News stories from Thursday August 4, 1977

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

Judge John Dooling of Federal District Court in Brooklyn withdrew his order requiring the government to provide Medicaid funds for elective abortions. Joseph Califano, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, immediately issued an order banning federal funds for abortion except when the mother's life is in danger.Judge Dooling had granted the temporary restraining order to pro-abortion groups. He based his withdrawal of the order on the ground that the pro-abortionists had not proven that the federal abortion law was "vague and ambiguous." [New York Times] Two proposals to increase the federal gasoline tax met an overwhelming defeat in the House, which put off a final vote on the rest of President's energy program. The overall legislation was expected to be approved by a comfortable margin tomorrow, before Congress starts a summer recess. President Carter, meanwhile, signed legislation establishing a Department of Energy. [New York Times] Aliens who came into this country unlawfully before 1977 would be given legal status under proposals made to Congress by President Carter. If the proposals become law, those aliens would be given either permanent or temporary standing as alien residents after registering with the government. The registration was opposed by Representative Edward Roybal, California Democrat, who said that it would establish "a segregated, card-carrying portion of our population." [New York Times] More than 8,000 pounds of highly enriched uranium and plutonium cannot be traced by government facilities. The government said there was no evidence that the materials had been stolen, but three members of Congress questioned this and promised an inquiry. [New York Times] Impressive sales gains were reported by the major chain stores in July. Increases ranged from 8.7 percent to more than 21 percent over a year ago. Higher prices accounted for part of the sales increase last month, but the gains far outstrip the rise of 5.8 percent in the Consumer Price Index from the year-earlier period. [New York Times] Oil stocks and many others moved higher, keeping the Dow Jones industrial average above the 875-880 range that some analysts regard as a "support" area. The average gained 2.17 points and closed at 888.17. [New York Times] Mexico has signed a letter of intent to sell large quantities of natural gas to a consortium of six United States companies. The amount was expected to be two billion cubic feet daily, about 3 percent of this country's anticipated gas demands in 1980, when Mexico hopes to start making full-scale deliveries through a new pipeline. The announcement came from Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex), the state petroleum monopoly that controls Mexico's oil industry. [New York Times] Japan's foreign exchange holdings, which have rapidly been accumulating, will be reduced under orders from Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda to the Ministry of Finance and other government agencies. The government appears to be increasingly sensitive to criticism in the United States and Europe over Japan's expanding exports, a major cause for the rapid climb in its foreign exchange holdings. [New York Times] Consolidated Edison's president, Arthur Hauspurg, denounced a Federal Power Commission report that criticized "obvious flaws" in the reliability of the company's electrical system. He said the report contained "inaccurate statements and unsupported conclusions." Many of the corrective steps that the commission recommended have been initiated, Mr. Hauspurg said, adding that others "would do little to help prevent another system outage, given the extraordinary set of circumstances experienced by our system on the night of July 13." [New York Times] The New York City police arrested a Puerto Rican man in the Bronx after receiving an anonymous tip that he was connected with the terrorist bombings in midtown Manhattan Wednesday. The suspect, David Perez, a former "defense minister" of the Young Lords, was charged with the possession of weapons, which the police said they had seized In the apartment at 740 Grand Concourse in which he was arrested. [New York Times] Syria rejected Egypt's proposal for a meeting of Arab and Israeli foreign ministers in the United States next month. President Hafez al-Assad said he objected to the meeting because it would be seen as competing with a Geneva Middle East peace conference where, he said, Palestinian rights should be recognized. He made the statement after a meeting with Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 888.17 (+2.17, +0.24%)
S&P Composite: 98.74 (+0.37, +0.38%)
Arms Index: 0.73

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	901	11.63
Declines	473	4.43
Unchanged	497	2.81
Total Volume		18.87

* 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*
August 3, 1977	886.00	98.37	21.17
August 2, 1977	887.39	98.50	17.91
August 1, 1977	891.81	99.12	17.92
July 29, 1977	890.07	98.85	20.35
July 28, 1977	889.99	98.79	26.34
July 27, 1977	888.43	98.64	26.44
July 26, 1977	908.18	100.27	21.39
July 25, 1977	914.24	100.85	20.43
July 22, 1977	923.42	101.59	23.11
July 21, 1977	921.78	101.59	26.88