News stories from Friday November 13, 1981

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

The Columbia's mission was cut short and its astronauts were ordered to prepare to land their troubled craft Saturday afternoon in the California desert. One of the craft's three fuel cells failed after Thursday's liftoff. The mission had been scheduled to last five days, ending next Tuesday. If the world's first reusable space vehicle touches down at 4:22 P.M., as scheduled, tomorrow, it will have been in orbit two days, six hours and 12 minutes. [New York Times] President Reagan's refusal to accept David Stockman's offer to resign was praised by 32 Republican senators in a letter to the President. Mr. Stockman, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, offered to quit following the publication of an article in the Atlantic Monthly that quoted him as expressing a lack of confidence in the administration's economic program. However, some other members of Congress believe that Mr. Stockman's views created serious problems for the President's economic program and that his continued effectiveness was in doubt. [New York Times] Hyman Rickover will step down in January as the Navy's chief nuclear officer, Secretary of the Navy John Lehman announced. Admiral Rickover, who will be 82 years old in January, guided the Navy into the nuclear age. His 63-year career with the Navy is one of the longest in government. He has been offered a position on President Reagan's staff as an adviser on nuclear energy. [New York Times] A lag in recording the earnings of millions of potential beneficiaries of the Social Securty System, dating from 1978, has raised the possibility that at least some workers might lose retirement benefits because they were not fully credited for their earnings. The Social Security Administration attributes the delay in recording earnings to a 1978 change in the way employers must report wages for Social Security purposes. [New York Times] Charities cannot raise enough money for the needy and provide enough volunteers to offset the cuts in federal social programs, as suggested by President Reagan, at least not in the near future, leaders of private agencies say. Foundations, United Way organizations and other nonprofit agencies are said to have so deeply integrated their giving with federal programs and grants that they are having to completely revamp their approach to making contributions. [New York Times] Four balloonists crash-landed their craft in Northern California mountains after setting a world record by flying nearly 6,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean. They brought the craft down after losing control of the balloon in a storm. The captain said that the craft "was falling apart during the last five miles" of the flight from Japan. It was the first time that a manned balloon had flown across the Pacific, and the longest nonstop balloon journey ever made. [New York Times] Oil and gas exploration in a preserve in northwestern Wyoming has been proposed by the United States Forest Service. Craig Rupp, the service's regional forester in Denver, recommended that drilling be allowed on more than 89,000 acres of the 687,000-acre Washakie Wilderness. The proposal will have a 60-day period of public review. [New York Times] A payment of $1,000 in cash by a Japanese magazine to Richard Allen, President Reagan's adviser on national security, is being investigated by the Justice Department, the White House said. The payment reportedly had been made after the magazine's interview with Nancy Reagan on Jan. 21. [New York Times] Archeological discoveries In Kenya appear to push back by almost a million years the first use of fire by the ancestors of modern humans. Until the Kenyan discoveries, the earliest strong evidence of fire was found in a very few sites, such as that at Chou-koutien, China, dated about 500,000 years ago. The new finds in Kenya are estimated to be about 1,400,000 years old. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 855.88 (-4.66, -0.54%)
S&P Composite: 121.67 (-1.52, -1.23%)
Arms Index: 2.10

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	622	9.14
Declines	964	29.74
Unchanged	356	6.67
Total Volume		45.55

* 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*
November 12, 1981	860.54	123.19	55.71
November 11, 1981	857.12	122.92	41.94
November 10, 1981	853.98	122.70	53.93
November 9, 1981	855.21	123.29	48.30
November 6, 1981	852.45	122.67	43.26
November 5, 1981	859.11	123.54	50.86
November 4, 1981	866.82	124.74	53.47
November 3, 1981	868.72	124.80	54.62
November 2, 1981	866.82	124.20	65.12
October 30, 1981	852.55	121.89	58.56