News stories from Monday May 12, 1975

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

The White House announced that a Cambodian naval ship seized a United States merchant ship in what were said to be international waters 60 miles off the coast of Cambodia and forced it to the nearest. Cambodian port. Ron Nessen, the White House press secretary, said that President Ford "considers this seizure an act of piracy." He said the American ship was fired on by the Cambodian ship and immediately afterward was boarded by Cambodian naval forces. [New York Times] The House Ways And Means Committee, deeply divided on the best way to deal with the nation's energy problems, approved legislation that would raise the federal tax on gasoline and take other steps to save fuel. The measure was adopted by a vote of 19 to 16. [New York Times] New York City notes and bonds dropped sharply in price as the market reacted to the announcement by Secretary of the Treasury William Simon that the federal government would not help solve the city's severe money shortage. As a result, yields on the city's bonds rose above 10 percent, exceeding the levels reached early last month just before the state advanced $400 million to pay off city debts. [New York Times] C. Douglas Dillon, vice chairman of the Rockefeller Commission, said that after 18 weeks of investigation it was his opinion that the Central Intelligence Agency had never engaged in massive domestic spying. However, he indicated that there had been "one or two rather major exceptions" regarding illegal activity. He declined to elaborate. [New York Times] Volkswagen, the leading symbol of West Germany's "economic miracle," announced a loss of $336 million in its worldwide operations for 1974. The company, which had never before reported a loss, will probably lose an equal amount in 1975, its managing director said. The oil crisis and the recession cut the company's car sales last year, idling 40 percent of its German plant capacity and work force. [New York Times] A pro-Communist general, Khamouan Boupha, announced that he had become the new Defense Minister of Laos. He issued orders grounding the air force and forbidding all movement of troops or military equipment. He had been Deputy Defense Minister under Sisouk na Champassak, a right-wing cabinet officer who resigned Friday and is now understood to have fled the country. [New York Times] With unusual speed, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved legislation providing financial aid for Indochina refugees. It limited the total cost to $405 million, the same amount approved last Thursday by a House appropriations subcommittee, but lower than the $507 million requested by President Ford. The Senate committee approved the bill by a vote of 13 to 0, indicating that both houses would approve similar refugee legislation perhaps by the end of this week. [New York Times] More than 16,000 South Vietnamese refugees arrived at Guam on four merchant ships. Another ship with about 4.000 additional refugees was due later. They will bring to almost 100,000 the number of refugees who have landed on Guam on their way to the continental United States since the fall of Saigon. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 847.47 (-2.66, -0.31%)
S&P Composite: 90.61 (+0.08, +0.09%)
Arms Index: 0.99

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	779	10.67
Declines	680	9.23
Unchanged	385	2.51
Total Volume		22.41

* 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 9, 1975	850.13	90.53	28.44
May 8, 1975	840.50	89.56	22.98
May 7, 1975	836.44	89.08	22.25
May 6, 1975	834.72	88.64	25.41
May 5, 1975	855.60	90.08	22.37
May 2, 1975	848.48	89.22	25.21
May 1, 1975	830.96	88.10	20.66
April 30, 1975	821.34	87.30	18.06
April 29, 1975	803.04	85.64	17.74
April 28, 1975	810.00	86.23	17.85