News stories from Friday August 29, 1980
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- The worst of the recession may be over, according to a government barometer of future trends in the economy. The Commerce Department's index of leading indicators for July surged by 4.6 percent, representing both a record increase and the second consecutive month of improvement.
A 9.1 percent pay increase for 1.4 million federal employees this year was approved by President Carter, who had been under extreme pressure from government employees and their representatives in Congress to grant the increase. The increase is more than the 7.8 percent that the President had previously said was justified because of inflation. The higher increase, which is still within the administration's voluntary guidelines for pay increases, becomes effective Oct. 1 unless Congress votes to repeal it.
[New York Times] - The Cuban resettlement program has run into trouble trying to find sponsors for thousands of young single men, many of whom have prison records, according to a spokesman for the State Department's Cuban-Haitian Resettlement Task Force. The spokesman said that still awaiting resettlement were 14,000 refugees at Fort McCoy, Wis.; Fort Indiantown Gap, Pa.; Fort Chafee, Ark.; Camp Eglin, Fla., and a holding center in Miami. Resettlement officials said that since April, slightly more than 120,000 Cuban refugees have been admitted to the United States, and that 105,000 have been resettled. About 1,600 have been identified as people who were jailed in Cuba for serious crimes. They have been sent to federal prisons. [New York Times]
- Cuban refugees who stormed a California-bound Braniff jetliner at the Lima Airport in a bid for resettlement in the United States surrendered and freed their 15 hostages including seven Americans. The release followed negotiations between the Cubans and Peruvian officials in cooperation with the United States State Department. The more than 165 Cubans who invaded the plane will be returned to a refugee camp east of Lima. [New York Times]
- A Philadelphia police officer was charged with murder following his fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager Sunday, who was allegedly driving a stolen car. The shooting set off two nights of violence this week. Officer John Ziegler, who is white, was also charged with involuntary manslaughter, aggravated assault, recklessly endangering another person and official oppression. [New York Times]
- California was threatened with a cutoff of $850 million a year in public works funds by the Environmental Protection Agency if by Sunday night, when the legislature adjourns for the rest of the year, it does not pass a bill requiring inspections and maintenance of automobile emission systems. California and Kentucky are the only urbanized states that have not met the auto emission control standards. [New York Times]
- The four Abscam defendants, Representative Michael Myers of Pennsylvania, Mayor Angelo Errichetti of Camden, N.J. and two other men were found guilty of bribery and conspiracy charges in the first trial to result from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Abscam operation to uncover political corruption. In a hushed Brooklyn courtroom Nancy Biedry of Glen Cove, L.I., the jury foreman in the three-week trial, said "guilty" 12 times -- covering all the charges -- in the cases of the four defendants. [New York Times]
- The Polish strikes spread to three copper mines in the industrial region of Silesia in the southern part of the country and to a major steel mill on the outskirts of Warsaw. Meanwhile, some progress reportedly was made between the government and the strikers on the issue of trade unions independent of Communist Party control, one of the strikers' principal demands.
The United States reiterated that it "will refrain from any words or actions" that might complicate the efforts of Polish workers and government officials to settle the strikes, in a statement issued by Secretary of State Edmund Muskie, who also restated the administration's view that no other power should intervene.
[New York Times] - A strike at The Times of London ended, and the paper will be published tomorrow after a weeklong suspension. The strike arose from the management's refusal to accept an abritrator's proposed 21 percent pay increase. Management had offered 18 percent. The strike came to an end when the journalists' union accepted a pay rise of 27 percent over a year and a half, substantially the same as the paper's original offer, but over a longer period. [New York Times]
- A treaty regulating ocean mining appeared close to agreement in Geneva by most of the nations of the world. At the close of the ninth session of the United Nations Law of the Sea Conference, delegates said they had made enough progress on the most difficult issues to be reasonably sure of agreement on the final treaty at their next session in March, probably in New York. But many disagreements, principally between rich and poor nations, remained. [New York Times]
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Stock Market Report
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 932.59 (+2.21, +0.24%)
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 28, 1980 | 930.38 | 122.08 | 39.89 |
| August 27, 1980 | 943.09 | 123.52 | 43.97 |
| August 26, 1980 | 953.41 | 124.84 | 41.70 |
| August 25, 1980 | 956.23 | 125.16 | 35.39 |
| August 22, 1980 | 958.19 | 126.02 | 58.21 |
| August 21, 1980 | 955.03 | 125.46 | 50.77 |
| August 20, 1980 | 945.31 | 123.77 | 42.56 |
| August 19, 1980 | 939.85 | 122.60 | 41.93 |
| August 18, 1980 | 948.63 | 123.39 | 41.88 |
| August 15, 1980 | 966.72 | 125.72 | 47.80 |