News stories from Monday May 9, 1977

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

Winter returned to much of the Northeast, bringing the latest spring snowstorm ever recorded in the New York metropolitan region. The heaviest snow tell in upstate New York -- 13 inches in the Catskills and 10 inches in Columbia County. Up to 12 inches fell in western Massachusetts and more than eight inches in northern Connecticut. [New York Times] President Carter made proposals to Congress intended to eliminate growing deficits in the Social Security system. In a message made public by Vice President Mondale during the President's absence in Europe, Congress was asked to enact a big payroll tax increase for employers, a smaller one for employees, and approve an experimental diversion of general tax revenues to Social Security. "Taken together," the President said, "the actions I am recommending today will eliminate the Social Security deficit for the remainder of this century." [New York Times] Patricia Hearst won a non-jail sentence from a Los Angeles judge who set five years of probation for her part in a 1974 robbery and shooting incident. He disregarded a Probation Department report that she should be imprisoned, accepting instead the County District Attorney's recommendation. She is still appealing a seven-year federal sentence for the San Francisco bank robbery in which she took part. [New York Times] Key aides reportedly advised Attorney General Griffin Bell to have the Justice Department seek a criminal indictment for perjury against Wallace LaPrade, head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's New York office. The indictment would be related to alleged break-ins, mail openings and wiretaps by F.B.I. agents in New York in the pursuit of radical fugitives. [New York Times] United States Steel increased prices an average of 6 percent, effective June 19. This was less than the 6.8 to 8.8 percent increases announced last week by Republic Steel and Youngstown Sheet and Tube, the first of the steelmakers to announce an anticipated increase in prices. Robert Crandall. acting director of the Council on Wage and Price Stability, said he was "very happy that the increase is less than Republic's initial action. We had been looking for something in the order of 5 to 6 percent. U.S. Steel may well call the tune." [New York Times] The stock market had its slowest day in almost six months and it seemed that anticipation of higher interest rates was responsible. Declining issues outnumbered rising ones 7 to 6. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 3.65 points to 933.09. [New York Times] A powerful lobbying, legal and public relations effort by French and British interests to win approval of landings in the United States by the supersonic Concorde jet is costing estimated $4 million and is entering its climactic stage. [New York Times] A veto of any death penalty bill that reached his desk was promised by Governor Carey of New York. He also indicated that he would strongly consider granting executive clemency to those serving prison sentences for possession of marijuana, once the bill to remove criminal penalties from possession of small amounts becomes law. [New York Times] The Soviet Union was warned by the leaders of Britain, the United States, France and West Germany not to endanger the status quo in Berlin. The four countries, after a routine review of the Berlin situation, said that strict adherence to existing agreements on Berlin was "indispensable to the continued improvement of the situation and essential to the strengthening of detente, the maintenance of security and development of cooperation throughout Europe." The statement followed a meeting at 10 Downing Street. [New York Times] A stronger and more official United States commitment to some kind of state for the Palestinians was made by President Carter. (In Geneva for a meeting with President Hafez al-Assad of Syria to discuss the Middle East conflict, the President said that "there must be a resolution of the Palestine problem and a homeland for the Palestinians.") The statement was regarded as significant in part because of a Soviet report that the Palestine Liberation Organization's leader, Yasser Arafat, was prepared to accept Israel's right to exist if Israel would simultaneously endorse a homeland for the Palestinians. [New York Times] A Canadian judicial report urged the abandonment for environmental reasons of the proposed $8.5 billion Arctic Gas pipeline that would bring Alaskan gas to the United States through Arctic Canada. It gave qualified support instead to an alternative route, the Alcan project, that would be built along an all-Canadian route through the Mackenzie Valley of the Northwest Territories. The report proposed that work on Alcan be delayed 10 years to allow time for settlement of land claims along the route. Alcan was one of two pipeline projects favored by the United States Federal Power Commission in a report last week. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 933.90 (-2.84, -0.30%)
S&P Composite: 99.18 (-0.31, -0.31%)
Arms Index: 0.88

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	607	5.92
Declines	743	6.38
Unchanged	509	2.93
Total Volume		15.23

* 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*
May 6, 1977	936.74	99.49	19.37
May 5, 1977	943.44	100.11	23.45
May 4, 1977	940.72	99.96	23.33
May 3, 1977	934.19	99.43	21.95
May 2, 1977	931.22	98.93	17.97
April 29, 1977	926.90	98.44	18.33
April 28, 1977	927.32	98.20	18.37
April 27, 1977	923.76	97.96	20.59
April 26, 1977	915.62	97.11	20.04
April 25, 1977	914.60	97.33	20.44