News stories from Friday October 14, 1977

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

Approval of the Panama Canal treaties was the object of a meeting and a joint statement by President Carter and Gen. Omar Torrijos at the White House. They said that under the accords the United States had the right "to act against any aggression or threat directed against the canal." In a "statement of understanding" to assure both Americans and Panamanians, the two leaders also affirmed that the United States' right to use military force to keep the Panama Canal open did not mean that Washington would intervene in "the internal affairs of Panama." [New York Times] Bing Crosby died of an apparent heart attack while playing golf at a course outside Madrid. The singer and actor was 73. His breezy baritone charmed popular music listeners for 50 years and made him one of the most successful personalities of American show business. He had just completed a highly successful tour of Britain. [New York Times] The minimum wage would rise to $3.35 an hour by 1981 from the current $2.30 under an agreement by House and Senate conferees. The hourly minimum would go to $2.65 next January, $2.90 in 1979, $3.10 in 1980, and $3.35 in 1981, a nickel below the Carter administration's goal for 1981. [New York Times] A revised energy program was approved by the Senate Finance Committee. The plan would save significant amounts of fuel, but would cost the Treasury a projected $32 billion in the next eight years. The committee has previously rejected President Carter's major energy tax proposals. Its bill will go before the Senate in about 10 days and its fate is in doubt. [New York Times] Industrial production rose four-tenths of 1 percent in September, offsetting a drop of four-tenths of 1 percent in August, the Federal Reserve Board reported. The increase last month was attributed partly to the end of a coal industry strike. [New York Times] The dollar was at a low or near-low against nearly all of the world's major currencies after a week of unusually heavy transfers of funds. The week was one of the most hectic in some years in foreign exchange trading. Traders attributed the decline to a number of factors, especially the record American trade deficit and uncertainty about the fate of the Carter administration's tax and energy programs. [New York Times] Stock prices rallied a bit in comparatively low volume on the day after the Dow Jones industrial average slipped to a two-year low. The Dow closed at 821.64, showing a gain of 3.47 points for the session. But for the full week the indicator registered a loss of more than 18 points. [New York Times] Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis has resigned as a consulting editor at Viking Press to avoid, she said, any possibility that she would be linked with the acquisition or publication of a novel that depicts Senator Edward Kennedy as the target of an assassination attempt. Mrs. Onassis said her attempts to separate her role in publishing and her life as a Kennedy relative had become impossible because of suggestions she was connected with the book. [New York Times] The indictment of former Representative Richard Hanna of California was voted by a federal grand jury in Washington. He was charged on 40 felony counts stemming from an inquiry into alleged bribery and influence peddling by members of the South Korean Central Intelligence Agency. Mr. Hanna is the first present or former member of Congress to be criminally charged in the 2½-year-old investigation. Three counts accused him of seeking some $100,000 in bribes in ex-change for influencing fellow members of Congress. [New York Times] The hijackers of a West German airliner with 91 persons on board were promised fuel for the craft in exchange for some of the hostages, some of whom were thought to be ill. The plane had been diverted from Europe to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates by hijackers who threatened to kill the hostages unless 13 terrorists were freed from West German and Turkish jails by Sunday. Parallel demands have been made by the kidnappers of Hanns-Martin Schleyer, the West German industrialist. [New York Times] The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science was awarded to a Swede and a Briton for what the Royal Swedish Academy termed "path-breaking contributions" to international trade theory. They are Bertil Ohlin, 78 years old, once an academic prodigy and later a leader of the Swedish Liberal Party, and James Meade, 70, a former professor at Cambridge University. [New York Times] More than 100 Soviet Jews charged in an open letter that Soviet authorities were trying to erase Jewish culture and minimize emigration to Israel, in continuing defiance of the Helsinki pacts and other accords on human rights. The charges were made in a 2,500-word letter to the 35 states taking part in the follow-up conference on European security at Belgrade. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 821.64 (+3.47, +0.42%)
S&P Composite: 93.56 (+0.10, +0.11%)
Arms Index: 0.99

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	658	8.26
Declines	699	8.71
Unchanged	498	3.44
Total Volume		20.41

* 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*
October 13, 1977	818.17	93.46	23.87
October 12, 1977	823.98	94.04	22.44
October 11, 1977	832.38	94.93	18.11
October 10, 1977	840.26	95.75	10.58
October 7, 1977	840.35	95.97	16.25
October 6, 1977	842.08	96.05	18.49
October 5, 1977	837.40	95.68	18.30
October 4, 1977	842.08	96.03	20.85
October 3, 1977	851.96	96.74	19.46
September 30, 1977	847.11	96.53	21.17