News stories from Friday March 19, 1976

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

Princess Margaret of Britain and her husband, Lord Snowdon, whose courtship before their marriage nearly 16 years ago attracted worldwide attention, are separating according to a statement from Kensington Palace in London, the home of the Princess. The statement said that the Princess would carry out her public duties and functions unaccompanied by Lord Snowdon, and there were no plans for divorce proceedings. [New York Times] With a rise in the Consumer Price Index of only one-tenth of 1 percent, consumer prices made the smallest advance in February in more than four years, the Labor Department said. A decline in meat prices, which may not continue, was said to have been responsible for the slight increase. However, economists do not expect inflation to proceed at that negligible rate and they believe that future months will not bring such good news. Nevertheless, the index was regarded as further indication of a very real slackening of inflation. [New York Times] The jury in Patricia Hearst's bank robbery trial began deliberations, trying to decide whether she willingly participated in the holdup or acted under coercion and in fear of death. The key question, Judge Oliver Carter told the jurors in Federal District Court in San Francisco, is whether the defendant was a willing participant in the robbery of the Sunset branch of the Hibernia Bank there in April 1974. [New York Times] The two young daughters of Seward Mellon, the Pittsburgh banker who is an heir to the Mellon empire, were abducted by three men as the girls left their Brooklyn home for school with their bodyguards. The children have been involved in a custody fight between Mr. Mellon and his former wife, Karen Leigh Boyd Mellon. They were reported to be somewhere in Pennsylvania with their father. [New York Times] The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency may order reductions of lead in gasoline to prevent potential but not fully proved public health hazards. The court appeared to uphold the agency's authority to regulate a broad range of environmental issues where danger to health seemed likely even though the danger had not been scientifically proved. The E.P.A. may now enforce regulations, first issued in 1973, requiring the gradual reduction of lead in gasoline. [New York Times] The Justice Department has instructed the Federal Bureau of Investigation to undertake a more extensive inquiry than the F.B.I. previously made into charges of financial corruption in the agency. The inquiry has been chiefly concerned with allegations that John Mohr, the retired head of the F.B.I.'s administrative division, or other F.B.I. officials had received kickbacks from a concern that has supplied the agency with electronic eavesdropping equipment. A Justice Department official said that the initial investigation could be called a "whitewash." [New York Times] Negotiations between the Rhodesian government and black nationalists were broken off and both sides called on Britain to resolve their dispute. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 979.85 (0.00, 0.00%)
S&P Composite: 100.58 (+0.13, +0.13%)
Arms Index: 0.82

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	689	8.11
Declines	731	7.04
Unchanged	441	2.94
Total Volume		18.09

* 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*
March 18, 1976	979.85	100.45	20.33
March 17, 1976	985.99	100.86	26.19
March 16, 1976	983.47	100.92	22.78
March 15, 1976	974.50	99.80	19.57
March 12, 1976	987.64	100.86	26.02
March 11, 1976	1003.31	101.89	27.30
March 10, 1976	995.28	100.94	25.90
March 9, 1976	993.70	100.58	31.77
March 8, 1976	988.74	100.19	25.06
March 5, 1976	972.92	99.11	23.03