News stories from Wednesday March 31, 1976

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

Teamsters on the East Coast began to strike at midnight, while in other parts of the country they prepared to set up picket lines as negotiators In Arlington Heights, III., failed to reach an agreement on a new contract. [New York Times] Ronald Reagan appealed for popular support in a half-hour television address that seemed aimed at attracting fresh financial backing from Democrats and independents, as well as Republicans. It listed domestic ills and foreign troubles and asked America to return to greatness. President Ford's new campaign manager, Rogers C. B. Morton, said most Republican voters had already repudiated the challenger's views. [New York Times] The problems of older American cities have played a lesser role in this year's presidential campaign than they did after the urban riots of the mid-1960's. Although prominent in debate in the New York Democratic primary next Tuesday, there are few signs that the cities' problems will be a major issue in the rest of the campaign. [New York Times] Solicitor General Robert Bork, arguing for the government, urged the Supreme Court to overrule its 1972 decision against capital punishment as then practiced in America and to hold that the death penalty is constitutional. Lawyers were questioned with unusual bluntness by three Justices on the second day of the Court's re-examination of the question. [New York Times] The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the mechanical respirator keeping Karen Anne Quinlan alive might be disconnected if her attending physicians and a panel of hospital officials saw no reasonable possibility that she would recover. She has been In a coma for almost a year. [New York Times] Lebanese Moslems and their leftist allies appeared to be moving reluctantly toward acceptance of a temporary truce in the civil war in response to Syrian and other pressure. Kamal Jumblat, the Moslem Druse leader who heads the Progressive Socialist Party and is also titular leader of the Moslem-leftist alliance, said he was not opposed to the principle of a truce. [New York Times] In Washington, King Hussein of Jordan reportedly told members of Congress that probably only Syrian military intervention could restore order in Lebanon. He was apparently asking the United States to persuade Israel not to follow suit if Syria took this action. [New York Times] The White House and State Department announced that the United States and the Soviet Union expect to complete within the next several weeks a pact limiting both peaceful and military nuclear explosions to a maximum of 150 kilotons. Meanwhile, neither is expected to test any more nuclear devices above this range. [New York Times] West Germany has abandoned a project to build a $600 million nuclear power plant for the Soviet Union in Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea. This was announced in Bonn after a last round of negotiations with Soviet officials in Moscow failed because of disagreement on economic terms, the German Minister of Economics said. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 999.45 (+7.32, +0.74%)
S&P Composite: 102.77 (+0.76, +0.75%)
Arms Index: 0.63

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	891	10.81
Declines	559	4.24
Unchanged	422	2.47
Total Volume		17.52

* 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 30, 1976	992.13	102.01	17.93
March 29, 1976	997.40	102.41	16.10
March 26, 1976	1003.46	102.85	18.51
March 25, 1976	1002.13	102.85	22.51
March 24, 1976	1009.21	103.42	32.61
March 23, 1976	995.43	102.24	22.45
March 22, 1976	982.29	100.71	19.41
March 19, 1976	979.85	100.58	18.09
March 18, 1976	979.85	100.45	20.33
March 17, 1976	985.99	100.86	26.19