News stories from Wednesday October 18, 1978

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

President Carter plans to announce a toughened, but still voluntary, wage-price guideline program next week, informed sources say. Among the major expected elements of the program: A wage guideline of 7 percent and a price guideline of 5¾ percent. The government is expected to use its buying power to punish those who don't follow the guidelines. [Chicago Tribune] President Carter has ordered production of crucial elements used in making neutron warheads but has not decided whether to deploy the nuclear weapons, press secretary Jody Powell said. Administration officials denied that the decision was made at this time to set a tough tone for the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty negotiations that begin in Moscow next week. [Chicago Tribune] World chess champion Anatoly Karpov credited a mind-bending doctor with helping him to win the final game against challenger Viktor Korchnoi and retain his world title. Now he wants to play American chess genius Bobby Fischer. Karpov, Russia's whiz-kid who first won the title by default when Fischer refused to play him in 1975, issued a challenge to the unpredictable Fischer. [Chicago Tribune] Stock prices fell again today amid continuing speculation over whether the Federal Reserve Board was acting to tighten credit further. The Dow Jones industrial average closed off 5.67 to 859.67. The average had fallen almost 31 points over the previous two sessions.Another burst of inflation would likely trigger a recession more damaging than that of 1974, Arthur Burns, former Federal Reserve Board chairman, told an inflation conference. [Chicago Tribune] With campaign contributions and other fringe benefits of public office flowing into Congress in record amounts, the country is turning into a "special interest state," the citizens' group Common Cause said. "The record of the 95th Congress offers clear evidence of this development," it said in a 121-page study seeking to document the influence of money on congressional decision-making. [Chicago Tribune] Susan Ford, 21, daughter of former President Gerald Ford, is engaged to Charles Frederick Vance, 37, a Secret Service agent who guards the family, and they will be married in Rancho Mirage, Calif., in June, it was announced today. Susan, a free-lance photographer who lives in nearby Palm Desert, met Vance after the Fords moved here from Washington. [Chicago Tribune] Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. and the U.S. government have reached agreement for Firestone to voluntarily recall an estimated nine million Firestone 500 steel-belted radial tires, the Washington Post said in its Thursday editions. [Chicago Tribune] The world's population time bomb, expected to begin exploding in the 1980s, may have been defused by birth control programs in some of the most populous nations, two sociology professors said. In a report titled "Declining World Fertility: Trends, Causes, Implications," demographers Amy Ong Tsui and Donald Bogue of the University of Chicago write that in most developing countries, birth rates have been declining faster than expected. [Chicago Tribune] The first successful transfer of working genes from the cells of one species of mammal into the cells of an entirely different species has been achieved at Stanford University. [Chicago Tribune] Thirty-eight percent of American homeowners exceed the rule of thumb that only 25 percent of a person's monthly income should go for housing expenses, the U.S. League of Savings Associations said. [Chicago Tribune] Canada's postal union has ignored emergency legislation approved by parliament ordering 23,000 striking postal workers back to their jobs. Hours after the legislation became law, union president Jean-Claude Parrot recommended that the membership exercise their right to strike, calling the law "a complete injustice." [Chicago Tribune] Four members of an American women's climbing expedition reached the top of the 26,502-foot mountain Annapurna Sunday, Nepal's ministry of tourism announced today. The four are the first women and the first Americans to climb the peak. The expedition is being led by Arlene Blum, 35, of Berkeley, Cal., a University of California biochemist. In 1975, an all-women Japanese expedition scaled Mt. Everest. [Chicago Tribune] United States Ambassador Diego Asencio has warned Americans that Colombia is serious about its threat to shoot down planes to smash the billion-dollar-a-year drug smuggling business to the U.S. "I personally wouldn't fly over that area for love or money right now," he said. [Chicago Tribune] Pope John Paul II will be welcome to visit his Communist homeland, which a decade ago barred the late Pope Paul VI, a Polish government official said today. "It is in the hands of the Pope," said Kazimerz Kakol, director of the Office of Church-State Affairs. Asked if that meant the new pontiff would be welcome in Poland, Kakol replied, "Absolutely." John Paul II would be the first pontiff to visit Poland. [Chicago Tribune] Police sources in Paris said Croatian dissident writer Bruno Busic, slain Monday night by five shots in the head, was suspected of involvement in the September, 1976, hijacking of a New York-to-Chicago Trans World Airways jetliner to Paris. The sources said Busic, 33, was the brother of Zvonko Busic, the leader of a group of Croatian nationalists who hijacked the aircraft. He also was believed to have been the writer of the communique the hijackers demanded be published in five major newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune. [Chicago Tribune]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 859.67 (-6.67, -0.77%)
S&P Composite: 100.49 (-0.77, -0.76%)
Arms Index: 0.95

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	300	6.11
Declines	1,219	23.51
Unchanged	372	3.32
Total Volume		32.94

* 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*
October 17, 1978	866.34	101.26	37.87
October 16, 1978	875.17	102.61	24.60
October 13, 1978	897.09	104.66	21.93
October 12, 1978	896.74	104.88	30.17
October 11, 1978	901.42	105.39	21.74
October 10, 1978	891.63	104.46	25.47
October 9, 1978	893.19	104.59	19.72
October 6, 1978	880.02	103.52	27.39
October 5, 1978	876.47	103.27	27.81
October 4, 1978	873.96	103.06	25.10