News stories from Monday January 25, 1982

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

An excise tax rise has been rejected by President Reagan as means of reducing the federal budget deficit despite the nearly unanimous advice of his advisers, administration officials said. Mr. Reagan was also reportedly ready to propose in his State of the Union Message tomorrow night a reorganization of government responsibilities that would turn over to state governments the administration of food stamps, welfare and highway programs along with $10 billion to $15 billion from excise taxes to help the states run the programs. In return, Mr. Reagan was said to be ready to propose that the federal government assume the entire cost of Medicaid, which has been shared by the federal and local governments. [New York Times] Welfare officials are being lenient in enforcing a new federal law that bars welfare payments to families with more than $1,000 worth of assets. Welfare officials across the nation who were asked whether the new law was being enforced said that they did not have the money or staff to make visits to homes of welfare recipients to check on their assets. They said they were relying on the recipients' asset estimates, investigating only when there was a fraud charge. [New York Times] Wayne Williams could be charged with the death of 10 other Atlanta youths. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Clarence Cooper granted a motion that allows the prosecution to introduce evidence that could link Mr. Williams, who is on trial for the murder of two young Atlanta men, to the deaths of the 10 others. [New York Times] A doubled quota of immigrants from Canada and Mexico would be welcomed by the Reagan administration, which is eager to improve relations with those countries. It proposes to raise the Canadian and Mexican legal immigration quota to 40,000 a year, doubling the current figure. [New York Times] Radioactive steam was released into the atmosphere from an upstate New York nuclear power plant after a water tube inside the plant had burst. At the same time thousands of gallons of radioactive water spilled onto the floor of the plant's containment building. The plant is on Lake Ontario 16 miles east of Rochester. [New York Times] Martial law in Poland was defended by Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, the country's leader, in a speech to Parliament. General Jaruzelski did not say when martial law would be lifted, but said he wanted it to end "as soon as possible." He reiterated that martial law was necessary to avoid civil war, attacked the United States economic sanctions and urged Poles to pull the country out of its crisis. He was vague about what role, if any, the suspended Solidarity trade union would play in the future. [New York Times] Poland will not be discussed by Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko of the Soviet Union when he confers Tuesday in Geneva with Secretary of State Alexander Haig, who has said that his purpose in his talks with Mr. Gromyko is to express directly the West's "outrage" over Poland. Mr. Gromyko said he had "no intention whatsoever" to discuss the Polish situation. Mr. Haig responded: "Well, I think it could be a very short meeting then." [New York Times] Salvadoran guerrillas deny emphatically that they are trained and equipped by Cuba and Nicaragua, which is what El Salvador's political and military leaders and United States officials say is the case. The anti-Government peasants and their military leaders in the province of Morazan, where the guerrilla movement is strongest, contend that theirs is an indigenous revolution brought about by decades of political and social injustice. [New York Times] Egypt has requested Soviet experts who would work on major industrial projects. The request for 66 technicians was confirmed by Foreign Minister Kamal Hassan Ali. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 842.75 (-2.28, -0.27%)
S&P Composite: 115.41 (+0.03, +0.03%)
Arms Index: 0.77

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	428	12.92
Declines	1,056	24.67
Unchanged	399	5.58
Total Volume		43.17

* 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*
January 22, 1982	845.03	115.38	44.39
January 21, 1982	848.27	115.75	48.60
January 20, 1982	845.89	115.27	48.86
January 19, 1982	847.41	115.97	45.06
January 18, 1982	855.12	117.22	44.91
January 15, 1982	847.60	116.33	43.31
January 14, 1982	842.28	115.54	42.94
January 13, 1982	838.95	114.88	49.13
January 12, 1982	847.70	116.30	49.80
January 11, 1982	850.46	116.78	51.90