News stories from Thursday October 23, 1975

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

Generalissimo Francisco Franco suffered a sudden setback in his heart illness and the succession to power of Prince Juan Carlos de Borbon appeared to be underway. High officials made it clear that it was time for the 82-year-old Chief of State to step down in the interests of his government. [New York Times] A bomb exploded under a car parked outside the London home of a member of Parliament who is serving as host to Caroline Kennedy, the 17-year-old daughter of President. Kennedy. The blast killed Gordon Hamilton Fairley, a leading British cancer specialist, as he was walking past the car. The incident occurred moments before Hugh Fraser, a Conservative, was to drive Miss Kennedy to an art course at Sotheby's. The exact motive was not known. [New York Times] A tax cut on 1976 income that would add $2.6 billion to reductions in 1975 taxes that took effect last spring was approved by the House Ways and Means Committee. However, under the package passed by the committee, like President Ford's plan, nearly all families with children and a worker making $5,000 a year or less would be worse off than they are now. [New York Times] Lawyers have filed suit in federal court in Jackson, Miss., against six Mississippi municipalities on behalf of black residents. The suit aims to impound more than $4 million in federal revenue-sharing funds until the towns equalize public services in black and white neighborhoods. [New York Times] House Speaker Carl Albert, in an unusually strong statement, urged Congress to approve legislation to avert a default by New York City, Representative Albert, an Oklahoma Democrat, said at a news conference that such a default would be "a catastrophe that would affect the entire country." He urged legislation to contain stringent measures to "keep the lid tight" on the city's fiscal behavior. City and state experts agree that unless federal aid is forthcoming, the city will default in early December.Meanwhile, Senator James Buckley, the Conservative-Republican of New York, urged President Ford to order the Justice Department to create "a citizens committee" to investigate whether the city had violated federal law by overstating available funds to cover borrowing. [New York Times] Each week, Florida's prisons are gaining 93 new inmates who are younger, tougher and serving longer terms than previous inmates. In a desperate search for space, the new prisoners are being locked into converted warehouses and placed behind cyclone fences in Army tents. [New York Times] Newsmen who left Peking with Secretary of State Kissinger were told that Chinese leaders now believed that American influence in world affairs had diminished in the last few years. [New York Times] The United Nations Security Council, voting 13-0, extended the mandate of the international peace-keeping force in the Sinai buffer zone by a year. [New York Times] The 1975 Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Eugenio Montale, a 79-year-old Italian poet, for his vision of human values through "an outlook on life with no illusions." In Milan, the poet said the award had made his life, "which was always unhappy, less unhappy." [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 855.16 (+5.59, +0.66%)
S&P Composite: 91.24 (+0.53, +0.58%)
Arms Index: 0.87

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	911	10.41
Declines	480	4.79
Unchanged	432	2.69
Total Volume		17.89

* 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*
October 22, 1975	849.57	90.71	16.06
October 21, 1975	846.82	90.56	20.80
October 20, 1975	842.25	89.82	13.25
October 17, 1975	832.18	88.86	15.65
October 16, 1975	837.85	89.37	18.91
October 15, 1975	837.22	89.23	14.44
October 14, 1975	835.25	89.28	19.96
October 13, 1975	837.77	89.46	12.02
October 10, 1975	823.91	88.21	14.88
October 9, 1975	824.54	88.37	17.77