News stories from Tuesday September 19, 1978
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- Hurricane Greta dissolved into a windy rainstorm, leaving behind hundreds of destroyed homes, ruined crops, washed-out roads, snarled communications, and floodwater in Honduras and Belize. Only one casualty was reported. The Honduran Red Cross said a child in the coastal town of La Ceiba was swept away by the tides. [Chicago Tribune]
- Liberal Republican Edward Brooke, the Senate's only black, survived a strong right-wing challenge in Massachusetts, but Democratic Governor Michael Dukakis was ousted by voters apparently fed up with high taxes. Brooke defeated conservative TV talk show host Avi Nelson, who has never held political office. Primary elections were also held in Oklahoma and Washington state today. [Chicago Tribune]
- Today was back-to-the-old-routine day for President Carter, almost as though his Camp David summit parley hadn't happened. Sen. Bill Roth [R., Del.], who on Monday suggested the Nobel Peace Prize for Carter, denounced the administration today for failing to support his tax reduction bill. And Rep. Eldon Rudd [R., Ariz.], who had praised Carter's speech to Congress Monday night, demanded an explanation Tuesday about a report that the C.I.A. is supplying arms to Nicaraguan rebels. [Chicago Tribune]
- The Senate Finance Committee approved new tax relief for business in an effort to stimulate investment and curb inflation. The amendment would cut taxes on businesses by $513 million next year, with the cut growing to $3 billion in 1983. The panel, meanwhile, delayed action on a proposal that would expand the income tax cuts voted by the House for most persons making $40,000 a year or less. [Chicago Tribune]
- The Senate defeated the first move by opponents of the compromise natural gas pricing and regulating bill to kill or rewrite it. Voting 59 to 39, the Senators rejected a motion to send the measure back to the Senate-House conference with instructions to remove its key pricing provisions. A final vote has been scheduled for Sept. 27. If the bill passes, it then will go to the House. [Chicago Tribune]
- A Senate subcommittee was told of four new grand jury investigations -- two in the state of New York and one each in Newark, N.J., and Boston -- as the "ugly and disgusting saga" of scandals at the General Services Administration unfolded further. Fifty G.S.A. employees have been disciplined, 80 agency employees have been transferred, and G.S.A. administrator Jay Solomon says he has instituted 19 major policy changes. [Chicago Tribune]
- Stocks fell for a sixth consecutive session amid worry about rising interest rates and a report of a drop in housing starts last month. The market got another downward shove on news that Jordan's King Hussein disassociated his country from the Camp David accords. The Dow Jones industrial average dosed 8.58 lower at 861.57.
Ford Motor Co. said it is raising prices of its 1979 model cars an average of $297, 4.2 percent. The increase is in line with the previously announced General Motors Corp. price increase. averaging $302, or 4.1 percent.
The United States reduced its balance of payments deficit by more than half in the first quarter, an encouraging sign for the nation's economy, the Commerce Department said.
[Chicago Tribune] - Lillian Carter, mother of President Carter, said she received a telephone call from the President after the Camp David summit talks were concluded and that he wept with relief while talking to her. She quoted him as saying, "Mother, it was the toughest thing I've ever done." [Chicago Tribune]
- Muhammad Ali credits a special formula of minerals, herbs, seeds and nuts invented by comedian Dick Gregory with providing him the stamina to recapture the heavyweight championship from Leon Spinks last Friday night. Gregory said he devised the formula nine years ago to help wipe out world hunger. [Chicago Tribune]
- The Chicago police department has been made virtually helpless to protect the city from terrorist activity by restrictions placed on its intelligence-gathering activity, Chicago Police Supt. James O'Grady told the House Intelligence Committee in Washington. He said a lawsuit filed in 1974 by the Alliance to End Repression prevented the department from gathering intelligence on the Nazi party before its recent march in Chicago, and on Croatian terrorists who recently occupied the West German consulate in the city. [Chicago Tribune]
- President Carter has promised that he and his wife, Rosalynn, will visit Egypt next summer. The pledge was one of two the President made at Camp David; the other was an agreement for the United States to build two airfields for Israel to compensate for two bases that Israel is returning to Egypt. [Chicago Tribune]
- Saudi Arabia and Jordan issued statements critical of the Camp David accords, saying the agreements failed to recognize the rights of the Palestinians. The support of both nations is considered critical to the success of the Middle East peace effort. [Chicago Tribune]
- The Israeli cabinet voted to evict 200 religious radicals who had erected a makeshift settlement on the West Bank of the Jordan River in defiance of the Camp David peace accords. "The government repudiates every settlement set up without its approval," the cabinet announcement said. [Chicago Tribune]
- Planes sprayed disinfectants to ward off epidemics as geologists warned that as many as 600 new tremors could hit eastern Iran, where 16,000 people died in a devastating earthquake. Iran Radio said some babies were pulled alive from the wreckage of Tabas and surrounding villages. In Tehran, nine persons were killed when a plane crashed on its way with relief supplies to the devastated area. [Chicago Tribune]
- Government troops have swept into the northern Nicaraguan town of Esteli, the last town held by rebels trying to overthrow President Anastasio Somoza, informed sources in Managua said. They said the National Guard went into the town at night after a heavy airborne rocket bombardment. There was no word of casualties. [Chicago Tribune]
- A cloud of poisonous hydrogen sulfide gas from a tanning plant billowed over the crowded port of Genoa, Italy, killing three men. Dozens were treated in hospitals. Hundreds in downtown Genoa complained of nausea and headaches. At one hospital doctors and nurses became ill after breathing fumes from the clothes and hair of patients. The fumes originated at the Bocciardo plant when a truck driver erroneously pumped 25 tons of chrome sulfate from a tank truck into a basin containing sodium hydrosulfide. [Chicago Tribune]
- British newspapers singled out a willowy, tawny-haired Czech countess as Prince Charles' latest girlfriend. Angelika Lazansky spent last weekend with Charles at Balmoral Castle, but a Buckingham Palace spokesman said the romance rumors were "a whole load of rubbish." [Chicago Tribune]
- According to impressionist Rich Little, politicians who want to gauge their standing with the public would do well to forget the polls and check with him. "The more trouble they get into the more popular they are in the show," Little said. Richard Nixon was a good example of that, and he's finding the same is true of President Carter. "Carter gets a better reaction now than he did even two months ago;" Little explained. "The more unpopular they become or problems they have or if the American people become a little disillusioned, the more they want to sea somebody poke fun at them." There are some voices he doesn't do. "I don't do [Vice President] Mondale because I don't think people would recognize him. I don't do Cyrus Vance because I don't even know what he sounds like." [Chicago Tribune]
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Stock Market Report
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 861.57 (-8.58, -0.99%)
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* |
| September 18, 1978 | 870.15 | 103.21 | 35.83 |
| September 15, 1978 | 878.55 | 104.12 | 37.29 |
| September 14, 1978 | 887.04 | 105.10 | 37.40 |
| September 13, 1978 | 899.60 | 106.34 | 43.33 |
| September 12, 1978 | 906.44 | 106.99 | 34.41 |
| September 11, 1978 | 907.74 | 106.98 | 39.66 |
| September 8, 1978 | 907.74 | 106.79 | 42.07 |
| September 7, 1978 | 893.71 | 105.42 | 40.30 |
| September 6, 1978 | 895.79 | 105.38 | 42.61 |
| September 5, 1978 | 886.61 | 104.49 | 32.18 |