News stories from Friday March 26, 1982

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

President Reagan withdrew his commitment to the budget for the fiscal year 1983 and was prepared to negotiate basic changes with Republicans and Democrats to reduce the deficit, Edwin Meese, the White House counselor, announced. It was the most explicitly conciliatory statement on the budget from anyone in the Reagan administration. Changes were necessary because the $91.5 billion deficit that was projected in early February had grown, Mr. Meese said. [New York Times] Three communication links failed on the space shuttle Columbia, but the project's officials said backup systems were sufficient for the astronauts to carry out their mission to its scheduled ending Monday. The failures raised the possiblity that the mission would have to be ended prematurely, but a project official said that the failures thus far had not degraded the flow of operational and scientific data from the spaceship, nor did they threaten the crew's safety. [New York Times] The Democratic Party adopted rules for its 1984 convention that turned away from its grass-roots emphasis and placed potentially decisive power to nominate its next presidential candidate back in the hands of office-holders and party officials. Without a single spoken protest and over only a handful of "nay" votes, the Democratic National Committee adopted rules providing that 14 percent of the delegates to the nominating convention be chosen on the basis of their office or party status and without commitment to a candidate. [New York Times] Some Vietnam veterans wept as preliminary work began in Washington on the two-acre site of a memorial to Americans who died in the Vietnam War. The groundbreaking ceremonies were attended by about 2,000 people, including Gov. Charles Robb of Virginia, who was a Marine officer in the war. The memorial, consisting of two 200-foot black granite slabs inscribed with the names of 57,692 Americans killed or missing in Vietnam, will be erected on the west end of the Mall, between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. [New York Times] Tax-exemption for veterans' groups may no longer be granted by the Internal Revenue Service while it denies the privilege to charitable or educational organizations that conduct lobbying activities, a federal appellate court has ruled. The court said in a 6-to-4 decision that it was unconstitutional to grant tax exemptions to veterans' groups, which have lobbied on a wide range of issues, while denying this status to other nonprofit organizations that lobby on behalf of legislation. [New York Times] A bad job of policing Medicaid fraud has been done by most states, according to a congressional committee. New York was the exception and was said to have done a superlative job. The report by the House Select Committee on Aging concluded that "state enforcement of the Medicaid program has been an unmitigated disaster." [New York Times] A meeting "at a high political level" will be held next month between the United States and Nicaragua, Mexico's delegate announced to the United Nations Security Council. United States sources would not confirm the announcement by Porfirio Munoz Ledo, nor would Jeane Kirkpatrick, the United States delegate, However, the Foreign Minister of Nicaragua, Miguel d'Escoto, said that the Mexican account matched his understanding. [New York Times] A compromise with the U.S. was im-possible on the issue of the American arms sales to Taiwan, Deng Xiaoping, China's leader, told an American businessman, Armand Hammer, at a meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Peking. A Chinese magazine this week quoted Mr. Deng as saying that Peking was "well prepared" to downgrade diplomatic relations with Washington if it had to. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 817.92 (-9.71, -1.17%)
S&P Composite: 111.94 (-1.27, -1.12%)
Arms Index: 2.23

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	497	7.33
Declines	927	30.46
Unchanged	452	4.61
Total Volume		42.40

* 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 25, 1982	827.63	113.21	51.96
March 24, 1982	823.34	112.97	49.38
March 23, 1982	826.67	113.55	67.12
March 22, 1982	819.54	112.77	57.61
March 19, 1982	805.65	110.61	46.24
March 18, 1982	805.27	110.30	54.27
March 17, 1982	795.85	109.08	48.89
March 16, 1982	798.33	109.28	50.23
March 15, 1982	800.99	109.45	43.37
March 12, 1982	797.37	108.61	49.59