News stories from Wednesday August 9, 1978

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

The House gave President Carter a breakthrough victory on his move to reorganize the civil service by rejecting 381 to 10 a resolution calling for disapproval of the overall plan. And it appears unlikely that the Senate will reject the general plan since there is no move in the works to bring up a similar resolution before the Friday deadline for such action. Under a law enacted last year, the President is empowered to go ahead with reorganization of the bureaucracy on a case-by-case basis unless Congress disapproves within 60 days of his presenting a general framework for the action. [Los Angeles Times] More than 7,000 ground employees across the nation struck Pan American World Airways in a contract dispute, a Teamsters spokesman said. Pan Am officials said the airline's operations would not be immediately affected because of undisclosed contingency plans. It was not known whether pilots would honor Teamster picket lines. Personnel in the dispute include reservations, sales and passenger service employees and cargo, medical and supply workers on both U.S. coasts, in Chicago, and on Hawaii and Guam. At issue are wage, pension, cost-of-living and hours provisions in the proposed new contract. Talks reportedly were continuing in New York. [Los Angeles Times] More than 300 fire fighters in Wichita, Kan., ended a 19-hour walkout and returned to work after an appeal by the president of the firefighters union. The firemen walked off the job in a pay dispute at about 3 a.m., leaving the city's 300,000 residents almost without fire protection. No major incidents were reported during the walkout. A union spokesman said the firemen returned to work after they had been assured that the only disciplinary action that would be taken against them would be the loss of a day's pay. [Los Angeles Times] A second subpoena for media information in the "Dr. X" murder case in New Jersey was issued to a publishing house and movie company that dealt with jailed New York Times reporter Myron Farber. Superior Court Judge William Arnold ordered the Doubleday Book Co. and Warner Communications to turn over certain files on negotiations with Farber for a book and film rights to the story. Farber went to jail Friday rather than surrender his files concerning Dr. Mario Jascalevich, on trial on charges of killing three hospital patients with overdoses of the drug curare. [Los Angeles Times] The Senate voted to give East Coast states increased government subsidies to compensate for the higher prices they must pay for imported oil. But the compromise decision also would prohibit the administration's proposal for a much larger subsidy for East Coast oil importers. The subsidy program is designed to offset the sharp difference in price between U.S. petroleum and more expensive imported oil. If approved by the House the compromise would mean slightly higher petroleum costs for consumers in 36 non-East Coast states. [Los Angeles Times] A ranking official of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in New Mexico says fears about a glut of nuclear waste endangering the world are exaggerated. In fact, says Darleane Hoffman, there will come a time when nuclear waste will be a boon, not a problem, as research provides ways to turn spent atomic fuel into usable energy. [Los Angeles Times] A voluntary program designed to improve the efficiency of large trucks and buses has conserved more than 1.7 billion gallons of fuel in the last five years, Secretary of Transportation Brock Adams said. That is enough fuel, he said, to heat the homes of 3 million Americans for a year. He hopes that 18 billion gallons can be saved by 1990, he said. [Los Angeles Times] Four scientists, including a woman, were named as candidates for a space laboratory mission in 1981. Two of the four will be selected later to make the trip, with the others serving as backups. They will conduct scientific experiments on what will be called the Spacelab 2 flight. The finalists are research scientist Loren Acton, 42, of Palo Alto, Calif., research physicist John-David Bartoe, 33, of Reston, Va., research physicist Dianne Prinz, 39, of Alexandria, Va., and solar scientist George Simon, 33, of Alamagordo. [Los Angeles Times] Convicted loan shark Gary Bowdach testified before a Senate subcommittee that the Atlanta federal prison is run like a country club and that "weapons are about as easy to get as a toothbrush." Bowdach said inmates often were better armed than their guards, that murders could be ordered for as little as $500 and that narcotics were freely available. Bowdach, the star witness in a Senate investigation of organized crime, also told of six murders at the prison. He is testifying under a grant of immunity and is in protective custody. [Los Angeles Times] The Commerce Department has approved an export license that will clear the way for the sale of $144 million in oil drilling equipment to the Soviet Union, administration officials said in Washington. It will be the first sale since President Carter on July 31 ordered restrictions on the exporting of oil and gas exploration equipment to the Soviet Union. The move was widely interpreted as a retaliation to the sentences handed down last month against two Soviet dissidents, Anatoly Sharansky and Alexander Ginsburg. [Los Angeles Times] Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos' former executive secretary, once a close friend and political associate, has fled the country by boat and applied for political asylum in the United States. Ernesto Maceda, 43, said that he fled "to escape persecution" after a political break with Marcos. He was forced to use a sailboat, motorboat and then a cargo ship in his escape from Manila to Hong Kong, he said, because he and other political opponents of Marcos had been placed on a blacklist that made them ineligible for exit permits. [Los Angeles Times] Lebanon is proposing to make Beirut an "open city" to end hostilities between Syrian peacekeeping forces and local rightist Christian militias, informed sources said. The proposal to demilitarize the financial and commercial center was part of a step-by-step security plan to end the fighting in the capital of a country that is slightly smaller than Connecticut. "Open city" would mean removal of barriers between Christian and Moslem sectors of the city. [Los Angeles Times] The Pentagon notified Congress it plans to sell Israel 100 kits for television-guided "smart bombs," without high explosives, for $19.6 million. This is the second U.S. sale of 100 such weapons to Israel. The GBU-15 "electrical optical glide bombs" are designed to be fired from F-4 fighter planes against ground targets. The plan is to sell Israel the kits, fuses, technical data and spare parts but not the warheads. Congress has 30 days in which to consider the proposed sale. Without a congressional veto, it will go ahead. [Los Angeles Times] A high-ranking secret police aide to Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu has defected and is in the United States under CIA protection, administration sources said. Lt. Gen. Ion Pacepa has asked U.S. officials to grant him political asylum. Romanian diplomats confirmed that Pacepa was a security official who came to the United States last March as advance man for Ceausescu's April trip to Washington, the Midwest and Texas. [Los Angeles Times] China and Libya issued a joint communique establishing diplomatic relations at ambassadorial level. They also signed agreements covering trade, economic, scientific and cultural cooperation. The agreements followed visits to Peking by a Libyan delegation. Libya has diplomatic ties with Taiwan, China's enemy, although informed sources said no Libyan diplomats are in Taiwan, and the China-Libya communique omitted the usual phrase recognizing Peking as the sole government of China. [Los Angeles Times] At least 200 members of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's Congress Party were injured in clashes with police during countrywide "Save India" demonstrations launched by the party. Mrs. Gandhi addressed two rallies in New Delhi, charging the present Janata Party government with lack of direction. The lower house of the Indian Parliament, meanwhile, passed a bill to prevent future government misuse of emergency powers such as those Mrs. Gandhi invoked in 1975. [Los Angeles Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 891.63 (+2.42, +0.27%)
S&P Composite: 104.50 (+0.49, +0.47%)
Arms Index: 0.88

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	1,118	31.37
Declines	510	12.66
Unchanged	328	4.77
Total Volume		48.80

* 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*
August 8, 1978	889.21	104.01	34.30
August 7, 1978	885.05	103.55	33.35
August 4, 1978	888.43	103.92	37.92
August 3, 1978	886.87	103.51	66.37
August 2, 1978	883.49	102.92	47.50
August 1, 1978	860.71	100.66	34.81
July 31, 1978	862.27	100.68	33.99
July 28, 1978	856.29	100.00	33.31
July 27, 1978	850.57	99.54	33.97
July 26, 1978	847.19	99.08	36.82