News stories from Tuesday May 21, 1974

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

Representative Peter Rodino, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, raised the possibility that President Nixon may have known of White House involvement in the attempted Watergate cover-up before March 21 last year, the date on which he said he was first informed by John Dean. Mr. Rodino did so after his panel listened to a presidential tape of the meeting with Mr. Dean. [New York Times] The Senate Judiciary Committee passed a resolution of support for special prosecutor Leon Jaworski in response to his complaint that President Nixon was trying to undercut his mandate. Senator Edward Kennedy, the sole dissenter, argued that the committee should take firmer action and hold public hearings on the complaint. [New York Times] Jeb Magruder, the deputy director of President Nixon's re-election campaign, was sentenced to serve from 10 months to four years in prison for his role in the Watergate break-in and cover-up. Mr. Magruder has been cooperating with federal prosecutors for more than a year. District Judge John Sirica ordered him to enter federal prison on June 4. [New York Times] The Labor Department reported a slowdown in the rise of consumer prices last month, thanks to a rare decline in the cost of food, With food prices easing by four-tenths of 1 percent on average, the overall consumer price index for April was up six-tenths of 1 percent for the smallest increase since last September. [New York Times] The House rejected a bill, opposed by the administration, to roll back oil and gasoline prices and authorize rationing at the pump. Democratic supporters of the measure said they would try to bring it back to the floor later for another test. [New York Times] The Department of Health, Education and Welfare is studying data collected from the country's largest cities on the disproportionate number of minority-group children suspended and expelled from public schools, and it informed a House subcommittee that the study would result in action. In New York City, it said, of 19,518 pupils suspended in the 1972-73 school year, 16,780 were from a minority group. [New York Times] The practice of assigning students to separate classes for "bright" and "slow" students is resulting in racially imbalanced classrooms within outwardly integrated schools in New York City. The separation is made on the basis of reading tests in the primary grades and continues in the high schools with honors and advanced courses for the best students. Some educators see a tendency for black pupils to be placed in "slow" classes and white in "bright" classes. [New York Times] Two junior high school deans in the Bronx who had been accused of beating unruly students with a thick wooden paddle were removed from their posts. The superintendent of District 9 in the Morrisania Section reassigned the two to his office pending the outcome of an investigation. [New York Times] The cabinet minister in charge of Portugal's overseas territories said that he expected Mozambique to become independent within a year. Antonio de Almeida Santos, a member of the provisional government named by the military junta in Lisbon last week, told newsmen during a visit to Mozambique that a referendum would be held there within a year and that the territory's residents would undoubtedly choose independence. [New York Times] Strains between Portugal's ruling junta and the provisional government it named last week came into the open after the departure of the country's deposed Premier and President for exile in Brazil. Leftist cabinet members, some of whom were in jail under the former regime, objected to the junta's decision to let the ousted leaders leave the country. [New York Times] Secretary of State Kissinger, continuing his peace shuttle between Israel and Syria, virtually completed the details for a cease-fire line on the Golan front and made progress in other areas of a proposed disengagement accord. After five hours of talks in Damascus, an American spokesman said the cease-fire line "is virtually set." [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 809.53 (-2.89, -0.36%)
S&P Composite: 87.91 (+0.05, +0.06%)
Arms Index: 0.91

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	466	3.77
Declines	866	6.39
Unchanged	459	2.03
Total Volume		12.19

* 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 20, 1974	812.42	87.86	10.55
May 17, 1974	818.84	88.21	13.87
May 16, 1974	835.34	89.72	12.09
May 15, 1974	846.06	90.45	11.24
May 14, 1974	847.85	90.69	10.88
May 13, 1974	845.59	90.66	11.29
May 10, 1974	850.44	91.47	15.27
May 9, 1974	865.77	92.96	14.71
May 8, 1974	850.99	91.64	11.85
May 7, 1974	847.15	91.46	10.71