News stories from Tuesday July 20, 1976
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- Threatening a nationwide strike to dramatize that the U.S. Postal Service "is going down the drain," union leaders accused the Ford administration of trying to ruin the mail service. Presidents of 53 local postal unions, representing 25% of the nation's 600,000 postal workers, voted for a "nationwide job action by Aug. 20" unless certain conditions were met, said Moe Biller, president of the New York area union. [Los Angeles Times]
- The Westinghouse Electric Corp. reached agreement in Pittsburgh on new three-year wage contracts with three striking unions, bringing a quick end to the first nationwide walkout against the company in 20 years. The agreements, covering 47,000 employees at 87 of the company's 123 plants, were reached with the International Union of Electrical Workers, the United Electrical Workers and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. The new contracts, patterned after agreements the unions reached with General Electric Co. last month, included pay increases totaling $1.10 an hour after three years and nearly unlimited inflation protection. The average hourly wage under old contracts was $5.15. [Los Angeles Times]
- Shirley Temple Black was sworn in at the White House as the nation's first woman chief of protocol. President Ford told her she had earned the "very important post" for her outstanding service as a representative at the United Nations and more recently as ambassador to the African nation of Ghana. The former child movie star, now 48, took the oath on a Bible held by her husband, Charles Black. As chief of protocol, Mrs. Black will take on the duties of officiating at the visits of foreign heads of state and dignitaries and in contacts with the Washington diplomatic corps. She replaces Henry Catto, who has been named as ambassador to U.N. organizations in Geneva. [Los Angeles Times]
- Only seven years ago a man on the moon radioed back to earth the historic message -- "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." And now mankind has taken another giant leap. Earthmen, or at least their mentalities, have reached their first planet with the landing on Mars of Viking I. The human who took that first step and opened a new age now lives on a farm outside of Lebanon, Ohio, with his wife and two children. Neil Alden Armstrong, 46, a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati, has shunned the spotlight since. But he was back in the news with President Ford's proclamation of July 20, 1976, as Space Exploration Day to honor the men and the exploits of Apollo II and Viking I. With Armstrong on the historic flight were Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin, who descended with Armstrong to the Sea of Tranquility in the Eagle lander, and Michael Collins, who remained in the Apollo capsule. A few months ago Armstrong was quoted as saying he "had hoped the moon shot would take our minds away from the more mundane and temporal problems that have faced us. But," he added quietly, "we still appear to be tied up with today's problems." [Los Angeles Times]
- The chairman of a House health subcommittee called for a White House meeting to try to resolve the impasse over insurance coverage for the planned swine flu immunization program. Rep. Paul Rogers (D-Fla.) urged President Ford to summon top insurance executives and drug manufacturers to a conference. Finding insurance coverage for the four companies who are making the vaccine is the chief obstacle to the plans, according to Dr. Theodore Cooper, assistant secretary for health in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. [Los Angeles Times]
- Dr. Alexander Schmidt, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration since 1973, is resigning Dec. 1 to return to the staff of the University of Illinois. An aide said the school would announce today Schmidt's appointment as vice-chancellor. A spokesman said his departure was not prompted by a Senate investigation of alleged irregularities and pro-business bias of the agency. As Schmidt disclosed his plans, 34 current and former FDA employees were testifying that the agency still failed to protect the public's health -- two years after the Senate launched its inquiry. They told two Senate subcommittees of documents mysteriously missing from files, pressure to approve drugs before testing was complete and other malpractices. [Los Angeles Times]
- Veteran radio commentator Lowell Thomas, who has been admitted to Presbyterian Medical Center in Denver, said he would undergo tests for seven to 10 days. "Apparently I have an infection of some sort, and I don't know if the doctors are sure they know what it is," Thomas said. Thomas, 84, was flown from Santa Rosa, Calif., Sunday night after complaining that he didn't feel well. Accompanying him was his son, Alaska Lt. Gov. Lowell Thomas Jr. [Los Angeles Times]
- A marble tombstone thought possibly to have marked Torn Paine's final resting place apparently is just the stone of an admirer, according to Frances Gale, a college student doing research on Hudson Valley architecture. A six-foot obelisk engraved "in memory of" the Revolutionary War pamphleteer was unearthed at a farm near Tivoli, N.Y. The opposite side bore a similar legend for John G. Lasher. The discovery aroused excitement because scholars have been unable to locate Paine's grave. Miss Gale said she had found a Kingston. N.Y., newspaper article dated Sept. 9, 1874, that said Lasher, "a staunch follower of Tom Paine," had ordered a monument for his hero and erected it in his front yard. [Los Angeles Times]
- A State Department official conceded for the first time that India used U.S.-supplied deuterium in detonating its initial atomic blast. Acting Asst. Secretary of State Myron Kratzer testified at an unprecedented Nuclear Regulatory Commission hearing that the Indians mixed the deuterium with their material to develop their first nuclear device. Earlier witnesses at the hearing urged the commission to ban future sales of enriched uranium reactor fuel to India. Kratzer said safeguards on fuel sales are adequate and he added that stopping sales to India would impose a "severe hardship" on 80 million Indians dependent on atomic power. [Los Angeles Times]
- The United States completed its military withdrawal from Thailand, leaving behind about 245 advisers and $388 million in equipment as the only vestiges of more than a decade of providing a military presence in mainland Southeast Asia. At one time there were almost 48,000 U.S. servicemen in Thailand, most of them involved in the air war in Indochina. The Thais in March ordered out the last 3,000 U.S. troops and the United States stuck to the Bangkok-ordered timetable. [Los Angeles Times]
- A proposed Latin American and Caribbean news agency was approved by a committee at a regional communications conference sponsored by the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in Costa Rica. Passage by the full conference was believed almost certain. The news service would be an "agency or a pool or consortium" of agencies. according to the proposal. Governments supporting the initiative said the agency was needed to balance coverage by existing international news services. A consensus proposal that there be an international right-of-reply to news stories, also was approved by two committees. [Los Angeles Times]
- The Argentine army announced that its troops had killed Mario Roberto Santucho, considered the No. 1 guerrilla leader in South America. Military sources said the death of Santucho, 40, was a devastating blow to the Argentine guerrilla movement. The private news agency Noticias Argentinas reported that the same troops who shot Santucho Monday in a Buenos Aires suburb also killed Gorriaran Merlo, Santucho's second in command of the People's Revolutionary Army. [Los Angeles Times]
- Prosecutors investigating Lockheed payoffs in Japan arrested another officer of the aircraft firm's former sales agent in Tokyo on charges of destroying evidence. Tatsuya Nakai, 46, a section chief at Marubeni Corp., was the third Marubeni employee arrested on Lockheed-related charges in two days and the 14th person arrested in the course of Japan's Lockheed investigation. One of the 14 has been released. [Los Angeles Times]
- The body of a Soviet freighter captain who disappeared shortly before he was to sail home was found in the River Tyne not far from Newcastle, England, with a large brass weight tied to the belt, police reported. They said Capt. Anatole Mankevitch drowned either as a result of an accident or suicide, and ruled out the possibility of a crime. Police reported that the weight tied to his belt came from his ship and was 3 feet long but "not heavy enough to drag a man down unless he wanted to go under." [Los Angeles Times]
- The Burmese government announced the arrest of a group of army officers who, it said, had plotted to kill President Ne Win and the secretary of the State Council, U San Yu. Burmese state radio said the plot had been foiled and the ringleaders arrested July 2. The announcement said the plot was engineered by three army captains and supported by 11 other officers. [Los Angeles Times]
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Stock Market Report
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 988.29 (-2.54, -0.26%)
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* |
| July 19, 1976 | 990.83 | 104.29 | 18.20 |
| July 16, 1976 | 993.21 | 104.68 | 20.45 |
| July 15, 1976 | 997.46 | 105.20 | 20.40 |
| July 14, 1976 | 1005.16 | 105.95 | 23.84 |
| July 13, 1976 | 1006.06 | 105.67 | 27.55 |
| July 12, 1976 | 1011.21 | 105.90 | 23.75 |
| July 9, 1976 | 1003.11 | 104.98 | 23.50 |
| July 8, 1976 | 991.98 | 103.98 | 21.71 |
| July 7, 1976 | 991.16 | 103.83 | 18.47 |
| July 6, 1976 | 991.81 | 103.54 | 16.13 |