News stories from Friday January 27, 1978

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

President Anwar Sadat will visit Washington next weekend for talks with President Carter, administration officials said. Mr. Sadat may also visit other cities, they said. He is expected to be in the United States about a week. [New York Times] An amendment to the Panama Canal neutrality treaty was endorsed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It would guarantee the United States the right to send troops to defend the canal after it passes to full Panamanian control in the year 2000. The committee did not formally adopt the amendment, but it recommended that the Senate do so. [New York Times] More snow threatened parts of the Upper Middle West, where thousands of travelers were still stranded by the storm earlier this week that disrupted the lives of millions of Americans and killed at least 70 people. President Carter ordered Army units to help exhausted National Guardsmen in Ohio to rescue stranded motorists and assist repairmen in restoring electrical power to 150,000 homes. Motorists were still searching for shelter in Michigan, where the National Guard was called out and a state of emergency declared. [New York Times] The stock market steadied in light, cautious trading, enabling the Dow Jones industrial average, which slumped on Thursday, to close ahead 0.78 point to 764.12. [New York Times] Higher social security taxes will not bring increased benefits to people retiring 40 years from now, according to a New Jersey actuarial consulting firm. It concludes that people 25 years of age now earning $10,000 a year will receive on retirement in 2018 only about half of what they would have received under the Social Security law before it was amended last year. Previously, people reaching retirement age in 2018 would have received Social Security benefits equal to 83 percent of the average of their final five years' pay. As a result of the 1977 amendments, the benefits will be equal to only 46.7 percent of the final average earnings. The study says that benefits will also decline for persons in other age and income groups. [New York Times] Nazi party members have a constitutional right to display swastikas at public demonstrations in Chicago's predominantly Jewish suburb of Skokie, the Illinois Supreme Court said in overturning the State Appellate Court. The Supreme Court, in an unsigned decision to which one of the seven justices dissented, said it was ruling "reluctantly" that the display of the swastikas "cannot be enjoined under the 'fighting words' exception, nor can anticipation of the hostile audience justify a prior restraint." [New York Times] Representative Daniel Flood, Democrat of Pennsylvania, has been accused by a former aide of selling his congressional influence for more than $100,000 in cash and bank stock. An affidavit filed in federal court in Los Angeles records some of the allegations of Stephen Elko, who was on Mr. Flood's staff from 1970 to 1975 and who was convicted of last October of accepting bribes to influence an action of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. [New York Times] Reports of heavy radiation in Canada resulted from malfunctioning instruments used by United States scientists in a joint Canadian-American search for a disintegrated Soviet nuclear-powered satellite. The apparent error was disclosed at Canada's National Defense headquarters in Ottawa. It is now believed that no part of the satellite fell to earth, but the search for possible contamination is continuing. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 764.12 (+0.78, +0.10%)
S&P Composite: 88.58 (0.00, 0.00%)
Arms Index: 0.70

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	577	7.68
Declines	733	6.79
Unchanged	478	3.13
Total Volume		17.60

* 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 26, 1978	763.34	88.58	19.60
January 25, 1978	772.44	89.39	18.69
January 24, 1978	771.57	89.25	18.69
January 23, 1978	770.70	89.24	19.38
January 20, 1978	776.94	89.89	7.58
January 19, 1978	778.67	90.09	21.50
January 18, 1978	786.30	90.56	21.39
January 17, 1978	779.02	89.88	19.36
January 16, 1978	771.74	89.43	18.76
January 13, 1978	775.73	89.69	18.01