News stories from Monday August 18, 1975

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

The Commerce Department reported that housing starts in July increased 14 percent over the previous month and showed their first substantial rise of the year. Starts last month were at an annual rate of 1,238,000, well above the recession low of fewer than 1 million in the winter months. [New York Times] Mel Patrick Lynch, a city fireman, and Dominic Byrne, a limousine operator, have admitted kidnapping Samuel Bronfman II and threatening that both he and his multimillionaire father, Edgar, would die unless a ransom demand was met, according to a Federal Bureau of Investigation complaint. It said Mr. Lynch admitted preparing the threatening ransom letter last June. But it was learned that an abduction of some member of the Seagram liquor empire family had been planned perhaps as long as two years ago. [New York Times] Future grain shipments to the Soviet Union have been boycotted by six maritime unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations. The unions also demanded more government protection against rising food prices and more protection for United States shipping interests. The boycott and union demands were announced following a meeting in Washington of George Meany, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and leaders of the six unions. [New York Times] Large grain sales to the Soviet Union were defended by President Ford in an address to an audience of 20,000 people at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, one of his stops on a two-day political trip across the Middle West. Mr. Ford said that he expected "further purchases of grain" by Moscow, confronting head-on the sensitive issue of grain sales to Russia, which grain farmers favor but many Midwestern conservatives find politically troublesome. [New York Times] In a daring flight from West Germany into Czechoslovakia, an American civilian in a helicopter flew three East Germans to the West on Sunday. The pilot, Barry Meeker, said that ground fire forced him to leave behind an injured East German woman and a friend of his at whose request, he said, he had undertaken the rescue mission. The helicopter landed in Traunstein, in the Bavarian Alps near the Austrian border and 50 miles east of Munich. [New York Times] Premier Vasco Goncalves of Portugal, under overwhelming military and civilian pressure to resign because of his pro-Communist policies, made a fighting speech before 5,000 cheering Communists and asked for confidence from "patriots, progressive people and democrats." The Premier, who acknowledged last Saturday that he was having trouble governing, went into the industrial suburb of Almada, across the Tagus River from Lisbon, to make his stand at a rally officially sponsored by the country's single labor organization, now controlled by the Communist party. [New York Times] Premier Yitzhak Rabin of Israel gave Parliament a guardedly hopeful assessment of the outlook for Secretary of State Kissinger's resumption this week of shuttle diplomacy between Jerusalem and Cairo, but he warned against undue optimism. His address was frequently interrupted by hostile remarks from members of the Likud party, the conservative opposition. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 822.75 (-2.89, -0.35%)
S&P Composite: 86.20 (-0.16, -0.19%)
Arms Index: 1.21

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	638	4.03
Declines	633	4.84
Unchanged	477	1.94
Total Volume		10.81

* 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*
August 15, 1975	825.64	86.36	10.61
August 14, 1975	817.04	85.60	12.46
August 13, 1975	820.56	85.97	12.00
August 12, 1975	828.54	87.12	14.51
August 11, 1975	823.76	86.55	12.35
August 8, 1975	817.74	86.02	11.66
August 7, 1975	815.79	86.30	12.39
August 6, 1975	813.67	86.25	16.28
August 5, 1975	810.15	86.23	15.47
August 4, 1975	818.05	87.15	12.62