News stories from Wednesday January 13, 1982

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

An air crash left at least 12 dead and more than 50 missing, according to the Washington (D.C.) police. An Air Florida jetliner taking off from National Airport in a snowstorm crashed into a Potomac River bridge crowded with commuter traffic and broke apart as it plunged into the river. The Boeing 737, bound for Tampa, had appeared suddenly out of the swirling snow over the 14th Street Bridge and sheared open a truck and half a dozen cars before caroming into the icy river. [New York Times] The airliner hit the Potomac bridge with a deafening roar, according to witnesses, who said that an eerie silence followed as the 737 glided onto the river, skidded across the gray ice and sank in the freezing waters. Firemen tugged life rafts toward the spot, and nearby bridges and the shoreline were set ablaze wth red torches, but there was little the rescue squads could do. [New York Times] The snowstorm knocked out power for nearly a million people in the South as the death toll in the national cold wave reached 143. Schools in many Northeastern areas were closed, and 230 National Guardsmen were mobilized in Atlanta to aid stranded motorists and to help remove thousands of abandoned cars. [New York Times] Ford balked at accepting the precedent-shattering agreement reached between General Motors and the United Automobile Workers to link wage and benefit concessions to lower car prices. The nation's second largest auto maker broke off talks with the union for a day, saying it needed more time to study the proposal. [New York Times] The threat of a terrorist attack against President Reagan by Libyan assassins has apparently receded, according to administration officials. [New York Times] Franklin D. Roosevelt recorded news conferences and, apparently inadvertently, some private conversations in the Oval Office for 11 weeks during his 1940 presidential re-election campaign, according to a history professor who says he has deciphered the secret tapes. The recordings, running about eight hours, mostly involve the news conferences, but the private talks contain acerbic allusions to Roosevelt's views on war and Wendell Willkie, his Republican rival. [New York Times] A major bank embezzlement led to a conviction. Harold Smith, who emerged from obscurity in 1978 to become one of the country's most powerful boxing promoters, was found guilty of embezzling $21.3 million from Wells Fargo National Bank. [New York Times] More curbs on Soviet trade, especially on the shipment of high-technology products and oil and gas equipment, are to be sought by the Reagan administration in talks with Washington's allies. The administration has apparently concluded that trade yields few benefits to the West and has helped the Soviet Union improve its military capacity to a point where it is a rising threat to Western security. [New York Times] A new diplomatic curb in Warsaw was reported by the State Department. It said the Polish government had begun barring foreigners from entering Western embassies other than that of their own country. But a department spokesman said that the practice had been protested and that the prohibition was expected to end soon. [New York Times] The Bonn-Washington split over American sanctions against the Soviet Union because of the situation in Poland was underscored by a West German spokesman. He indicated that Bonn would do nothing to hinder West German companies from sidestepping the effects of American prohibitions on supplying components for a pipeline to carry natural gas from Siberia to Western Europe. [New York Times] Paris-Bonn differences over Poland prompted Chancellor Helmut Schmidt to fly to France for talks with President Francois Mitterrand. Tensions in the governing coalition of Socialists and Communists were heightened by a letter from Poland's leader to the French Communist leader affirming there was room in Warsaw "for unions that are autonomous and genuinely independent in relationship to the state as employer." [New York Times] Talks on Palestinian self-rule are to be intensified, according to Secretary of State Alexander Haig. After a 90-minute meeting with President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo, Mr. Haig said that the Egyptian leader had agreed to accelerate the negotiations to try to resolve the 20-month stalemate over autonomy for the Arabs in the Israeli-occupied territories. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 838.95 (-8.75, -1.03%)
S&P Composite: 114.88 (-1.42, -1.22%)
Arms Index: 1.67

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	389	7.88
Declines	1,090	36.77
Unchanged	394	4.48
Total Volume		49.13

* 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*
January 12, 1982	847.70	116.30	49.80
January 11, 1982	850.46	116.78	51.90
January 8, 1982	866.53	119.55	42.04
January 7, 1982	861.78	118.93	43.42
January 6, 1982	861.02	119.18	51.50
January 5, 1982	865.30	120.05	47.50
January 4, 1982	882.52	122.74	36.75
December 31, 1981	875.00	122.55	40.78
December 30, 1981	873.10	122.30	42.96
December 29, 1981	868.25	121.67	35.24