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News stories from Sunday January 2, 1977
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- The National Association of Purchasing Management, whose economic reports generally reflect the ups and downs of the nation's business, says that prospects for 1977 are brighter than they were two months ago and that there are signs that a significant rate of improvement will be felt toward mid-year. "The key factor in the rate of upturn," according to the association's latest report, lies in new capital expenditures for increasing the nation's industrial base, which will determine how many new jobs are actually created. [New York Times]
- Wall Street will eventually be abandoned as the traditional center of the securities industry, mainly because trading is being taken over by computers, according to one of the first comprehensive studies of the industry. The study, funded by the New York district of the Securities Industry Association and prepared by Prof. Michael Keegan of the School of Business at New York University, also found that commercial banks, which are cutting into the securities industry's original line of business -- financing government operations -- are taking away customers who generally dealt with Wall Street firms.
Computerization's effect on the securities industry may be seen at Paine, Webber, Jackson & Curtis, at 140 Broadway, where time is no longer measured in minutes but in microseconds. Print and paper are being replaced by electronic signals, and computers provide desired information on screens at the touch of a key, sending information simultaneously to the firm's 1,800 stockbrokers throughout the country. [New York Times]
- Rupert Murdoch, the new owner of the New York Post, announced that he had reached agreements with about a dozen major stockholders to buy a controlling interest in the New York Magazine Company, publisher of New York and New West magazines and the Village Voice. He said he would pay $8.25 a share for the initial acquisition of 904,010 shares of the 1,800,000 outstanding shares. [New York Times]
- Carlos Romero Barcelo, the new Governor of Puerto Rico, did not mention President Ford's proposal that Puerto Rico be made a state in his inaugural address in San Juan. The Governor, a former Mayor of San Juan, supports statehood for Puerto Rico. He dealt instead with the populist themes of his gubernatorial campaign that gave him an upset victory. [New York Times]
- Justice Department prosecutors are reported to have concluded that they are unable to bring any major criminal charges against members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation allegedly involved in corruption in the bureau. They decided, a source in the department said, that indictments were not likely because of the negligible amounts of money involved, questions of "fairness" to those under investigation and the fact that the five-year statute of limitations on federal prosecutions had run out in many of the cases. The prosecutors nevertheless acknowledged instances of impropriety and maladministration over many years. [New York Times]
- A Senate staff report said that the government program for assuring the safety of pesticides was in a "state of chaos" that raises doubts about the protection of the public from traces of dangerous chemicals. The Environmental Protection Agency was charged with poor planning and management, with long delays in correcting allegedly serious program deficiencies and with making misleading statements to Congress and the public. [New York Times]
- Bronx District Attorney Mario Merola announced that a 40-year-old "jealous suitor" and a 17-year-old accomplice had been arrested and charged with setting the fire last Oct. 24 that killed 25 persons in the Bronx Social Club at 1003 Morris Avenue. The suspects are Jose Angelo Cordero and Hector Lopez, 17, both of the Bronx. [New York Times]
- Christianity and Communism in the Soviet Union have reached a state of uneasy coexistence. Neither the tenets of Marxism-Leninism nor the periodic crackdowns on believers have eradicated the church as an important part of Soviet life. There are believed to be still 30 million members of the Orthodox Church -- double the size of the Communist Party. [New York Times]
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