News stories from Friday July 30, 1982

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

Steel union leaders rejected an industry proposal to replace the present contract with a new one. The steel companies had said a new contract was mandatory if their labor costs were to be made competitive and the industry was to be revived. The existing contract is now likely to stand until next year, officials of the United Steelworkers of America said. Union officials said the industry's three-year proposal would have frozen direct wages and eliminated cost-of-living increases for the first year and would have placed a 50 cent ceiling on cost-of-living increases in each of the next two years. About 900 presidents of the union's locals voted against the proposals at a 40 minute meeting in Pittsburgh. [New York Times] The Federal Reserve will cut to 11 percent from 11½ percent the rate it charges on loans to banks and other financial institutions, effective Monday. The reduction, which followed a half point decrease on July 20, gave a new impetus to recent declines in interest rates and prompted analysts to predict still lower rates in coming weeks. [New York Times] The Washington Post lost a libel suit and the jury awarded a total of $2.05 million in damages to William Tavoulareas, president of the Mobil Oil Corporation. The award was based on the first of two articles that appeared in the Washington Post in late 1979 charging that Mr. Tavoulareas had used Mobil's money and his influence to establish his son in the ship-ping business and to provide him with millions of dollars in Mobil contracts. The award consists of $250,000 in compensatory damages and $1.8 million in punitive damages. [New York Times] More than 175 sex-biased provisions of the federal code were cited in an internal Reagan administration memorandum, which was released in response to questioning by Sarah McClendon, a reporter, at President Reagan's news conference Wednesday. The memorandum, prepared by the civil rights division of the Justice Department, said that despite efforts to remove sex-based language from federal law, "substantive sections" of the code differentiate on the basis of sex. [New York Times] The 10 percent income tax cut of July 1 that increased the take-home pay for many Americans by pennies to as much as $13 a week is being spent the same way it has been received since July 1: little by little. In recent interviews around the nation, many people seemed to agree with John R. Smith, a semi-retired certified public accountant in Indiana, that the increased income is vanishing into higher consumer prices or increased state and local taxes. [New York Times] A plan for the P.L.O.'s withdrawal of 6,000 fighters from west Beirut was sent by Lebanon's Prime Minister to Philip Habib, the special United States envoy. Palestinian officials said the P.L.O.'s plan called for the guerrillas to leave Lebanon by land over a one-month period and to be "redeployed" in Syria, Jordan, and Egypt, which they said had agreed conditionally to take in some of the fighters. [New York Times] A new cease-fire in Beirut arranged by Philip Habib, the special United States envoy to the Middle East, appeared to be holding. It began at 9 P.M. Lebanon time and followed the bombardment by Israeli forces of Palestinian neighborhoods in west Beirut from the land, sea and air. The attacks began only hours after the Palestine Liberation Organization presented the Lebanese Prime Minister with a detailed plan for the withdrawal of the besieged P.L.O. guerrillas from west Beirut. [New York Times] The new Arab League plan calling for the withdrawal of Palestinian forces from west Beirut was called a "positive step" toward resolving the crisis. President Reagan and and Foreign Minister Kemal Hassan Ali of Egypt agreed on that point at a meeting in Washington, a senior administration official said. The withdrawal plan, approved Thursday after a two-day Arab League meeting in Saudi Arabia, was endorsed by the Palestine Liberation Organization. [New York Times] Panama's President resigned two years before the end of his term, according to a government announcement that gave no reason for the resignation. President Aristedes Royo will be succeeded by Vice President Ricardo de la Espriella. The National Assembly President, Luis de Leon Arias, said Mr. Royo stepped down "solely and exclusively for health reasons." Diplomatic sources said the resignation was the result of increasing friction between the President and the National Guard. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 808.60 (-3.61, -0.44%)
S&P Composite: 107.09 (-0.63, -0.58%)
Arms Index: 1.58

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	607	11.54
Declines	745	22.36
Unchanged	455	5.37
Total Volume		39.27

* 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 29, 1982	812.21	107.72	55.67
July 28, 1982	811.83	107.73	53.84
July 27, 1982	822.77	109.43	45.73
July 26, 1982	825.44	110.36	37.73
July 23, 1982	830.57	111.17	47.28
July 22, 1982	832.00	111.47	53.86
July 21, 1982	832.19	111.42	66.77
July 20, 1982	833.43	111.54	61.05
July 19, 1982	826.10	110.73	53.03
July 16, 1982	828.67	111.07	58.77