News stories from Friday March 26, 1976

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

The chairman of the House Postal Service subcommittee said that the United States Postal Service was on the "brink of bankruptcy" and the agency was unlikely to get the federal help it needed if it did not stop cutting back mail service. Representative James Hanley, Democrat of upstate New York, said that Postmaster General Benjamin Bailar agreed with this view and has called a moratorium on service cutbacks and rural office closings that were meant to save money. But there appeared to be some ambiguity about the Postal Service's stand on the moratorium. [New York Times] President Ford said at a Republican fundraising luncheon in San Francisco that he would not "play Russian roulette" with national security by allowing Democrats in Congress to cut his military spending request. He said Representative Brock Adams and other Democrats on the House Budget Committee, who propose to cut $7 billion from military appropriations, had "forgotten the history of world wars" in "the hysteria of the election campaign." [New York Times] The United States and Turkey reached an agreement on a four-year accord under which American military installations would be reopened in Turkey in return for a pledge of about a billion in American grants and loans -- about $250 million yearly, most of it in military assistance. The accord would entirely end the American embargo on military aid to Turkey that followed Turkey's invasion of Cyprus in 1974, but its approval by Congress is uncertain because of concern over Turkey's lagging efforts to end the Cyprus crisis. The embargo was eased by Congress last October and it was then that the Turkish-American talks were begun. They ended with the agreement signed at the State Department by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Turkey's Foreign Minister, Ihsan Caglayangil. [New York Times] Moslem leaders in Lebanon insisted that there could be no cease-fire in the Lebanese civil war unless their Christian opponents agreed to sweeping constitutional changes and the immediate unconditional resignation of President Suleiman Franjieh. Kamal Jumblat, the Druse leader and head of the Lebanese left, said again that the Moslem leftists were determined to press for full military victory as a means of achieving a political settlement. [New York Times] Lin Yutang, the writer, who had for many years been the leading Chinese scholar in the West, died after a long illness in a Hong Kong hospital. He was 80 years old. Among his best-known books were "Wisdom of China," "Wisdom of India" and "Wisdom of Confucius." [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1003.46 (+1.33, +0.13%)
S&P Composite: 102.85 (0.00, 0.00%)
Arms Index: 0.77

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	768	9.47
Declines	632	6.01
Unchanged	453	3.03
Total Volume		18.51

* 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*
March 25, 1976	1002.13	102.85	22.51
March 24, 1976	1009.21	103.42	32.61
March 23, 1976	995.43	102.24	22.45
March 22, 1976	982.29	100.71	19.41
March 19, 1976	979.85	100.58	18.09
March 18, 1976	979.85	100.45	20.33
March 17, 1976	985.99	100.86	26.19
March 16, 1976	983.47	100.92	22.78
March 15, 1976	974.50	99.80	19.57
March 12, 1976	987.64	100.86	26.02