News stories from Monday March 28, 1977
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- The collision of two 747 jumbo jets on an airport runway in Santa Cruz de Tenerife Sunday killed 574 people. There were 70 survivors, 11 of them in serious condition. The Spanish government ordered a judicial inquiry. One plane was operated by Pan American World Airways, and the other by KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. All aboard the KLM plane were killed. Prospects seemed to be good that the cause of the collision might be determined through recording devices, interviews with crew members and other survivors of the Pan American 747, and testimony of traffic controllers. The crash-resistant voice recorder from the Pan American plane was being flown to Washington.
In terms of deaths, the collision of the 747's was the worst disaster in the history of aviation, but it will also be the most costly in civil aviation insurance claims. Estimates of the eventual claims run from a total $102 million by spokesman for Lloyd's of London, which carried much of the insurance for the planes, to $425 million by another insurance source. The claims will be determined in long negotiations between lawyers for insurers and lawyers for victims.
[New York Times] - A review and possible upgrading of the other-than-honorable discharges of about 432,000 Vietnam war servicemen has been authorized by President Carter, the Defense Department said. The review follows the President's initial pardon of draft evaders -- which he promised in his campaign -- in the Vietnam war, officially described as the time between Aug. 4, 1964, and March 28, 1973. Unlike the pardon of last Jan. 21, the revision of discharges will require individuals to apply to review boards of each service in the next six months. [New York Times]
- Law enforcement officials said that a federal grand jury is conducting an investigation into "wide-ranging abuses of poverty funds" by the Hispanic Association for a Drug Free Society, a Bronx addiction rehabilitation center known as S.E.R.A. The organization receives over $3.2 million a year in federal, state and city grants. [New York Times]
- A record trade deficit of $1.87 billion for the United States was reported by the Commerce Department for February. It was quite likely that rising, and increasingly expensive, oil imports that now account for more than a quarter of this country's total imports were responsible. It was the third time in four months that the deficit was at a record level. [New York Times]
- Representative Thomas Ashley, Democrat of Ohio, is expected to be named chairman of a special House committee that will coordinate action through avoiding jurisdictional disputes that could delay passage of President Carter's energy legislation. The law is going to be "very tough medicine," Mr. Ashley said in an interview. [New York Times]
- Large sums of U.S. currency may illegally be carried in and out of the country with virtual impunity because of lax enforcement of what could be one of the government's most effective laws against organized and white collar crime, according to an investigation by the General Accounting Office. The law that is said to be not enforced properly is the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970. [New York Times]
- An inundation of complaints has fallen on Washington over President Carter's plan to crack down on the use of snowmobiles, motorcycles, dune buggies and other off-road vehicles on environmentally sensitive public lands. The prohibition of such vehicles is expected to be included in the President's forthcoming environmental message. [New York Times]
- High-level secret talks on normalizing relations between the United States and Cuba were conducted from late 1974 to late 1975 at the initiative of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, according to Carter administration officials. The talks were held in Washington and New York and were the first direct, official contact the two countries had had since 1961. Direct talks were resumed last Thursday in New York, but have been limited initially to matters of fishing rights in waters between the two countries. [New York Times]
- A spirited exchange in Moscow on human rights between Cyrus Vance and Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet Communist leader, has cleared the air for their talks on a treaty to limit strategic arms, the Secretary of State said. At an afternoon session with Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, Mr. Vance outlined in detail the Carter administration's alternative formulas to end the deadlock. [New York Times]
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Stock Market Report
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 926.11 (-2.75, -0.30%)
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* |
| March 25, 1977 | 928.86 | 99.06 | 16.55 |
| March 24, 1977 | 935.67 | 99.70 | 19.65 |
| March 23, 1977 | 942.32 | 100.20 | 19.36 |
| March 22, 1977 | 950.96 | 101.00 | 18.66 |
| March 21, 1977 | 953.54 | 101.31 | 18.04 |
| March 18, 1977 | 961.02 | 101.86 | 19.84 |
| March 17, 1977 | 964.84 | 102.08 | 20.70 |
| March 16, 1977 | 968.00 | 102.17 | 22.14 |
| March 15, 1977 | 965.01 | 101.98 | 23.94 |
| March 14, 1977 | 958.36 | 101.42 | 19.29 |