Minister was alive and apparently in good health at the time a remote mountain lake was being searched for his body. The terrorists, in a new message distributed simultaneously in four cities, gave the government 48 hours to save Mr. Moro's life by releasing an unspecified number of "Communist prisoners." They accused the government of having issued a false report this week that Mr. Moro had been slain and his body thrown into the lake. [New York Times]
  • Soviet fighter planes forced a South Korean airliner down in the Soviet Union near the Arctic Circle, Canadian and American officials said. The Korean plane, carrying 113 persons, was on its way to Seoul from Paris. [New York Times]
  • The Senate voted on a bill to prohibit federal intelligence agencies from using electronic surveillance methods without a court order; the lone dissenting vote came from William Lloyd Scott. The House will now consider the bill.

    Former FBI director L. Patrick Gray and two top aides were arraigned on charges of allowing illegal surveillance methods. There was a demonstration of support for Gray and aides Mark Felt and Edward Miller by present and former FBI agents. They are on trial for allegedly having approved illegal break-ins against the radical Weather Underground group, among others, during the Nixon administration.

    Attorney General Griffin Bell announced at a Senate Judiciary committee hearing plans for new guidelines and a new charter for the FBI. [CBS]

  • Pleas of not guilty were made by L. Patrick Gray, former Acting Director of the F.B.I., and two other former high officials of the bureau in Federal District Court in Washington in response to felony charges arising from break-ins committed by F.B.I. agents in a hunt for radical fugitives six years ago. Just before they entered their pleas they were loudly applauded in front of the courthouse by a crowd of 700 persons, most of them agents or former agents. [New York Times]
  • President Carter was told by three senior Democratic members of the House Ways and Means Committee that Congress would not enact a tax bill like the one he proposed in January. Al Ullman, the committee's chairman, and Dan Rostenkowski and Joe Waggoner reviewed the series of defeats Mr. Carter's revenue-raising tax reform proposals have had this week at a White House meeting with the President. The committee, meanwhile, turned back another of Mr. Carter's tax proposals today, by voting to defer indefinitely action on a measure that would tighten up accounting procedures that may be used by farming syndicates and so-called family corporation farms. Mr. Waggoner told reporters, "We tried to explain to him he had no constituency in the Congress or in the country for these reforms." He said that Mr. Carter "has never been talked to as candidly as he was this morning." [New York Times]
  • President Carter appealed to Congress to "fulfill its duty to the American people" and enact an energy program. The President was forceful in his urging and his stance appeared to reflect a decision to be more assertive, a decision made last weekend at a meeting at Camp David with cabinet members and the White House senior staff. The discussions dealt with a wide range of criticism of the administration, including complaints of vacillation and indecisiveness. [New York Times]
  • There has been a lack of information about conditions inside Cambodia since the Khmer Rouge took over. Yugoslavian television filmed two reports there within the past month. Mass murders have been by committed by Cambodian Communists, according to refugees who have escaped, mostly to Thailand, but neutral observers have generally been unable to confirm these reports. Details about life in Cambodia are shown in the films brought out by a Belgrade TV news team; it is noteworthy that only regimes friendly with Cambodia, particularly Communist China, have been allowed to send people into the country. Cambodia's use of children as laborers in most areas of commerce and industry were filmed, along with the lifestyles of the people. [CBS]
  • The Soviet wife and daughter of an American professor attempted to chain themselves to a fence at the U.S. embassy in Moscow in protest over the Soviet Union's refusal to allow her to emigrate to the United States. University of Virginia professor Woodford McClellan is married to Irina Astakhova, but the Soviets refuse to allow McClellan back into Russia and also refuse to allow his wife out, saying that she knows state secrets. In a 1975 interview, Mrs. McClellan noted that her husband was allowed to see her for two years, and if she had such secrets, she could have told them to him then.

    Today's incident at the U.S. embassy occurred during Secretary of State Vance's visit, but the Soviets claimed that "technical difficulties" prevented the broadcast of pictures from Moscow. An audio broadcast of the incident was played; video was noted as being blocked by Soviet authorities, and the transmission of photographs by UPI and Associated Press were disallowed as well. Professor McClellan said that his wife is obviously desperate, and he hopes her gamble will succeed. [CBS]

  • Police in Columbus, Georgia, discovered a possible seventh victim of the stocking strangler; the victim is schoolteacher Janet Cofer. There are no suspects in the case as yet. [CBS]
  • Prominent American Jews -- 37 rabbis, scholars, writers and community leaders -- sent a message supporting the leaders of an Israeli peace group that recently called on the Begin government to exercise "greater flexibility" in its peace policy. The message's signers included Saul Bellow, the novelist; Seymour Lipset, the political scientist, and Irving Levine of the American Jewish Committee. [New York Times]
  • The dollar soared and gold prices plunged in foreign exchange markets following the Carter administration's decision to sell 300,000 ounces a month of Fort Knox gold for six months. The government will also take another step in its more vigorous support of the dollar. Anthony Solomon, the Under Secretary of the Treasury for Monetary Affairs, said that the United States, at a meeting next week of the International Monetary Fund in Mexico City, would propose ways to strengthen the surveillance of international monetary behavior. [New York Times]
  • Stock prices surged on the Big Board's fourth busiest session in its history in which a total of 43.23 million shares was traded and many were bought by foreign customers. The market's biggest advance was made early in the day in response to the Treasury Department's announcement of plans to sell gold at public auctions to support the dollar. The Dow Jones industrial average finished with a gain of 6.50 points at 814.54. [New York Times]


Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 814.54 (+6.50, +0.80%)
S&P Composite: 94.54 (+0.68, +0.72%)
Arms Index: 0.71

IssuesVolume*
Advances1,03127.77
Declines4759.02
Unchanged4096.44
Total Volume43.23
* in millions of shares

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
DateDJIAS&PVolume*
April 19, 1978808.0493.8635.06
April 18, 1978803.2793.4338.97
April 17, 1978810.1294.4563.49
April 14, 1978795.1392.9252.28
April 13, 1978775.2190.9831.58
April 12, 1978766.2990.1126.22
April 11, 1978770.1890.2524.30
April 10, 1978773.6590.4925.74
April 7, 1978769.5890.1725.17
April 6, 1978763.9589.7927.36


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