News stories from Thursday January 12, 1978

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

Inflation increased at the wholesale level in December, mainly reflecting the biggest rise in food prices in seven months, the government said. The Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics said wholesale prices increased seven-tenths of 1 percent last month, compared with a November rise of four-tenths of 1 percent. The comparative figures were arrived at through a new and superior indicator of price changes working through the economy, the department said. [New York Times] President Carter attributed the dollar's instability to the nation's continuing consumption of imported oil and Congress' failure to legislate effective conservation measures. His remarks at his news conference indicated a new emphasis in his personal efforts to encourage passage of his energy program. He repeatedly stressed the relationship of energy problems and the dollar's health. [New York Times] A token rally in the stock market -- the first gain of 1978 -- reflected a stronger dollar in foreign exchange markets, but it lacked conviction, many Wall Street observers said, noting that the best gains were shaved in late trading. The Dow Jones industrial average advanced 2.25 points to 778.15. [New York Times] A decision to replace a United States Attorney in Philadelphia has developed into a controversy, partly because it appears to some critics to be a breach of President Carter's campaign promise to appoint all federal prosecutors on the basis of merit, not politics. Mr. Carter acknowledged that he had got in touch with Attorney General Griffin Bell to "expedite" the removal of David Marston, a Republican, who in the last year has successfully prosecuted some prominent Democrats in Pennsylvania. Mr. Carter denied that he had done so because of the investigations. [New York Times] Vice President Mondale said that the Carter administration hoped to modify regulations limiting the ownership of federally irrigated lands. On the fourth day of his fence-mending tour in the Rocky Mountain states, the Vice President and Interior Secretary Cecil Andrus repeatedly said that the President was determined to preserve family farming on the irrigated lands by retaining strict residency requirements. But, Mr. Mondale said, the administration was considering a sliding scale of acreage limitations based on the type of irrigated land and the crops grown on it. [New York Times] New Jersey has been chosen for a special study of the factors that give it the nation's highest cancer mortality rate. Federal environmental officials want to know whether there is a statistical correlation between the incidence of cancer cases and exposure to toxic substances emitted by industrial plants. A computer terminal in the State Department of Environmental Protection in Trenton has been linked to a cancer data bank at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., which is collecting nationwide health and environmental data. [New York Times] President Carter accused the Soviet Union of "unwarranted" interference in the Somali-Ethiopian fighting over the Ogaden border area. At his news conference, he urged talks to end the dispute, saying "our hope is that the Somalis might call publicly for negotiations to begin immediately to resolve the Ogaden dispute," Mr. Carter said that Washington had complained to Moscow in "very strong terms" about continuing shipments of Soviet arms and the sending of Cuban advisers to Ethiopia. [New York Times] Henry Ford II went to South Africa for an inspection tour of the Ford Company's plants in Port Elizabeth, which employ 1,100 blacks. The treatment of blacks working for American companies in South Africa has been an issue for years. Mr. Ford was vague about the reasons for his visit. "It's 10 years since I've been here, so I thought I'd see how everything was going," he said. There was no doubt, however, that the status of the company's black employees would be a major topic for discussion with his executives in Port Elizabeth, even ahead of the profit problem the company has in South Africa's recession. [New York Times] The United States urged Italy and other Western European countries to reduce Communist influence. A policy statement made by the Carter administration said that Italy's Communist Party did not share democratic "values and interests." The current political crisis in Italy "had increased the level of our concern," the statement said. [New York Times] Rioting broke out for the second day in Managua, Nicaragua, after about 30,000 people attended the funeral of Pedro Chamorro, the opposition newspaper editor and publisher who was murdered Tuesday. Demonstrators set fires to buildings and cars Wednesday. A number of persons were reported to have died in the new clashes with heavily armed National Guardsmen. The government, meanwhile, announced it had arrested four persons and charged them with Mr. Chamorro's murder. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 778.15 (+2.25, +0.29%)
S&P Composite: 89.82 (+0.08, +0.09%)
Arms Index: 0.93

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	753	10.67
Declines	606	7.98
Unchanged	492	4.08
Total Volume		22.73

* 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*
January 11, 1978	775.90	89.74	22.88
January 10, 1978	781.53	90.17	25.18
January 9, 1978	784.56	90.64	27.90
January 6, 1978	793.49	91.62	26.15
January 5, 1978	804.92	92.74	23.57
January 4, 1978	813.58	93.52	24.09
January 3, 1978	817.74	93.82	17.72
December 30, 1977	831.17	95.10	23.56
December 29, 1977	830.39	94.94	23.61
December 28, 1977	829.70	94.75	19.63