News stories from Thursday July 9, 1981

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

A bill that would prohibit abortion was approved by a Senate subcommittee in the first congressional action toward overturning a 1973 Supreme Court ruling that gave American women the right to terminate pregnancy. The measure, approved by a vote of 3-to-2, could allow the states to prosecute abortion as murder. [New York Times] A definition of death was endorsed by a presidential ethics commission. It affirmed that human life ends when the brain stops functioning and urged the 50 states to adopt a uniform law defining death as the "irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain." New life-sustaining methods have rendered the old legal definition, based on breathing and heartbeat, meaningless in many cases. [New York Times] A bill to give legislators a tax break by allowing them to deduct from taxable income the cost of living in Washington was reluctantly abandoned by a House committee. The members also voted to forego a cost-of-living raise that would have increased congressional salaries to $70,900 a year from the present $60,662.50. [New York Times] Massachusetts braced for a strike threatened by a union representing 28,000 state employees who have not been paid for more than a week, and Gov. Edward King put the National Guard on alert for possible duty at a maximum-security prison and at state mental and public health institutions. State spending has been frozen since July 1 while the legislature has argued over aid for municipalities to cope with the revenue loss of a voter-mandated property tax cut totaling about $500 million. [New York Times] California's food crops are imperiled by an infestation of the Mediterranean fruit fly, which is considered the most destructive orchard pest. State officials conceded that the inadvertent release of hundreds of thousands of fertile fruit flies in an eradication program might have been responsible for the infestation, which threatens big segments of California's $14 billion produce crop. [New York Times] Broad latitude to use arms sales as a tool of foreign policy was said to be the aim of a new presidential policy directive made public by the White House. The directive said, "We will deal with the world as it is, rather than as we would like it to be." [New York Times] Police abuse in New Orleans was cited by a federal grand jury that indicted seven police officers for conspiracy to violate the civil rights of four persons they were questioning about the slaying of a policeman. [New York Times] Britain's House of Commons seethed with bitter recriminations after a sixth successive night of urban violence, and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was taunted and denounced by left-wing critics. Members of her own Conservative Party demanded stringent measures to combat the wave of rioting, looting and assaults on the police in the inner cities. In Manchester alone, more than 1,000 white and black youths stormed a police station and shattered and looted more than 150 shops. [New York Times] Poland's airline, LOT, was struck for four hours by about 6,000 employees over a demand that they be allowed to elect the line's general manager. The protest was believed to be the first walkout affecting civil aviation in the Soviet bloc. [New York Times] The Israel-Jordan border was closed to tourists under an order issued by Prime Minister Menachem Begin in retaliation for a similar Jordanian prohibition. The new restrictions will curtail the relatively free movement that has been permitted across the Jordan River since Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 war. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 959.00 (+5.52, +0.58%)
S&P Composite: 129.30 (+0.98, +0.76%)
Arms Index: 0.66

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	856	27.35
Declines	614	12.94
Unchanged	410	5.22
Total Volume		45.51

* 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 8, 1981	953.48	128.32	46.00
July 7, 1981	954.15	128.24	53.55
July 6, 1981	949.30	127.37	44.59
July 2, 1981	959.19	128.64	45.09
July 1, 1981	967.66	129.77	49.07
June 30, 1981	976.88	131.25	41.55
June 29, 1981	984.59	131.89	37.93
June 26, 1981	992.87	132.56	39.24
June 25, 1981	996.77	132.81	43.91
June 24, 1981	999.33	132.66	46.65