News stories from Tuesday December 23, 1975

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

Among Democratic candidates for the presidential nomination, Senator Birch Bayh rates as an orthodox political technician, hammering away at the theme that he can best woo back organized labor and its leaders. His campaign stresses that he can win, making it essential for him to do well in the early party primaries. So far, he has had neither stunning triumphs nor serious setbacks. He has been doing well with the party's liberal elements, who sometimes have demanded high ideological purity. [New York Times] A labor arbitrator ruled that two baseball pitchers, Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally, were free agents, no longer bound by their contracts, and could sell their services to the highest bidder. The decision by Peter Seitz was hailed by the Players' Association as a major erosion of the controversial "reserve system," which binds an athlete to his team until he is traded or retired. It was denounced by Bowie Kuhn, commissioner of baseball. A continued struggle is expected between players and club owners in collective bargaining and eventually in the courts. [New York Times] Richard Welch, station chief in Athens of the Central Intelligence Agency, was shot and killed by unidentified gunmen outside his suburban residence as he returned from an embassy Christmas party. Officially listed as a special assistant to the ambassador, he had recently been named as a C.I.A. representative and his address listed in a local English-language newspaper. Assigned six months ago to Athens, he had served in the early 1960's in Cyprus. [New York Times] Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, warning that Soviet-American tensions might rise, said the Ford administration would continue to use available military aid and diplomatic means to oppose the imposition of a Soviet-backed regime in Angola by force. At a Washington news conference he said the Senate vote against further secret financing in the Angolan civil war had "severely complicated" administration efforts for a diplomatic solution. He said available means would be used to oppose Soviet "expansion," even if Soviet-American relations were set back. He pledged no American forces would go to Angola. [New York Times] The last of the hostages seized at an oil ministers' meeting in Vienna on Sunday were released by their pro-Palestinian captors at the Algiers airport. The five men and a woman who staged the kidnapping rode into the city by car, apparently not under arrest. The Austrian government demanded their extradition, but the Associated Press said Algiers was considering political asylum since the hostages were unharmed. [New York Times] An art cache including 15 paintings by the late Mark Rothko and many other works by other leading artists and sculptors, purportedly owned by the Marlborough Galleries, has been found in a Toronto warehouse, according to the lawyer for the painter's daughter who has sued the gallery for mishandling his estate. He said that if the works, valued at $15 million to $20 million, are indeed owned or controlled by Marlborough, they could be seized as assets to satisfy the $9.2 million in fines and damages assessed in Surrogate's Court. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 843.75 (+5.12, +0.61%)
S&P Composite: 88.73 (+0.59, +0.67%)
Arms Index: 0.72

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	871	10.08
Declines	569	4.72
Unchanged	475	2.95
Total Volume		17.75

* 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*
December 22, 1975	838.63	88.14	15.34
December 19, 1975	844.38	88.80	17.72
December 18, 1975	852.09	89.43	18.04
December 17, 1975	846.27	89.15	16.56
December 16, 1975	844.30	88.93	18.35
December 15, 1975	836.59	88.09	13.96
December 12, 1975	832.81	87.83	13.10
December 11, 1975	832.73	87.80	15.30
December 10, 1975	833.99	88.08	15.68
December 9, 1975	824.15	87.30	16.04