News stories from Thursday May 23, 1974

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

Lawyers for the House impeachment inquiry declared that the Judiciary Committee had a constitutional obligation to reject the edited White House transcripts as a substitute for the Watergate tapes subpoenaed by the committee. In an apparent effort to generate public support for formal action by the committee against the President next week, John Doar, the chief counsel, called the transcripts "inadequate and unsatisfactory," and Albert Jenner, the chief Republican counsel, said the House "would not be acting responsibly" if it accepted the transcripts in place of the tapes. [New York Times] The United States Court of Appeals in Washington turned down efforts by the Senate Watergate committee to subpoena five White House tapes, calling the committee's need for the tapes marginal. In a unanimous decision, the court noted that the House Judiciary Committee had already obtained copies of the five tapes and said that the Senate committee had failed to demonstrate a legislative need for them. [New York Times] A 21-year-old man hijacked a helicopter at the 34th Street heliport in New York City and forced it to fly to the roof of the Pan Am building, where he was captured after the helicopter's pilot was shot while attempting to escape. The suspect told the pilot and another hostage that he wanted a bikini-clad girl to deliver $2 million to buy guns for the Jewish Defense League, which said it had never heard of him. [New York Times] The United States assured the Geneva Disarmament Conference that it would not develop miniature nuclear weapons that could be used interchangeably with conventional weapons on the battlefield. There has been concern that such low-yield "mini nukes" could blur the distinction between conventional and nuclear warfare and thus increase the chances for full-scale nuclear war. In issuing the policy statement on the last day of the conference's spring session, the United States left itself free to improve its present tactical nuclear arms. [New York Times] A homosexual civil rights bill was defeated 22 to 19 in the New York City Council, while supporters of the bill in the balcony shook their fists and shouted "bigot" at the councilmen below. [New York Times] Secretary of State Kissinger said he had made "good progress" toward removing the main obstacle to a Syrian-Israeli disengagement agreement -- the size of forces to be allowed in the front-line disengagement zones. Mr. Kissinger offered the assessment at the end of another day of negotiations in both Syria and Israel. [New York Times] Israeli troops killed six Palestinian guerrilla infiltrators in the Golan Heights and captured two who reportedly said the group had planned to carry out another "massacre," patterned on the attack at Maalot. The group, which had slipped past Israeli lines in occupied Syrian territory, had apparently intended to raid one or two collective farms in Israel proper, taking hostages and demanding the release of guerrillas held by Israel. [New York Times] Leaders of the extremist Protestant groups in Northern Ireland said they would intensify their protest strike and expressed confidence that they would bring down the provisional administration, Although the barricades largely disappeared from Belfast streets, spokesmen for the strikers said their efforts to restrict gasoline deliveries would be enough to halt all but medical traffic. British and provincial government officials have refused to negotiate with strike leaders, who rejected as meaningless a decision by the provincial government to water down proposals for an all-Ireland council. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 805.23 (+2.66, +0.33%)
S&P Composite: 87.29 (+0.20, +0.23%)
Arms Index: 0.80

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	532	5.50
Declines	874	7.19
Unchanged	376	2.12
Total Volume		14.81

* 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 22, 1974	802.57	87.09	15.45
May 21, 1974	809.53	87.91	12.19
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