News stories from Thursday September 14, 1978

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

American, Egyptian, and Israeli negotiators acknowledged that they have hit a snag at the Camp David summit meeting. Jody Powell, White House press secretary, said: "More progress and more flexibility are essential." But some diplomatic observers conceded that progress has come more slowly than they had hoped. [Chicago Tribune] The House Assassinations Committee is investigating whether the late George De Mohrenschildt knew in advance that Lee Harvey Oswald would try to shoot retired Gen. Edwin Walker. The committee displayed a photograph of Oswald with a rifle and pistol. The photo had handwriting on the back indicating he sent it to De Mohrenschildt five days before Oswald tried to shoot Walker on April 10, 1963. [Chicago Tribune] The Senate Finance Committee proposed the nation's first negative withholding tax -- money actually added to each paycheck instead of withheld -- as part of a $1.8 billion expansion of tax cuts for about 7.6 million working poor with children. The committee also appeared ready to approve an additional $2 billion individual tax cut atop the $10.8 billion already approved by the House as part of its $16.3 billion bill. However, final decisions were put off until Monday. [Chicago Tribune] The Senate Armed Services Committee unanimously rejected Defense Secretary Harold Brown's plea for hundreds of new military projects. A House committee had turned Brown away Wednesday. Brown, fighting for $2.2 billion in alternate programs to replace the $2 billion nuclear aircraft carrier scuttled by President Carter, was told by the chairman of the Senate committee, John Stennis [D., Miss.]: "We've worked on this bill for a year, and I don't want to go back and redo all this stuff." [Chicago Tribune] The extraordinary and sweeping powers granted the President by Congress in four declared states of emergency over the last 45 years expired today, as required by a law enacted two years ago. The sweeping powers granted presidents since Franklin D. Roosevelt's first term had remained at the disposal of the White House long after the actual emergencies themselves had ended. [Chicago Tribune] Two of four prisoners who engineered a daring escape in Tennessee and ditched a hijacked airplane in Arkansas were seized after their stolen car crashed head-on with a patrol car. The other two remained at large. At nightfall, two dozen police searched for one of them in the Ozark National Forest of north Arkansas. The other was believed bound for Missouri in a stolen car with two elderly hostages. [Chicago Tribune] A Philippines air force plane of the presidential fleet plowed into a Manila suburb, killing at least 33 persons aboard and on the ground. An air force spokesman said lightning might have struck the aircraft. The twin-turboprop was carrying members of President Ferdinand Marcos' security staff and newsmen back to Manila from the northern Philippines. [Chicago Tribune] In Montevideo, the American chief executive and 20 other employees of Ford Motor Company's Uruguayan subsidiary have been jailed on charges of cheating the state out of customs duties on imported auto parts. Police said they were accused of having some parts removed from shipping crates before customs inspectors could verify the contents, then claiming the parts were missing. [Chicago Tribune] The arrest of Corrado Alunni, Italy's most wanted terrorist and reputed leader of the Red Brigades, is a major breakthrough in the hunt for the killers of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro, police say. Alunni, 30, was arrested Wednesday in a suburb of Milan. [Chicago Tribune] The Soviet Union's supersonic airliner, the Tupolev-144, has been quietly withdrawn from passenger service for unexplained reasons, an Aeroflot flight inquiries official disclosed when he told a would-be passenger by phone that the "Concordsky," rival of the Anglo-French Concorde, would not be flying this year. [Chicago Tribune] In South Africa, police raided a squatter camp at Crossroads, outside Cape Town, and arrested hundreds of blacks, witnesses reported. One man reportedly was shot and killed and a baby was trampled to death as residents scuffled with police trying to evict them. Several persons were admitted to hospitals for treatment of bullet wounds, injuries received in beatings, and the effects of tear gas, the witnesses said. The camp of 20,000 was cordoned off by about 600 policemen., Police said they used batons, tear gas, and dogs after they were "attacked with sticks and stones." [Chicago Tribune] Prime Minister Ian Smith has ruled out further contacts with Joshua Nkomo, black nationalist guerrilla leader, and said Rhodesia's only hope for a peaceful settlement now lies with the American and British governments. Addressing a press conference Thursday, Smith described Nkomo as a "monster," and said the biracial transitional government would ban local affiliates of the foreign-based guerrilla movements headed by Nkomo and Robert Mugabe. [Chicago Tribune] A stay-home strike to mourn victims of a clash between anti-Shah demonstrators and army troops spread to Teheran's central business district, despite a government order that businesses stay open. According to an official count, 97 persons were killed in the clash last week. But other sources have placed the death toll in the hundreds. The extent of the strike was difficult to assess, since the strike came on the eve of the Moslem sabbath. [Chicago Tribune] The Nicaraguan National Guard opened an offensive to recapture Leon, a rebel-held city 60 miles northwest of the capital of Managua. President Anastasio Somoza, in a move to save his embattled government, mobilized Guard reserves to throw into the fight at Leon and six other cities and towns. Leon was one of three key cities in the nation's populous northwest still in rebel hands. [Chicago Tribune] Gambling stocks continued to soar, but the general market fell sharply among uneasiness over inflation, the struggling U. S. dollar, and reports of little progress at the Camp David peace talks. The Dow Jones industrial average closed 1?56 points lower at 887.04.Ford Motor Co. elected Philip Caldwell president to succeed the ousted Lee Iacocca. Caldwell, 58, will keep his current positions of vice chairman of the board and deputy chief executive officer. Commercial banks will lose business to other institutions if they continue to squabble over the branch banking issue, John Heimann, U. S. Comptroller of the Currency, said at a bankers' convention in Chicago. He said savings and loan associations and other institutions increasingly are offering traditional banking services and the public doesn't know or care about differences. [Chicago Tribune] First Lady Rosalynn Carter chatted with country singer-songwriter Willie Nelson and his children Amy and Paula after Nelson performed at a White House party for members of the National Association for Stock Car Racing and the Americans who recently crossed the Atlantic by balloon. Mrs. Carter hosted the party. [Chicago Tribune] Fat people can't blame their problem on their ancestors anymore, according to a medical research team that says there is no scientific evidence to blame obesity on heredity. The team says it found a person's environment plays the major role in obesity. Alfred Rimm, a professor of preventive medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin, based the conclusions on a three-year study he undertook with an assistant professor and a mathematician. [Chicago Tribune] First, it was shuttle diplomacy. Now, it's bicycle diplomacy. President Carter is trying to keep the Mideast summit at Camp David informal, and apparently a bicycle is part of the image. The other day, the White House press office released a photograph of Carter, seated on a bicycle, speaking with Egyptian delegates. After that Jody Powell, the president's spokesman, told reporters, "You'll notice the photograph has been carefully cropped so it is not possible to tell if it has trainer wheels." [Chicago Tribune] Neither of them was able to win the 1976 presidential election, but ex-California Gov. Ronald Reagan and former President Gerald Ford are still heavyweights as far as fundraising goes. The one-time political antagonists joined forces in Dallas the other day on behalf of G.O.P. oilman William Clements, who aspires to be governor of Texas. Backers paid $1,000 a plate to hear Ford praise Clements and to hear Reagan liken Carter's foreign, economic, and defense policies to abstract art: "It doesn't make sense no matter how you look at it." How much cash was raised? A bit more than $1.3 million. [Chicago Tribune] A Chicago area songwriter says he's been robbed. Ronald Selle filed suit today in Federal District Court, charging that the Bee Gees stole his music for their hit song and soundtrack recording of "How Deep Is Your Love." The suit, charging violation of federal copyright laws, seeks more than $1 million in profits and damages from the Gibb Brothers -- Barry, Robin, and Maurice. Selle says in the suit that he copyrighted his song, called "Let It End," on Nov. 17, 1975, and later tried to peddle it to Warner Brothers Records. It was rejected. In 1977, the Bee Gees copyrighted their song, on the soundtrack of the movie "Saturday Night Fever." The suit also asks that all copies and recordings of the song be impounded, which would include the movie. Also named as defendants are Paramount Pictures, Warner Brothers, and Stigwood Music. [Chicago Tribune] Those playful Polaroid camera commercials with James Garner have created a problem for actress Marlette Harley. America believes they're really married. "I can understand the general public," she says, "but other people in show business? They come up on the set and say, 'Oh, you act too.' " To make things clear, Hartley, the wife of a French director, has begun wearing a specifically made T-shirt emblazoned with "No, I am not Jim Garner's wife." And to head off any other misconceptions, she bought her 10-week-old daughter, Justine Emilie, a tiny T-shirt that proclaims, "No, I am not Jim Garner's baby." [Chicago Tribune]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 887.04 (-12.56, -1.40%)
S&P Composite: 105.10 (-1.24, -1.17%)
Arms Index: 0.72

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	382	10.61
Declines	1,198	23.93
Unchanged	349	2.93
Total Volume		37.47

* 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
Date	DJIA	S&P	Volume*
September 13, 1978	899.60	106.34	43.33
September 12, 1978	906.44	106.99	34.41
September 11, 1978	907.74	106.98	39.66
September 8, 1978	907.74	106.79	42.07
September 7, 1978	893.71	105.42	40.30
September 6, 1978	895.79	105.38	42.61
September 5, 1978	886.61	104.49	32.18
September 1, 1978	879.33	103.68	35.07
August 31, 1978	876.82	103.29	33.85
August 30, 1978	880.72	103.50	37.76