News stories from Friday April 1, 1977
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- Unemployment declined to 7.3 percent of the work force last month, two-tenths of a percentage point below the February level, the Labor Department said. The decline reflected in part the return to work of people who had been laid off because of the winter's cold and fuel shortages. Total employment rose by 300,000 in March, the fifth consecutive month that there has been an increase. There was, however, an increase in the number of jobless teenagers. The unemployment rate among teenage blacks rose by nearly 3 percentage points to 40.1 percent. [New York Times]
- Most Vietnam war deserters will qualify for an upgrading of their undesirable discharges under the review authorized this week by President Carter. The scope of the President's order is much broader than was first understood, its practical effect appears likely to go far toward ending official punishment of the war evaders. Pentagon sources said that about 60,000 of the 69,170 deserters eligible for relief under the President's order, or more than 85 percent, would satisfy the criteria for an "automatic" improvement in their discharges if they apply to review boards within six months. [New York Times]
- Texas oilmen and anti-Castro Cubans conspired with Lee Harvey Oswald to kill President Kennedy, according to hearsay testimony given to the House Assassinations Committee by a Dutch television newsman. Willem Oltmans was called before the committee after he had said in press and television interviews that the conspiracy to kill President Kennedy involved not only Lee Harvey Oswald but George de Mohrenschildt, who apparently killed himself several days ago; the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, the late H. L. Hunt, the Texas oil millionaire; and Jack Ruby, Oswald's assassin. An F.B.I. spokesman said "all the information from Mr. Oltmans about Mr. de Mohrenschildt is all new to us and probably all new to reality." [New York Times]
- The recession hardly touched the energy-rich states of Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama and Louisiana and in the current recovery they are overtaking the rest of the South in prosperity. This was reported by the Southern Growth Policies Board, an agency formed by 13 Southern states to monitor and aid growth. The report also said that the energy states have grown more rapidly in population, income and employment. The even economic growth of the South is threatened, the report said. [New York Times]
- An ethics code was approved by the Senate in an 86 to 9 vote. The bill was more stringent than a similar one approved last month by the House. Senator Lowell Weicker, Republican of Connecticut, voted against the bill, while the other Senators from the New York metropolitan area voted for it. He said: "It couldn't be more appropriate than to pass the so-called ethics bill on April Fool's Day," because "in a knee-jerk effort to quiet some criticism over a pay raise, we have done fundamental, institutional harm to the Senate." [New York Times]
- Higher tariffs on shoe imports were rejected by President Carter. The International Trade Commission, a domestic trade advisory agency, had urged a tariff increase over five years. The President instructed his chief trade negotiator, Robert Strauss, to seek agreements with Taiwan and South Korea, major exporters of low-priced shoes, to restrict their shipments and ordered that adjustments in federal aid regulations be made to help shoe manufacturers in this country become more competitive. The President's decision was not welcomed in Congress, where there was strong support for the commission's recommendations. [New York Times]
- Samuel Wright, Democratic New York City councilman from Brooklyn, one of the city's most powerful black political leaders, was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of extortion and conspiracy. He was charged with having asked for and received a $5,000 bribe to help a California education services company increase its sales while he was chairman of the Community School 23 in the Ocean-Hill Brownsville section of Brooklyn. Mr. Wright, chairman of the Council's ethics committee, denied the charges. [New York Times]
- It Is very doubtful, Secretary of Defense Harold Brown said, that the United States and the Soviet Union can reach agreement on a reduction of their strategic weapons arsenal before the current freeze on those weapons expires next October. He said that defense spending by the United States would increase by $2 billion annually if President Carter ultimately decided that the Russians were not negotiating in good faith and consequently ordered an acceleration in the development of American weapons. [New York Times]
- The mood and intention of the Soviet leaders apparently was miscalculated by the Carter administration before and during Secretary of State Cyrus Vance's trip to Moscow. Members of the American delegation and others say that the White House did not take seriously the warning signs from Moscow and that the flat rejection of the American arms proposal was unexpected. [New York Times]
- The Centers for Disease Control has found an increase in female hormones in men and women who work in plants making birth control pills. New federal standards to protect workers are under consideration. [CBS]
- President Carter ordered that the presidential yacht "Sequoia" be sold; the yacht was a refuge for Richard Nixon during his last days in office. [CBS]
- Rhodesia's government lifted the ban on admitting blacks to restaurants, hotels, bars and nightclubs. [CBS]
- Nathan Green, a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi Germany, recently leased a store he owns in San Francisco to two people he described as "ordinary." It turns out that they are members of the National Socialist White Workers party and they opened the store as the "Rudolf Hess Bookstore", selling racist and Nazi material. Green is attempting to get his tenants evicted, but local Nazis are fighting it. [CBS]
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Stock Market Report
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 927.36 (+8.23, +0.90%)
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* |
| March 31, 1977 | 919.13 | 98.42 | 16.51 |
| March 30, 1977 | 921.21 | 98.54 | 18.81 |
| March 29, 1977 | 932.01 | 99.69 | 17.03 |
| March 28, 1977 | 926.11 | 99.00 | 16.71 |
| March 25, 1977 | 928.86 | 99.06 | 16.55 |
| March 24, 1977 | 935.67 | 99.70 | 19.65 |
| March 23, 1977 | 942.32 | 100.20 | 19.36 |
| March 22, 1977 | 950.96 | 101.00 | 18.66 |
| March 21, 1977 | 953.54 | 101.31 | 18.04 |
| March 18, 1977 | 961.02 | 101.86 | 19.84 |