News stories from Tuesday June 18, 1974

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

President Nixon completed his week-long tour of five Middle Eastern countries, terming it a success under his limited set of objectives. His trip, the President said, was only the beginning of a much longer journey toward the goal of "a just and lasting peace in this part of the world," and that the problems ahead were "still enormously difficult." He and Mrs. Nixon went on to the Azores for an overnight stay. [New York Times] As President Nixon started his trip home, Israeli planes resumed bombardment of alleged Arab guerrilla bases in Lebanon. The jets bombed targets on the western slope of Mount Hermon and in the Hasbani River Valley. The bombings apparently were in retaliation for the guerrilla killings of three women on June 13 in an Israeli kibbutz. An Israeli official said that President Nixon's Middle East visit might have been a factor in preventing the Israelis from striking back earlier. [New York Times] Proposed regulations designed generally to end sex discrimination in education were published by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. In addition to prohibiting the common practice of limiting home economic courses to girls and carpentry courses to boys, the regulations cover a large number of controversial areas. These include admissions policies; scholarships and other financial aid; curfews in dormitories; counseling and testing that may have a sex bias; financial aid for sororities and fraternities that limit membership to females or males, and a ban on sex-segregated classes in all except sex education. [New York Times] Leon Jaworski, the special Watergate prosecutor, responding in an interview to the first serious criticism of his seven months in office, justified plea-bargaining as a fair, legal and even necessary way to prosecute Watergate criminals. He also defended the results of the bargains the prosecution has negotiated -- the guilty pleas frequently offered by Nixon campaign aides and White House officials. Exploring the President Nixon's possible motive in ordering the dismissal of Archibald Cox, the first Watergate special prosecutor, the House Judiciary Committee focused on when the President first learned of the Watergate cover-up. [New York Times] Shelter Island in Suffolk, Long Island, is a summer vacation spot but it has 1,800 permanent residents who, like most other people in Suffolk County, are stanch Republicans. Watergate has not weakened the faith of the island's residents in President Nixon. Some of them, like Evans Grilling, the former town supervisor known as Mr. Conservative Himself, say that they are dismayed that support for Mr. Nixon seems to be eroding among the nation's conservatives. [New York Times] Some legislative opponents of Governor Byrne's proposed tax program offered an alternative: a statewide property tax that would be levied at a higher rate against business and industrial property. This would, its sponsors said, enable New Jersey to assume the full cost of operating public schools and eliminate the need for a state income tax, which Mr. Byrne recommends. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 830.26 (-2.97, -0.36%)
S&P Composite: 89.45 (-0.59, -0.66%)
Arms Index: 1.24

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	407	2.23
Declines	959	6.54
Unchanged	374	1.34
Total Volume		10.11

* 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*
June 17, 1974	833.23	90.04	9.68
June 14, 1974	843.09	91.30	10.03
June 13, 1974	852.08	92.34	11.54
June 12, 1974	848.56	92.06	11.15
June 11, 1974	852.08	92.28	12.38
June 10, 1974	859.67	93.10	13.54
June 7, 1974	853.72	92.55	19.02
June 6, 1974	845.35	91.96	13.35
June 5, 1974	830.18	90.31	13.68
June 4, 1974	828.69	90.14	16.04