News stories from Thursday July 27, 1978

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

Rejection of a postal pact was voted by local leaders of the nation's largest postal union, but they decided to submit the tentative contract with the Postal Service to rank-and-file members. Labor leaders and postal officials tended to agree with a prediction by Emmet Andrews, president of the 280,000-member American Postal Workers Union, that workers would ratify the tentative contract. [New York Times] Apparent Republican efforts to embarrass President Carter and House Speaker Tip O'Neill over nominations to the Federal Election Commission broke into the open on Capitol Hill. For nearly an hour, Senator Mark Hatfield questioned one nominee, John McGarry, over alleged discrepancies between income reports he had submitted to the Internal Revenue Service and to the House as an employee. [New York Times] Purchase of an aircraft carrier opposed by the Carter administration was narrowly approved by the House Appropriations Committee in a $119.4 billion defense spending bill. An amendment to drop all funds for a carrier failed on a 26 to 26 tie vote. [New York Times] Navy women won a victory. A federal law that prohibits them from serving at sea except on transport and hospital ships was declared unconstitutional by Judge John Sirica of Federal District Court. In a 38-page decision, he ruled that, under the law, "sex is required to take precedence over individual ability." [New York Times] Childless couples, heartened by the birth of the first known baby conceived outside the body, have bombarded the British doctors who supervised the procedure with requests for similar help. The physicians, who reported more than a hundred requests from at least three countries, including the United States, said they planned to continue their work and predicted that their technique would eventually become widely used. [New York Times] The United Nations Security Council endorsed a Western plan for ending guerrilla war in South-West Africa and leading it to independence as the new black African state of Namibia "at the earliest possible date." The Council approved the independence resolution, 13 to 0, with the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia abstaining. In a second resolution, the Council unanimously supported steps to insure the early "reintegration" of the port of Walvis Bay into Namibia.Keeping Walvis Bay as part of South Africa is viewed as essential to many whites in the region. The enclave on the desert coast of South-West Africa is the territory's only deep-water port and has been a major factor in South Africa's opposition to a Western plan for granting black majority rule in the territory. [New York Times] Egypt and Arab hard-liners moved to calm their dispute over President Anwar Sadat's peace gesture to Israel amid signs that Washington would have problems arranging an Egyptian-Israeli meeting next month. Arab League foreign ministers, attending the conference of non-aligned countries in Belgrade, agreed on a plank in a resolution calling for a special United Nations General Assembly session to discuss Palestine. [New York Times] Portugal's Prime Minister was dismissed, he announced. Mario Soares said that President Antonio Ramalho Eanes had dissolved the six-month-old Socialist government. The government lost its majority in Parliament two days ago with the withdrawal from a coalition by the conservative Center Democrats. The conservatives had been angered by Mr. Soares's refusal to dismiss a Minister. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 850.57 (+3.38, +0.40%)
S&P Composite: 99.54 (+0.46, +0.46%)
Arms Index: 0.76

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	1,018	22.20
Declines	491	8.14
Unchanged	389	3.65
Total Volume		33.99

* 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*
July 26, 1978	847.19	99.08	36.82
July 25, 1978	839.57	98.44	25.40
July 24, 1978	831.60	97.72	23.27
July 21, 1978	833.42	97.75	26.07
July 20, 1978	838.62	98.03	33.34
July 19, 1978	840.70	98.12	30.85
July 18, 1978	829.00	96.87	22.86
July 17, 1978	839.05	97.78	29.18
July 14, 1978	839.83	97.58	28.37
July 13, 1978	824.76	96.25	23.62