News stories from Wednesday October 25, 1978

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

Sen. Edward Brooke [R., Mass.] was absolved by the Senate Ethics Committee of charges he altered key documents needed in an investigation of his finances. But the investigation will continue. The committee's chief counsel, Richard Wertheimer, resigned Oct. 12 after charging that altered documents hindered the panel's probe. [Chicago Tribune] Billy Carter testified before a federal grand jury investigating the financial dealings of former budget director Bert Lance and then told reporters that Lance "hasn't done a damn thing wrong." President Carter's brother said "Republican prosecutors" and a "Republican, Yankee press" are out to "destroy Bert Lance." [Chicago Tribune] The crew of a Pacific Southwest Airlines 727 jetliner apparently lost sight of a small Cessna just before colliding with it in the worst crash in U.S. history, the Los Angeles Times reported. The paper published an interview with unnamed officials who said they had listened to a cockpit tape-recording of the crew's conversation shortly before the collision. [Chicago Tribune] President Carter vetoed a $7 billion spending authorization bill for the Small Business Administration. Aides said the bill would have cost the government $2 billion more than the President recommended. They said the legislation would have led to increased borrowing from the S.B.A. in connection with disaster relief loans. [Chicago Tribune] A stock market rally faded in late trading, weighed down by negative reaction over the President's anti-inflation program and a falling dollar. While declining stocks and gainers finished about even, the Dow Jones industrial average, up 6 points at one time, slipped 2.34 to close at 830.21.The dollar sank to new lows against major foreign currencies in a thumbs-down reaction to President Carter's anti-inflation program. There was some late recovery on Treasury Secretary Michael Blumenthal's statement that indicated U.S. support for the greenback in disorderly foreign markets. Henry Kaufman, partner of Salomon Brothers, believes "we should all support the President," but he thinks Carter's package to curb inflation through voluntary compliance "eventually will prove ineffective and will be followed by Phase 3 -- mandatory wage and price controls." He told the convention of the American Bankers Association in Hawaii that "the present situation is far more precarious than it was in 1971, when the last controls were imposed." [Chicago Tribune] Roger Underhill, a key witness against fugitive pornographer Mike Thevis, was killed today in an apparent ambush shooting in Atlanta. Underhill, 50, once a dominant figure in the $100-million Thevis bookstore and peep-show empire, identified Thevis as the killer of a competing adult bookstore operator eight years ago. [Chicago Tribune] A 36-year-old Boise woman who received a corneal transplant on Aug. 21 has died of rabies, which it is believed she contracted from the transplant. About 150 people who may have come into contact with the woman and the cornea donor -- a 39-year-old Oregon man who died Aug. 20 -- may have to undergo painful rabies shots to ward off the disease, health officials say. [Chicago Tribune] The Salt Lake City jail, an ambulance crew and officials at two hospitals turned away a 51-year-old incapacitated "street person" found lying under an overpass covered with maggots, forcing a policeman to leave him on a hospital lawn. The victim, Robert Thornton, eventually was treated at the Veterans Administration medical center -- where a surgical resident initially had rejected him -- when a nursing supervisor learned he was outside in 41-degree temperature. [Chicago Tribune] Remington Arms Co. is recalling about 200,000 guns following a $6.3 million settlement to a Texas man who claimed he was shot by a rifle whose trigger had not been pulled. The company said it is recalling four models of bolt-action guns made before February, 1975, so their trigger assemblies can be replaced: Mohawk 600 rifle, Remington 600 and 660 rifle and XP-100 pistol. [Chicago Tribune] Attack jets from an aircraft carrier missed their practice targets and dropped 32 live bombs near a rural community, officials said. Today, three days after the 500-pound bombs had been dropped and exploded upon impact, the Navy still had not publicly explained how it happened. There were no injuries. The target was a practice bombing range on the Marine Corps base at Twentynine Palms, a major training area for the Navy and Marines in the Mojave Desert about 120 miles east of Los Angeles. [Chicago Tribune] Alfred Kahn, who presided over airline fare reductions as head of the Civil Aeronautics Board, took over the job of reducing something much more intractable: the rate of inflation. President Carter announced that Kahn will run his new anti-inflation program, with its voluntary wage-price guidelines and its use of government buying and regulation to force compliance. [Chicago Tribune] The Israeli cabinet, after three days of intensive debate, has approved in principle a draft peace treaty with Egypt. But it added several amendments -- still undisclosed -- that are to be negotiated during further talks with Egyptian representatives in Washington. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin said a final version of the peace treaty would have to be approved by both the cabinet and the parliament. In Cairo, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat said he is confident a peace treaty will be signed. [Chicago Tribune] Egyptian security forces have smashed a Communist plot to overthrow President Anwar Sadat and seize power, the semi-official newspaper Al-Abram said. The newspaper said thee alleged conspirators belonging to a secret Communist organization were arrested and appeared in court today. The report said the group was named the Organization of the Egyptian Communist Party. [Chicago Tribune] White Rhodesians are triumphantly toasting the troops who smashed several black nationalist guerrilla camps in neighboring Mozambique and Zambia. But some blacks fear the raids, which reportedly killed 1,500 guerrillas and destroyed great quantities of Soviet-made arms, will provoke terrorist reprisals and further dim chances for an end to the six-year war. "It was fantastic and way overdue," a white doctor said of the government raids. "If these terrorists want to come in and murder Rhodesian civilians, they must expect us to hit them before they hit us." [Chicago Tribune] About 1,500 prisoners, including 1,126 political prisoners, were released from Iranian jails as widespread anti-Shah demonstrations shut down Tehran's two major universties for the third consecutive week. An estimated 3,000 students demonstrated at the Aryamehr Technical University campus in downtown Tehran. A similar anti-Shah demonstration was held by leftist students at Tehran University. The prisoners were freed under an amnesty in observance of Shah Reza Pahlavi's 59th birthday. [Chicago Tribune] The health of Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev has become so uncertain that Western observers believe he is no longer capable of serious negotiations, the Times of London reported. The newspaper said this is one reason final stages of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty talks between the Soviet Union and the United States are proving difficult. [Chicago Tribune] Black African nations, dissatisfied with the result of Western negotiations in Pretoria last week, have asked for a United Nations Security Council meeting to press for economic sanctions against South Africa for refusing to accept a U.N. plan for bringing independence to South-West Africa [Namibia]. The South Africans insisted on holding their own elections in the territory in December, but agreed to allow a second, U.N.-supervised election at a later date. [Chicago Tribune] Mexican President Jose Lopez Portillo told a Spanish language class at the University of Peking that the basic human rights of Mexican migrant workers are being violated in the United States. He said American employers abuse, exploit, and shame Mexican migrant workers. Lopez Portillo, who is on an official visit to China, told the students Mexico must find a way to create jobs to stop the flow of hundreds of thousands of Mexicans across the border to the U.S. [Chicago Tribune] Officials in Melbourne, Australia, deny they are withholding a vivid description of an unidentified flying object given to air-traffic controllers by a young pilot who said an alien craft was chasing him. The pilot and his plane vanished, and a land, sea and air search turned up no trace of either. [Chicago Tribune]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 830.21 (-2.34, -0.28%)
S&P Composite: 97.31 (-0.18, -0.18%)
Arms Index: 1.26

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	634	10.01
Declines	846	16.84
Unchanged	398	4.53
Total Volume		31.38

* 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 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
October 11, 1978	901.42	105.39	21.74