News stories from Monday September 13, 1982

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

A proposed railroad merger that would combine three major Western and Southwestern lines, the Union Pacific, Missouri Pacific and Western Pacific, was approved by the Interstate Commerce Commission. Officials said final details of the acquistion by Union Pacific of the two other lines would probably be approved by Oct. 20, and the merger could become effective 30 days later. [New York Times] New hospital regulations developed by the Reagan administration to replace requirements regarded as "costly and unnecessary" would relax or repeal many of the current standards governing qualifications of the hospital staff, sanitation, social services, medical libraries and food served to patients. [New York Times] Insufficient evidence to prosecute Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan was found in a reopened investigation by a special federal prosecutor, Leon Silverman. The prosecutor said some of allegations made against the Secretary of Labor had been fabricated. [New York Times] The insanity defense would be limited under legislation proposed by President Reagan that also includes two other measures limiting the rights of criminal defendants. The measures have been debated in Congress. Mr. Reagan said that the legislation would "make it more likely that those who commit crimes pay a price." In addition to limiting the insanity defense, the legislation would revise the "exclusionary rule" for barring evidence in criminal trials and reduce defendants' rights to federal court review of state court convictions. [New York Times] CBS Cable will close down within 90 days, CBS Inc. announced. The performing arts network, the first major programming casualty in the cable industry, reportedly lost more than $30 million during the last year because of insufficient advertising revenues, its sole support. [New York Times] CBS Inc. is being sued for libel by Gen. William Westmoreland, the former commander of United States military forces in Vietnam, because of its portrayal of him in a documentary on the Vietnam war. In "The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception" General Westmoreland was described as the head of "a conspiracy at the highest levels of American intelligence, to suppress and alter critical intelligence on the enemy." He is seeking $120 million in compensatory and punitive damages. [New York Times] Hearings on a nuclear fallout lawsuit brought by more than 1,100 people against the government are scheduled to begin tomorrow in federal district court in Salt Lake City. The plaintiffs are current or former residents of a region in southern Utah and northern Arizona near the Nevada desert, where for a 12-year period beginning in 1951 more than 100 atomic bombs were detonated in a testing program. They contend that they or their relatives developed cancer and other diseases caused by the radioactive fallout. [New York Times] Israeli air strikes continued all day against Syrian and Palestinian positions in central and eastern Lebanon. Officials in Jerusalem said bombings were being made because of a long run of attacks on Israeli troops, mostly by forces of the Palestine Liberation Organization using Syrian-held territory as cover. [New York Times] The Reagan administration reacted to the latest outbreak of fighting in Lebanon with the statement that it was ''extremely concerned," adding that the fighting underscored the need to negotiate "as quickly as possible" the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Lebanon. [New York Times] Forty-six passengers died when a Spantax Airlines DC-10 bound for New York crashed on takeoff from Malaga, Spain, and caught fire. They were among 393 people aboard, many of them Americans. Spanish officials said 113 people were injured. [New York Times] Deng Xiaoping was elected chairman of the newly formed Central Advisory Commission to China's Communist Party. The council was created at the 12th party congress, which concluded last weekend, as a vehicle to get older leaders to surrender their posts to younger men and go into semi-retirement as a party elder. The 78-year-old Mr. Deng joined the commission almost immediately. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 918.69 (+11.87, +1.31%)
S&P Composite: 122.24 (+1.27, +1.05%)
Arms Index: 0.59

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	846	36.74
Declines	651	16.68
Unchanged	408	6.10
Total Volume		59.52

* 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*
September 10, 1982	906.82	120.97	71.07
September 9, 1982	912.53	121.97	73.08
September 8, 1982	915.75	122.20	77.95
September 7, 1982	914.28	121.37	68.96
September 3, 1982	925.13	122.68	130.90
September 2, 1982	909.40	120.28	74.73
September 1, 1982	895.05	118.25	82.83
August 31, 1982	901.31	119.51	86.36
August 30, 1982	893.30	117.66	59.56
August 27, 1982	883.47	117.11	74.39