News stories from Thursday July 26, 1979

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

The House rebuffed President Carter on energy again, voting 237 to 182 to continue a nuclear breeder reactor project that the President has vowed to kill. The Clinch River reactor in Tennessee is designed to test the feasibility of an electric generating plant that breeds more fuel than it uses. [New York Times] The gasoline situation has hurt tourism sharply this summer. Attendance at amusements, bookings at hotels and motels and restaurant meals are down by 10 to 20 percent across the nation and by up to 30 percent on the East Coast because of tourists' fears of running short of fuel. Not even the widespread availability of gasoline now and advertising drives have erased the memory of shortages. [New York Times] Inflation at a double-digit annual rate continued last month as consumer prices, paced by soaring energy and housing costs, rose 1 percent, the government reported. Food prices increased by a modest 0.2 percent and beef and veal costs declined 1.3 percent in June, but inflation for the first half of 1979 ran at a blistering annual rate of 13.2 percent. [New York Times] Moon Landrieu has been selected as the new Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, according to White House officials. Mr. Landrieu is a former Mayor of New Orleans and an early Carter supporter in 1976. And urban affairs sources reported that the only remaining unfilled cabinet post, that of Secretary of Transportation, has been offered to Neal Goldschmidt, the Mayor of Portland, Ore. [New York Times] Compensation for radiation victims is to be studied by a panel established by President Carter. The panel has been asked to recommend a fair way of dealing with claims for compensation filed by persons who say they were made ill by radiation from atomic weapons tests in the 1950's. [New York Times] Misuse of revenue sharing funds was the target of federal auditing rules enacted in 1976, but a research group reports that the new requirements have been so widely flouted by state and local governments that considerable corruption may have been concealed in the $7-billion-a-year program. Difficulty in enforcing the rules is one reason that general revenue sharing is in danger of being eliminated or sharply altered next year. [New York Times] The first reported ape hybrid has resulted from a chance mating of two species of ape in an Atlanta zoo that led to the birth of a healthy offspring. Analysis of genetic material from the three animals is said to support a theory that new species sometimes arise from the juggling of such material over a few generations rather than from small mutations taking perhaps millions of years. [New York Times] Casino gambling continues to expand in Atlantic City. Resorts International Inc., which opened the first and highly profitable hotel casino there, announced that it would spend more than $120 million to build a second and larger casino and 1,000-room hotel on 56 acres of oceanfront property near the Steel Pier. The concern said it had reached an accord with a development company that had obtained a court order to delay the project. [New York Times] A fifth suspect in the kidnapping of a bank executive's wife walked into police headquarters in Paterson, N.J., and surrendered. The suspect, who had been sought by F.B.I. agents, was apparently not the heavily accented man whose anonymous telephone tip led to the recovery Wednesday of most of the $217,000 ransom paid for the release of Joan Dedrick. [New York Times] Formation of a new Indian regime was started as President Sanjiva Reddy asked Charan Singh to head it, Mr. Singh, who led the move that ousted Prime Minister Morarji Desai 12 days ago, said that the major priorities of his government would be to "eliminate unemployment, fight poverty and narrow differences" among India's classes. [New York Times] New opposition to the arms treaty with Moscow was expressed in Senate testimony by Gen. Alexander Haig, the recently retired NATO commander. He urged the Senate to delay acting on the pact until "flaws" in it "have been resolved" and until the Senate can assess the administration's future defense spending programs. [New York Times] Britain spurred private investment as the 12-week-old Conservative government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher announced a plan to curtail activities of the National Oil Corporation and make some of its assets available to the public. [New York Times] Nicaragua's banks are bankrupt and it was the government's "obligation" to take control of them, the new revolutionary government said. The ruling junta issued the statement after announcing that Nicaraguan banks would be nationalized. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 839.76 (+0.25, +0.03%)
S&P Composite: 103.10 (+0.02, +0.02%)
Arms Index: 0.88

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	802	16.06
Declines	598	10.51
Unchanged	454	5.70
Total Volume		32.27

* 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*
July 25, 1979	839.51	103.08	34.89
July 24, 1979	829.78	101.97	29.69
July 23, 1979	825.51	101.59	26.86
July 20, 1979	828.07	101.82	26.37
July 19, 1979	827.30	101.61	26.78
July 18, 1979	828.58	101.69	35.95
July 17, 1979	828.50	101.83	34.27
July 16, 1979	834.90	102.74	26.62
July 13, 1979	833.53	102.32	33.07
July 12, 1979	836.86	102.69	31.77