News stories from Monday December 13, 1976

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

The stay of execution it had granted in the Gary Gilmore case was lifted by the Supreme Court in a 5 to 4 decision. The Court said that Mr. Gilmore had "made a knowing and intelligent waiver of any and all federal rights he might have asserted after the Utah trial court's sentence was imposed," rejecting an argument of representatives of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund on behalf of Mr. Gilmore's mother, who brought the appeal. [New York Times] The Secretary of the Treasury in the Carter administration will be Michael Blumenthal, chairman and chief executive officer of the Bendix Corporation, sources in the Carter camp said. Mr. Blumenthal, 50, headed the international trade negotiations known as the Kennedy Round from 1963-67. It was also said that Charles Schultze, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, would be named chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers. [New York Times] A lawyer for cousins of Howard Hughes accused Melvin Dummar, the Utah gas station operator who would inherit 1/16 of Mr. Hughes's estate under a purported will submitted for probate, of involvement in what they called its forgery. [New York Times] Stock prices advanced for the fourth session in a row as investors, encouraged by a spreading reduction in the prime lending rate, stepped up buying. The Dow Jones industrial average closed up 1.09 points to 974.24. Higher prices on the New York Stock Exchange outnumbered declines by more than 4 to 3. Credit markets declined in reaction to news that the Federal Reserve did not post lower short-term interest rates. [New York Times] Oil ministers belonging to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries began gathering in Doha, Qatar, for their crucial price-setting conference tomorrow. OPEC's president, Mohammed Sadli of Indonesia, said on his arrival that a "possible scenario" for the meeting would be the announcement of a small price increase at the conference and a larger one later.Secretary of State Henry Kissinger warned negotiators at the Conference on International Economic Cooperation in Paris of the danger in establishing a direct link between any concessions offered developing countries at the conference and price moderation by oil exporting countries at their meeting in Qatar. The warning was contained in a cable sent from Washington and leaked to the Dutch press last week. [New York Times] Divorced women can be excluded from a Social Security "wife's insurance benefits" program for mothers caring for young or disabled children, the Supreme Court said in a unanimous decision. The Court reversed a federal court in Illinois that said the exclusion of divorced women from those benefits "invidiously discriminates against divorced wives." [New York Times] Portugal's Socialist government received a qualified vote of confidence in the local elections on Sunday. The party received 33.11 percent of the total vote, which was less than the 35 percent plurality it had in the legislative election last April. Nevertheless, the victory for the Socialists on Sunday probably averted a government crisis. [New York Times] Israel's Defense Minister, Shimon Peres, predicted that there would be "meaningful negotiations" in the second half of next year between Israel and its Arab neighbors resulting in agreements short of a comprehensive settlement. He made it clear in an interview that he preferred Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's step-by-step diplomacy to the Geneva conference approach advocated by Arab leaders and officially by Israel. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 974.24 (+1.09, +0.11%)
S&P Composite: 104.63 (-0.07, -0.07%)
Arms Index: 0.89

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	877	12.36
Declines	636	7.95
Unchanged	444	4.52
Total Volume		24.83

* 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*
December 10, 1976	973.15	104.70	25.96
December 9, 1976	970.74	104.51	31.80
December 8, 1976	963.26	104.08	24.56
December 7, 1976	960.69	103.49	26.14
December 6, 1976	961.77	103.56	24.83
December 3, 1976	950.55	102.76	22.64
December 2, 1976	946.64	102.12	23.30
December 1, 1976	949.38	102.49	21.96
November 30, 1976	947.22	102.10	17.03
November 29, 1976	950.05	102.44	18.75