News stories from Monday May 1, 1978

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

Israeli-American ties were reaffirmed at a White House observance of Israel's 30th anniversary. Several hundred rabbis and other Jewish leaders participated in the celebration with President Carter and Prime Minister Menachem Begin, whose differences over Middle East peace issues were muted. [New York Times] Subpoenas of corporate records will be used by the Carter administration in its call for "voluntary" control of inflation, Barry Bosworth, the director of the Council on Wage and Price Stability, said. The administration will also invite public criticism of the companies that do not hold down prices, Mr. Bosworth said at a meeting of the American Newspaper Publishers Association. The administration will also request business executives to hold their salary increases to 5 percent and "high visibility unions" to accept much smaller wage increases in contract negotiations. Physicians, dentists, lawyers and other professionals also will be asked to hold down their fees. [New York Times] A plot to hijack a cruise ship was foiled by an undercover agent of the F.B.I. Four men taken into custody in New York planned to hold the S.S. Emerald Seas, which cruises between Miami and Nassau, the Bahamas, and her 800 passengers for $6 million ransom. The men had completed their plans and were preparing to go to Miami and book passage on the ship when they were arrested. A movie was said to have inspired the plot. [New York Times] Commercial banks will be allowed to transfer automatically money from savings to checking accounts starting Nov. 1 if their customers request the service, the Federal Reserve Board decided. Savings and loan associations and mutual savings banks oppose this change in banking procedures on the ground that commercial banks will have an unfair advantage, The United States League of Savings Associations said it would go to court "in the next couple of days" for an injunction against what it described as an "illegal" action that usurped the power of Congress. [New York Times] Mao Tse-tung told Richard Nixon that he was particularly pleased when right-wing governments were established in Western countries, the former President says in excerpts from his memoirs describing his visit to China in 1972. Mr. Nixon gives a few details, but little substance of his China initiative, perhaps the most important foreign policy accomplishment of his administration. Mao, said, according to Mr. Nixon, "I like rightists, I am comparatively happy when these people on the right come into power." [New York Times] Stock prices rose again in one of the strongest market rallies since the end of World War II. "This is a 'Miller market," John Winthrop, a Wall Street broker, said explaining that investors believe that G. William Miller, the Federal Reserve Board's chairman, "understands the inflation figures and is willing to take affirmative action." There is an "electric feeling" in Wall Street, Mr. Winthrop said. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 7.01 points to 844.33, its best showing in five months. [New York Times] Philip Morris made an offer for all the outstanding shares of the Seven-Up Company at a price of $41 a share or a total of up to $440 million. The move by the country's second largest cigarette company to take over the producer of the country's third biggest-selling soft drink faces a fight by members of Seven-Up's three founding families, the Griggs, Ridgeways and Gladneys, who do not welcome the offer. [New York Times] The water, the earth and the air around the Pierrepont elementary school in Rutherford, N. J., are being tested to find whether one of them could be the source of the cluster of cancer cases that have broken out among the town's school children. The New Jersey Division of Environmental Cancer is also investigating the 42 industrial sources of possible carcinogens within a three-mile radius of the school. "This is the first time we've done anything on this scale," Dr. Peter Preuss, the division's director, said. [New York Times] A 600-mile trip to the North Pole over the frozen Arctic Ocean was made by a Japanese explorer on a dogsled, the first time a one-man expedition has reached the top of the world, according to the National Geographic Society, one of the expedition's sponsors. Naomi Uemura. 37 years old, reached the Pole on Sunday. 54 days after he departed from Cape Columbia in Canada's Northwest Territories. [New York Times] Yasser Arafat said that "the only possible solution" to the Middle East problem was for the United States and the Soviet Union to provide guarantees for Israel and a Palestinian state, In an interview in Beirut, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization said Israel would have nothing to fear from a new Palestinian state. It would have to "start from zero", and would be preoccupied with its own problems, he said. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 844.33 (+7.01, +0.84%)
S&P Composite: 97.67 (+0.84, +0.87%)
Arms Index: 0.49

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	1,008	26.59
Declines	517	6.64
Unchanged	404	3.79
Total Volume		37.02

* 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*
April 28, 1978	837.32	96.83	32.85
April 27, 1978	826.92	95.86	35.47
April 26, 1978	836.97	96.82	44.45
April 25, 1978	833.59	96.64	55.80
April 24, 1978	826.06	95.77	34.52
April 21, 1978	812.80	94.34	31.54
April 20, 1978	814.54	94.54	43.23
April 19, 1978	808.04	93.86	35.06
April 18, 1978	803.27	93.43	38.97
April 17, 1978	810.12	94.45	63.49