News stories from Tuesday June 19, 1979

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

Efforts to get truckers back to work and head off a national stoppage called by the independents for midnight Wednesday were explored in an anxious mood by top federal officials at the White House. The stoppage by independent truckers, who are protesting the high prices and scarcity of fuel and threats of violence, has caused a marked drop in the shipment of foods. [New York Times] Gasoline sales on odd-even dates took effect on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey as a prelude to imposition of the plan tomorrow in the New York metropolitan area. Connecticut announced plans to join New York and New Jersey in restricting gasoline sales as the Governors of the three states moved to ease increasingly long lines at service stations. [New York Times] A tax on "windfall" oil profits that is markedly stronger than the administration's proposal was approved in the House Ways and Means Committee by a vote of 20 to 16. [New York Times] Heating oil prices will rise sharply next winter and supplies may run short, according to industry experts. They said that the price would be more than 80 cents a gallon, compared with an average of 48.5 cents last winter. Most experts regard the supply outlook as extremely uncertain. [New York Times] Links between radiation and cancer will be the subject of congressional testimony starting tomorrow. In 1945 the first of 250,000 soldiers began taking part in atmospheric atomic weapons tests, and the issue is whether radiation from the blasts gave some of them cancer. Veterans who have cancer seek compensation, and are trying to prove what is largely unknown. [New York Times] Europeans cleared most DC-10's to fly again despite the United States' grounding of domestic DC-10's pending the results of a federal inquiry into the May 25 crash of one of the airliners in Chicago. The Europeans had voluntarily grounded their DC-10's two weeks ago but have now adopted a new inspection and maintenance program and have approved flights to points outside the United States.American Airlines violated no rules when it changed its procedure for installing engine mounts of DC-10 jumbo lets from the method advised by the builder and approved by the government, federal officials testified. Investigators have concluded that the change caused a serious engine mount crack in the DC-10 that crashed on May 25 and cracks in eight other DC-10's inspected after the disaster. [New York Times] Medicaid and welfare funds would drop by $831 million in all 50 states under a move by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare to comply with what it said was a new interpretation of a law enacted last year to curb fraud and abuse. The cut would involve $117 million from New York State, $26.6 million from New Jersey and $12.4 million from Connecticut. [New York Times] U.S. military chiefs back the treaty with Moscow to limit arms, according to White House and Pentagon officials. They said that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had informed President Carter that, despite some aspects they consider troubling, they would testify in support of the pact when it went before the Senate.A close aide to Leonid Brezhnev emerged at the Vienna summit meetings as the man personally closest to the Soviet leader. The associate, Konstantin Chernenko, often came to the aid of the ailing 72-year-old leader when things became physically difficult for him. [New York Times] Efforts to aid Vietnamese refugees are being pressed by the Carter administration. Officials said that Washington would join with London in seeking an early conference, probably a meeting of the Security Council, to bring world pressure on Vietnam to stop forcing ethnic Chinese to flee. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 839.40 (0.00, 0.00%)
S&P Composite: 101.58 (+0.02, +0.02%)
Arms Index: 0.89

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	747	14.27
Declines	696	11.80
Unchanged	454	4.71
Total Volume		30.78

* 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*
June 18, 1979	839.40	101.56	30.97
June 15, 1979	843.30	102.09	32.93
June 14, 1979	842.34	102.20	37.84
June 13, 1979	842.17	102.31	40.75
June 12, 1979	845.29	102.85	45.44
June 11, 1979	837.58	101.91	28.27
June 8, 1979	835.15	101.49	31.47
June 7, 1979	836.97	101.79	43.38
June 6, 1979	835.50	101.30	39.83
June 5, 1979	831.34	100.62	35.05