News stories from Saturday August 7, 1976

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

New laboratory tests again failed to identify an influenza or other virus that might have caused the outbreak of the mysterious respiratory disease in Pennsylvania. State health officials expressed total bafflement about the origin of the illness that caused 25 deaths. There have been no other deaths since late last week, but some of the 135 people who apparently caught the disease at the American Legion convention in Philadelphia last month were still in critical condition. [New York Times] The dominant mood among the thousands of people who have gone to the 41st International Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia has been one of celebration. "We were long overdue for a party, and at last we're having it," a priest said as he entered the convention hall. He was among the participants who have been eager to sing and pray together, to meet and to get to know one another and, as a teenage usherette put it, "to feel good about being Catholic." The high point of the congress which organizers and visitors said is an event of extraordinary significance for the Church, will come at its final session today when Pope Paul VI makes an address from Rome by satellite. [New York Times] The latest test of a Martian soil sample by Viking 1 has given the strongest indication yet of biological activity on the planet, according to scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. This was a radioactivity reading from the craft's so-called pyrolytic release experiment, that matched the readings produced by algae and bacteria in the soil of a dry valley in Antarctica, long regarded as one of the closest terrestrial analogues of Martian terrain. However, the scientists cautioned that a "control" test for confirmation, involving pre-sterilization of soil from the same sample, collected July 28, would have to be done. The laboratory also announced that Viking 2 had gone into orbit around Mars. The craft is scheduled to land there Sept. 4. [New York Times] Mayor Beame and New York City Comptroller Harrison Goldin sought to obtain assurances from the Securities and Exchange Commission that neither they nor the city would be prosecuted as a result of an S.E.C. investigation into the sale of city notes and bonds, according to well-placed S.E.C. and Capitol Hill sources. The mayor and Mr. Goldin were understood to have made the request to the S.E.C. at a meeting in New York on July 22, five days before the city brought suit against the commission, charging that the S.E.C. had no authority to investigate its security sales. [New York Times] The United States and Iran announced that Iran planned to spend $10 billion for military purchases from the United States as part of mounting trade between the two countries that would total about $50 billion from last year through 1980. In an effort to emphasize the growing political, economic and military ties between Washington and Teheran, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Iran's Economics Minister, Hushang Ansary, signed a communique in Teheran after a two-day meeting of the Iran-American Joint Commission. The communique set forth ambitious goals of cooperation for the rest of the decade and showed no sign of a let-up in the arms sales, which were recently criticized in Washington in a Senate staff study. [New York Times] President Idi Amin of Uganda and President Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya signed peace documents pledging to resume normal relations, reduce the threat of war and resume trade. The documents were signed in Kampala by President Amin, and in Mombasa by President Kenyatta. [New York Times] Calm was restored to Soweto, the black township in South Africa where eight people were killed and at least 41 injured in four days of rioting, but police across the country remained on an alert. The objective of the demonstrators was to prevent residents of Soweto from getting to their jobs in Johannesburg. It was believed that peace was mainly due to the exhaustion of the demonstrators, who have had little sleep, and the quieting influence of parents home in greater numbers over the weekend. [New York Times] White South Africa, which prides itself on one of the highest standards of living in the world, was enjoying an open-air weekend. Only on Johannesburg newspaper billboards was there any sign that dozens of black youths were lying in hospitals with police bullet wounds nine miles to the southwest. After weeks of upheaval in Soweto, the black "shadow city" sprawling beyond abandoned gold mines, the white community remains almost untouched. [New York Times]