News stories from Thursday December 8, 1977

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

Although President Carter once promised to send a health insurance plan to Congress early next year, Secretary Joseph Califano of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare told ABC the bill might not be ready until late in 1978 "or early in 1979." However, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) said both Vice President Mondale and Carter's aide on domestic policy, Stuart Eizenstat, had assured him that no decision had been made to delay the legislation. And Eizenstat told ABC that Califano was "not speaking for us." [Los Angeles Times] A series of explosions rocked a chemical disposal plant at Logan Township, N.J., and set off a spectacular fire in a cluster of huge storage tanks. Two workmen were killed, 10 were injured, four critically, and four others were missing. A cloud of chemical fumes billowed from the Rollins Environmental Services, Inc., plant about 15 miles south of Philadelphia, but authorities said the fumes posed no danger. Witnesses said four or five explosions shook the cluster of tanks containing waste chemicals. The blasts "could have been the result of a welding spark," a company spokesman said, but the exact cause has not been determined. [Los Angeles Times] Warren Burger, Chief Justice of the United States, temporarily barred the FBI from presenting to a federal grand jury documents seized in a raid on two Church of Scientology offices in Los Angeles and Washington last July 8. At issue is the validity of the search warrant used. Acting on a request by Scientology lawyers, Burger stayed a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that had cleared the way for the FBI to make immediate use of the papers in an investigation of alleged conspiracies by church officials to infiltrate several government agencies and steal documents. The stay is good only until Burger receives the government's response some time in the next few days. [Los Angeles Times] Senate energy conferees -- split 9 to 9 and unable to agree on whether to lift price controls from natural gas -- voted not to abandon the quest for a compromise. Leaders said that if no agreement could be reached by next week, finishing work on the program might be put off until next year. But congressional sources said that even with such an agreement it now appeared doubtful that there would be final House and Senate action until January. [Los Angeles Times] Fifteen men -- including a mechanic, a psychiatrist and a former assistant headmaster of an exclusive boys' school -- were arrested in connection with what authorities called a ring in which homosexuals from around the nation staged sex parties with "dozens" of boys, some as young as 9. A Boston prosecutor called it "sex for hire . . . People patronizing it came from all over the country." He said the ring, operating out of a house in Revere, just north of Boston, had come to the attention of police earlier this year. Twelve of the suspects were arrested in Boston and New York. Three others were already in jail. [Los Angeles Times] The latest report from the National Cancer Institute's search for cancer-causing chemicals said the drug tolbutamide, taken by a half-million diabetics, does not cause cancer in animals. The Food and Drug Administration, however, has been trying to discourage its use, saying the drug has been implicated in increased risk of death from cardiovascular problems. Three days earlier the institute had reported that an unrelated drug, diapson -- used to treat leprosy and a relatively rare form of malaria -- caused two types of cancer in male rats and was thus considered a cancer risk for humans. [Los Angeles Times] Israel has offered to cooperate with Egypt in building a nuclear power plant in the Sinai desert, Business Week magazine reported. The magazine also said Israel suggested joint development of the oil reserves in the Gulf of Suez but that Egypt will apparently continue to develop those reserves with major oil firms. Some observers think Egypt is more likely to be interested in the Sinai power plant and in cooperative irrigation and agriculture, the magazine said. Meanwhile. in another sign of warming relations, Egypt returned to Israel the bodies of three soldiers killed in the 1973 Mideast war. [Los Angeles Times] Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos strongly indicated that he would spare the life of his leading political opponent, former Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr., sentenced to death by a military tribunal. Asked about speculation by observers in Manila that he would prevent the execution, Marcos said in an interview: "I guess they know me as much as I know myself. The are probably correct, but I can't say anything other than that." The death sentence for Aquino on dubious charges of murder, subversion and illegal possession of arms brought protests from around the world. Marcos indicated he was bothered by the bad image from the Aquino case and other allegations of human rights violations. [Los Angeles Times] Two top Rhodesian guerrilla leaders have rejected an invitation by British Foreign Secretary David Owen to attend talks in London next week, the official news agency of Mozambique reported. Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo, leaders of the Patriotic Front guerrilla alliance, made the disclosure at a press conference in Maputo, Mozambique's capital, the agency said. Meanwhile, Owen and U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance discussed the prospects for a peaceful settlement of the Rhodesian issue during a breakfast meeting in London. [Los Angeles Times] A former president of Britain's Law Society, Sir David Napley, who attended the South African inquest into the death of Steve Biko, said in a published report that he had no doubt that the black consciousness leader died in prison Sept. 12 as a result of injuries inflicted by security police. Napley wrote that no British jury would have accepted the testimony of two leading police witnesses at the inquest, and he called for an independent inquiry. At the United Nations, the General Assembly adopted a resolution, supported by the United States, calling Biko's death murder. [Los Angeles Times] Two guerrilla groups fighting for the independence of Ethiopia's northern province of Eritrea have merged their forces, according to a report by an Arab news agency in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. The groups are the Eritrean Liberation Front and the Eritrean People's Liberation Front, the two major guerrilla organizations fighting the Ethiopian government since 1962. They claim now to control all of Eritrea except for a few major towns. [Los Angeles Times] Britain announced that it will cut back its troop strength in Northern Ireland because of a sharp decline in the sectarian violence there. Roy Mason, the minister in charge of the province, did not say how many troops would be pulled out, but other sources set the figure at 1,000 -- leaving 13,500 there. [Los Angeles Times] The U.N. General Assembly elected Poul Hartling of Denmark to become U.N. high commissioner for refugees Jan. 1. The assembly acted without a vote in approving Secretary General Kurt Waldheim's nomination of Hartling to a five-year term succeeding Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan of Iran, who resigned after 12 years in the post. [Los Angeles Times] The former wife of folk singer Bob Dylan has been charged with battery and interfering with classroom conduct as a result of a Nov. 8 attempt to recover custody of four of the couple's five children. Although Sarah Dylan, 38, had a valid court order allowing her to take custody of the children, she allegedly choked and struck a male teacher when she went to pick up the children from Point Dume Elementary School in California, Deputy District Attorney Ronald Carpol said. Mrs. Dylan was accompanied by three private detectives who have also been charged with one count of willfully interfering with classroom conduct, a violation of the Education Code. Arraignment for the four is set for Dec. 20. [Los Angeles Times] A rocket-like torch was used to melt the first hole in the massive Ross ice shelf in Antarctica to search for evidence of life in the 660 feet of ocean water below, according to officials at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Scientists later will lower television and still cameras through this hole and others and will collect samples of the sea bed for laboratory analyses. The drill site is about 400 miles from McMurdo Station. The expedition is sponsored by the National Science Foundation and coordinated by the Ross ice shelf management office at the university. [Los Angeles Times] As thousands cheered along the route, Pope Paul drove in an open car from the Vatican to downtown Rome and laid a wreath of red and pink roses beneath a statue of Mary. During his annual trip to mark the Feast of the Immaculate Conception he also exchanged greetings with Rome's Communist mayor, Giulio Carlo Argan. [Los Angeles Times] Sen. Richard Schweiker (R-Pa.) said that if he runs for Pennsylvania governor next year he will tell voters he might not serve a full four-year term because he has presidential ambitions for 1980. "I know that's unorthodox," he said, "but I really think you are farther ahead in telling people the truth." But, Schweiker said, he wouldn't run for President if Ronald Reagan does. Instead, he would support him. [Los Angeles Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 806.91 (-0.52, -0.06%)
S&P Composite: 92.96 (+0.18, +0.19%)
Arms Index: 1.12

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	750	8.30
Declines	593	7.37
Unchanged	534	4.73
Total Volume		20.40

* 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*
December 7, 1977	807.43	92.78	21.05
December 6, 1977	806.91	92.83	23.77
December 5, 1977	821.03	94.27	19.16
December 2, 1977	823.98	94.67	21.16
December 1, 1977	825.71	94.69	24.22
November 30, 1977	829.70	94.83	22.67
November 29, 1977	827.27	94.55	22.95
November 28, 1977	839.57	96.04	21.57
November 25, 1977	844.42	96.69	17.91
November 23, 1977	843.30	96.49	29.15