News stories from Monday April 17, 1978

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

On the eve of an uncertain vote on the second Panama Canal treaty, the Senate Democratic leadership won the agreement of a key Senator on the language of a reservation that would assert the United States policy of non-intervention in Panama's internal affairs. Senator Dennis DeConcini, Arizona Democrat, said he had agreed to the wording because it "does not do any violence" to a reservation he plans to introduce that provides that the United States has the right to intervene militarily in Panama to keep the canal open. [New York Times] President Carter's income tax bill got off to a shaky start in its consideration by the House Ways and Means Committee. The committee rejected two out of three of Mr. Carter's revenue-raising tax proposals for ending itemized deductions for state and local taxes. In the key test, the committee rejected, 19 to 18, the President's proposal to abolish deductions for state and local sales taxes. Then it voted, 20 to 17, against ending deduction for state and local taxes on personal property. It was apparent that Mr. Carter's plan to combine tax rate cuts for individuals and corporations with revenue-raising proposals faces a long struggle in Congress. [New York Times] Huge purchases of stock by foreign investors and by domestic institutions produced another record trading session on the New York Stock Exchange. Volume on the Big Board totaled 63.5 million shares, far ahead of the record of 52.28 million shares that was set only last Friday. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 14.99 points, closing at 810.12. It had climbed nearly 20 points in the previous session. "Foreign investors kept seeing the dollar declining and our stock market getting cheaper, so they finally barreled in," a Wall Street broker said. "Pension funds and other institutions, which had been piling up cash for months, didn't want to be caught on the sidelines, and they jumped in, too." [New York Times] A $183 round-trip trans-Atlantic fare will be offered by Laker Airways on charter flights in May and June from London to the United States and Canada. The Laker fare starting May 14 will be $57 less than the current rate for charter flights booked in advance and the cheapest ever for the London-New York run. Laker is trying to make up for a decline this year in travel to Britain. [New York Times] Two bubble gum manufacturers will go to court to settle an antitrust suit in which one of them charges that the other has illegally shut out competition in the vital area of baseball cards. The Supreme Court left standing a decision that Topps Chewing Gum must face trial on charges by the Fleer Corporation that its rival had created a monopoly by signing up major league baseball stars to exclusive picture-card contracts. [New York Times] Arkady Shevchenko, a United Nations official who refused to return to the Soviet Union last week, had been in touch in the last several years with intelligence officers of the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., according to a former intelligence officer familiar with the case. Without elaborating on the precise nature of the association, the source said that it had involved "some degree of cooperation" on Mr. Shevchenko's part and had been more than a series of informal, casual contacts. Mr. Shevchenko has been the top-ranking Soviet official in the United Nations Secretariat. [New York Times] A British-American effort failed to break a deadlock in the dispute over how to achieve majority rule in Rhodesia, but there was no outright rejection of a joint plan for an all-parties settlement. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 810.12 (+14.99, +1.89%)
S&P Composite: 94.45 (+1.53, +1.65%)
Arms Index: 0.61

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	1,061	43.10
Declines	542	13.40
Unchanged	345	7.01
Total Volume		63.51

* 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*
April 14, 1978	795.13	92.92	52.28
April 13, 1978	775.21	90.98	31.58
April 12, 1978	766.29	90.11	26.22
April 11, 1978	770.18	90.25	24.30
April 10, 1978	773.65	90.49	25.74
April 7, 1978	769.58	90.17	25.17
April 6, 1978	763.95	89.79	27.36
April 5, 1978	763.08	89.64	27.26
April 4, 1978	755.37	88.86	20.13
April 3, 1978	751.04	88.46	20.23