News stories from Friday March 19, 1982

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

General Motors and union negotiators were optimistic that a final agreement on a contract replacing one that was to expire Sept. 14 was near. Agreement has already been reached on such issues as equality of sacrifice by management and union members, purchase of General Motors stock by employees and a program to retrain workers whose skills had been made obsolete by new technology. Tough issues such as profit sharing, a shift in union work outside the company and job security still remain to be resolved, however. [New York Times] A $114.5 billion rise in weapons costs, a record figure affecting 44 present and future programs, was announced by the Pentagon. It brings the total costs of the weapons systems being produced, developed and planned, including warplanes, submarines, missiles and other fighting gear, to $454.8 billion as of Dec. 31. [New York Times] $1 billion in mortgage subsidies for the housing industry that would be provided immediately under a bill in Congress might be supported by President Reagan. White House sources said that Mr. Reagan is considering giving the bill his backing. But the President also made clear that he felt congressional inaction on his buidget was hurting the housing industry by keeping interest rates high. Housing industry leaders told Mr. Reagan at a White House meeting that their industry was about to collapse. [New York Times] Procter & Gamble was found guilty of negligence in offering a defective product when it put Rely tampons on the market, but the jury in federal district court in Denver did not award any damages to an 18-year-old woman who sued the company, charging that she had become a victim of toxic shock syndrome after using the tampons. The jury also decided that Procter & Gamble did not violate any expressed or implied warranty on the product, which was one of the charges in the suit. [New York Times] Church groups assailed President Reagan's choice of Herman Nickel to be Ambassador to South Africa. At Senate confirmation hearings, opposition came from the director of the Africa Office of the National Council of Churches, who questioned whether Mr. Nickel would have the respect of black South Africans, and Jean Sindab, executive director of the Washington Office on Africa, another church group. [New York Times] Modest cuts in OPEC's oil output may result from a meeting of the ministers from the organization's 13 member countries in Vienna. Important details of how the reduced production would be shared among the member countries were still to be worked out at another session. But Sheik Ahmed Yamani, oil minister of Saudi Arabia, told reporters that "we have reached agreement on a ceiling of 18 million" barrels a day. That would represent a reduction of no more than 200,000 barrels a day from the estimated current total OPEC output. [New York Times] Nicaragua requested a meeting of the Security Council of the United Nations to denounce what it said was its "imminent" invasion by the United States or by paramilitary forces supported ay the United States. Daniel Ortega, coordinator of Nicaragua's three-man junta and one of the nine principal Sandinist commanders, requested the meeting in a letter to the Secretary General of the United Nations. [New York Times] Honduras has more military advisers from the United States to help strengthen its security in the face of a military buildup in neighboring Nicaragua. The State Department said that since the start of the year the number of United States military training personnel on temporary duty in Honduras was between 90 and 100. Throughout 1981 there were no more than 25 United States advisers in Honduras, the department said. [New York Times] The U.S. said it had no evidence that would contradict the official Salvadoran account of the death of four Dutch television journalists in San Salavador Wednesday. The United States inquiry was one of several underway. The Salvadoran military command said the Dutchmen had died when guerrillas they were with exchanged gunfire with an army patrol. [New York Times] New York state's dependence on oil is expected to be lessened by increased supplies of hydrolectric power that will come from the province of Quebec. A 13-year power contract was initialed by Governor Carey and Premier Rene Levesque in Manhattan. Running from 1984 to 1997, the Canadian power supply will eliminate the state's need of eight billion gallons of imported oil for that period. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 805.65 (+0.38, +0.05%)
S&P Composite: 110.61 (+0.31, +0.28%)
Arms Index: 0.97

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	848	24.02
Declines	573	15.80
Unchanged	433	6.43
Total Volume		46.25

* 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*
March 18, 1982	805.27	110.30	54.27
March 17, 1982	795.85	109.08	48.89
March 16, 1982	798.33	109.28	50.23
March 15, 1982	800.99	109.45	43.37
March 12, 1982	797.37	108.61	49.59
March 11, 1982	805.56	109.36	52.95
March 10, 1982	804.89	109.41	59.44
March 9, 1982	803.84	108.83	76.06
March 8, 1982	795.47	107.35	67.33
March 5, 1982	807.36	109.34	67.44