News stories from Thursday October 26, 1978

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

At an oceanfront political rally in Miami Beach for Democratic candidates, President Carter disclosed almost off-handedly that he will sign the $18.7 billion tax cut passed by Congress. After the rally, Carter attended a $1,000-a-person fundraiser for state Sen. Bob Graham, who is running for governor. Earlier, he campaigned in Nashville for Tennessee Democrats. [Chicago Tribune] The continuing fall of the dollar overseas, plus a decline in the stock market, have shrouded President Carter's new voluntary wage-price guideline program with a credibility problem, officials say. The President's economic advisers believe the government must move swiftly and aggressively to enforce the program to convince the public that he is serious. Officials perceive a generally lackadaisical public attitude about the program. [Chicago Tribune] Nancy Jordan, wife of presidential assistant Hamilton Jordan, has filed for divorce on grounds that the couple's eight-year marriage is irretrievably broken. The couple separated Jan. 1, according to the suit, which was filed last Friday in Fulton County Superior Court. They were married Jan. 20, 1970. [Chicago Tribune] Common Cause filed suit against President Carter in an effort to prevent his interim appointment of a friend of House Speaker Tip O'Neill to the Federal Election Commission. Common Cause, the consumer's lobby, called the appointment of Boston lawyer John McGarry "a political payoff" and accused Carter of "playing the shabbiest politics." [Chicago Tribune] The stock market continued to sink, weighed down by interest rate, dollar, and inflation problems. More than 1,300 issues posted losses and fewer than 200 stocks gained. The Dow Jones industrial average declined 9.09 to close at 821.12.The battered American dollar will recover somewhat next year, but the strength will be "transitory" because of inflation, Chicago bank economist Donald Kemp said. The new president of American Motors Corp. says those people standing by with hammer, nails and coffin for the automaker will have a long wait. Soon, Paul Tippett insists, such words as "ailing" no longer will apply to AMC. [Chicago Tribune] Palestinian chief Yasser Arafat condemned the Camp David accords as a ticket to Palestinian "slavery" and said the agreements make a Middle East War more likely. In his first interview with an American correspondent since the accords were fashioned, the guerrilla leader also said Washington was trying to get him to join the Camp David negotiating process for Palestinian self-rule on the Jordan River's West Bank and the Gaza Strip, where 1.1 million Palestinians live. [Chicago Tribune] Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan arrived in Washington tonight and declared that Israeli settlers on the occupied Jordanian West Bank were there to stay whether the United States and Egypt objected or not. Returning for peace treaty talks with Egypt, he said the U.S. was to blame for the dispute that flared up after Israel's decision to enlarge its West Bank settlements. [Chicago Tribune] Canada's 23,000 striking postal workers bowed to government power and reported back to work today, and five of their union leaders went to court on charges of prolonging the walkout in defiance of an emergency federal law. The post office reported more than 93 percent of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers members were back at their jobs, but that it would take a few days for operations to return to normal. [Chicago Tribune] Pope John Paul II, meeting with Lebanese Maronite bishops, said he will do everything in his power to bring peace to Lebanon, even to visiting the war-torn country. The Pope received the Patriarch of Antioch, Antoine Pierre Khoraiche, and three other Maronite bishops after a 45-minute audience with French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing. Giscard said he was "deeply moved by the beaming personality of John Paul II." [Chicago Tribune] Two members of an all-woman expedition that scaled the 26,545-foot Annapurna main peak have died, an official of Nepal's Tourism Ministry said today. The victims were identified in San Francisco as Vera Watson, 46, of Stanford, Cal., a computer programmer at IBM Corp. in San Jose, Cal., and Alison Onyszkiewicz, 36, of Leeds, England, an art lecturer. Watson had been the first lone woman to climb Aconcagua peak in Argentina, the highest peak in the Western hemisphere. Circumstances of the deaths were not immediately learned. [Chicago Tribune] The assassin who killed Bulgarian defector Georgi Markov may have murdered as many as eight other victims in Europe, the Evening Standard said. Commander Jim Nevill, chief of Scotland Yard's anti-terror squad, described the newspaper report as speculation and said police had no knowledge of other victims. Markov, a broadcaster and playwright who defected from Bulgaria in 1970 and became an outspoken critic of its Communist regime, died Sept. 11. [Chicago Tribune] Angered when a commercial blood bank in Omaha turned him down as a paid donor, a bearded drifter stabbed to death the center's medical director and a processing employee. Omaha police later booked James Tulloch, 33, on two counts of suspicion of first-degree murder. Dead are Dr. Paul Reichstadt and Bernadette Fuller, both employees of Blood Plasma Services, Inc. [Chicago Tribune] The majority of American workers drive to their jobs alone, the government reported today, and the number of workers using public transportation is decreasing. [Chicago Tribune] Snipers firing from a rooftop killed the police chief of the southern Iranian city of Jahrom and critically wounded the town's martial law commander, officials said. There were reports that at least six other persons were killed in antigovernment disturbances. The two officials were on patrol in Jahrom, one of a dozen cities placed under martial law Sept. 7, when they were shot. [Chicago Tribune] Huge piles of garbage obstructed Paris sidewalks, French merchant shipping was paralyzed, and mail deliveries were reduced sharply in the biggest wave of public service strikes to hit France in years. At issue in the strikes, which began over the weekend, were disputes over working conditions and job security rather than wage levels. [Chicago Tribune]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 821.12 (-9.09, -1.09%)
S&P Composite: 96.03 (-1.28, -1.32%)
Arms Index: 1.38

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	163	2.26
Declines	1,471	28.10
Unchanged	253	1.63
Total Volume		31.99

* 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*
October 25, 1978	830.21	97.31	31.38
October 24, 1978	832.55	97.49	28.88
October 23, 1978	839.66	98.18	36.09
October 20, 1978	838.01	97.95	43.67
October 19, 1978	846.41	99.33	31.81
October 18, 1978	859.67	100.49	32.97
October 17, 1978	866.34	101.26	37.87
October 16, 1978	875.17	102.61	24.60
October 13, 1978	897.09	104.66	21.93
October 12, 1978	896.74	104.88	30.17