News stories from Thursday April 23, 1981

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

Rising consumer prices slowed in March with an advance of six-tenths of 1 percent, the smallest rise since July, the Labor Department reported. The slowdown followed smaller increases in energy prices after the sharp rise in February when the administration removed oil price controls. [New York Times] The President will address Congress Tuesday night and will seek its cooperation with his budget proposals for next year on the eve of its debate on the budget. Mr. Reagan's aides also hoped that his first extensive appearance in public since the assassination attempt March 30 will dramatize his convalescence and give fresh momentum to his economic program. [New York Times] The Columbia's initial voyage into space was not perfect, its pilots, John Young and Robert Crippen, said, though its performance was "phenomenal" and "superb." The craft was uncomfortably cold some of the time, they said, the toilet quit working near the end of the flight, they kept getting entangled in communications lines, and despite its dramatic grace in landing, Columbia missed its touchdown spot and landed long. [New York Times] Information about kickbacks was given twice to Spiro Agnew during his two-year term Governor of Maryland, witnesses testified at a civil damage suit in Annapolis that seeks to recover nearly $200,000 in bribes, plus interest, allegedly paid to Mr. Agnew by state contractors. They said that the future Vice President was told that his friends were soliciting state contractors for kickbacks. [New York Times] Human life begins at conception, asserted five physicians who testified at the start of Senate hearings on a bill to outlaw abortions. The hearings, interrupted twice by pro-abortionists, are being held by a Judiciary subcommittee, whose chairman, John East, Republican of North Carolina, is a strong foe of abortions. Senator East in his opening remarks said that the statute under consideration seeks to "vitiate" and "negate" the 1973 Supreme Court decision that gave women a constitutional right to abortions. [New York Times] Mortgages with adjustable rates will be allowed by federally chartered savings and loan associations starting April 30 under new regulations approved by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. The new mortgages' interest rates can be increased without limit and adjusted as often as the lender desires. [New York Times] A high Soviet official went to Warsaw for talks with Polish Communist Party leaders that are expected to deal with the pace and extent of the reforms sought by union leaders in Poland. The visit by Mikhail Suslov, a top member of the Soviet Politburo and a symbol of Kremlin orthodoxy, was a surprise and the first by a representative of the Soviet leadership in the nine months since the Polish government agreed to the establishment of an independent trade union and a movement toward what may be more democracy in Poland. [New York Times] The U.S. curb on grain exports to the Soviet Union will be lifted by the Reagan administration, probably tomorrow, despite State Department reservations, an administration official said. The restriction was set in January 1980 by President Carter in retaliation for the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. The official said lifting the embargo would make good a campaign promise to American farmers, and would reflect the easing of Soviet pressure on Poland. [New York Times] Israel is a greater threat to Saudi Arabia than the Soviet Union, the Saudi Minister of Petroleum, Sheik Ahmed Yamani, said in a speech to the Foreign Policy Association in New York. He said that his country faced two threats: international Communism and Israel, and that the first reinforced ties with the United States but the second was "a threat to that friendship." He also said that Saudi Arabia's friendship with the United States was "tinged with some bitterness." [New York Times] India will not honor safeguards at the American-built nuclear facilities at India's Tarapur power plant if the United States discontinues shipments of nuclear fuel, Indian officials have told the administration, according to White House and congressional aides. India was told by administration officials that the United States wanted to end the 1963 agreement on supplying nuclear fuel. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1010.27 (+3.25, +0.32%)
S&P Composite: 133.94 (-0.20, -0.15%)
Arms Index: 0.98

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	844	31.60
Declines	693	25.45
Unchanged	384	7.15
Total Volume		64.20

* 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 22, 1981	1007.02	134.14	60.65
April 21, 1981	1005.94	134.23	60.29
April 20, 1981	1015.94	135.45	51.01
April 16, 1981	1005.58	134.70	52.95
April 15, 1981	1001.71	134.17	56.03
April 14, 1981	989.10	132.68	48.39
April 13, 1981	993.16	133.15	49.85
April 10, 1981	1000.27	134.51	58.12
April 9, 1981	998.83	133.92	59.54
April 8, 1981	993.43	134.31	48.04