News stories from Thursday November 19, 1981

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

A compromise on spending was urgently sought by Senate Republican leaders in efforts to trim a stopgap government appropriation and avert a veto threatened by President Reagan. Authority for the federal government to spend money runs out at midnight tomorrow, and federal operations could be disrupted Monday if an emergency measure is not adopted over the weekend. [New York Times] A major shift in civil rights policy was set by the Justice Department. It said it would no longer seek to desegregate a entire school district when segregation is shown to exist in only part of the district. Many civil rights lawyers say that the process being abandoned is critical to proving violations by local school authorities. [New York Times] CBS will increase its evening news program from 30 minutes to at least 45 minutes and more likely a full hour by early 1983, top executives of the network said. It would be the first increase in the length of a national evening newscast since 1963, when CBS expanded its program to 30 minutes from 15 and NBC and ABC followed suit. [New York Times] A crackdown on some student grants is planned by Education Secretary Terrel Bell, who said that a study indicated that up to $452 million in overpayments were now being made to needy college students under the Pell Grants program. Mr. Bell also said that his department planned to compare information provided by some applicants with income tax returns prepared by their families. [New York Times] A nuclear plant must halt operations under a ruling by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Design errors related to earthquake safety have been discovered in the facility, the Diablo Canyon power plant near San Luis Obispo, Calif., which is near a geological fault. The commission said that the license permitting the plant to load fuel and conduct low-power testing would remain suspended until the plant passed seismic tests. [New York Times] The Marathon Oil Company, seeking to fend off a takeover effort by the Mobil Corporation, has agreed to be acquired by the United States Steel Corporation for about $6.3 billion. The merger would be the second largest in American history and would create the nation's 13th largest industrial company, with total annual revenues of nearly $21 billion. [New York Times] Rising concern over Richard Allen has been expressed by senior White House officials, according to an administration aide. He said that the officials, fearing they did not have full information about Mr. Allen's activities, ordered him to review records of contacts with Japanese businessmen while serving as President Reagan's national security adviser. Justice Department sources, meanwhile, said the officials investigating the $1,000 payment Mr. Allen received from a Japanese magazine had been told by one of his secretaries that she had failed to follow his instructions to turn the money over to the government. [New York Times] A new gain for foreign arms sales, which are being pressed by the Reagan administration, was marked as the House Foreign Affairs Committee in effect backed the sale of 40 F-16 jets to Pakistan. [New York Times] Washington said it regretted the "hasty" initial reaction by Soviet information outlets to President Reagan's arms control proposals and expressed the hope for a more positive response in the future. Moscow has derided the President's offer to cancel plans to deploy 572 new American medium-range missiles in Europe if the Kremlin dismantled 1,100 Soviet warheads now deployed. [New York Times] Moscow broadened its attacks on President Reagan's arms control proposals, but a Kremlin spokesman said the Soviet Union hoped that the plan was not Washington's "final say on the issue." [New York Times] A metal of potential nuclear use that was seized at Kennedy International Airport just before it was to be loaded on a passenger flight to Pakistan has prompted a federal investigation. The government prohibits export of the metal, zirconium, without a license because it is a key component in the construction of reactors. [New York Times] Access to a highly secret technology for enriching uranium will be offered to Australia under a decision by President Reagan, according to Energy Department officials. Until now the technology has not been made available to any foreign government. Officials also said the President had told the department to explore ways to have private business take over the entire uranium enrichment program. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 844.75 (+0.69, +0.08%)
S&P Composite: 120.71 (+0.45, +0.37%)
Arms Index: 0.66

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	772	26.92
Declines	721	16.50
Unchanged	429	5.47
Total Volume		48.89

* 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*
November 18, 1981	844.06	120.26	49.98
November 17, 1981	850.17	121.15	43.19
November 16, 1981	845.03	120.24	43.74
November 13, 1981	855.88	121.67	45.57
November 12, 1981	860.54	123.19	55.71
November 11, 1981	857.12	122.92	41.94
November 10, 1981	853.98	122.70	53.93
November 9, 1981	855.21	123.29	48.30
November 6, 1981	852.45	122.67	43.26
November 5, 1981	859.11	123.54	50.86