News stories from Wednesday November 10, 1982

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

Leonid Brezhnev is dead, the Tass news agency reported. The agency said the 75-year-old Soviet leader died "a sudden death" at 8:30 A.M. today. Tass said the announcement was made by the Central Committee of the Communist Party. There was no immediate announcement of a successor. [New York Times] Prospects for a public works program to provide jobs for the unemployed brightened in Congress. There was a rising bipartisan consensus in favor of passing a bill to create such a program during the post-election session amid signs President Reagan might support a limited program. [New York Times] Governmental costs of joblessness continued to increase as 650,000 more people requested unemployment benefit payments. As of Nov. 1, nearly 4.7 million people were receiving jobless insurance payments averaging $102 a week. [New York Times] President Reagan stopped by Washington's National Cathedral to listen for a while to the reading of the names of Americans killed or missing in the Vietnam War. The candlelight ceremony, along with the unveiling of the stark war memorial in the Washington Mall, is part of a weeklong tribute to those lost in Vietnam. [New York Times] A faulty aircraft was cited by test pilots in a confidential report. One month after the Navy awarded a $1.14 billion contract to McDonnell Douglas for 63 F-18 planes, the pilots reported that a five-month evaluation confirmed that the aircraft was "not operationally suitable." [New York Times] The space shuttle program is making a critical transition from flight testing to the hauling of orbital freight with the fifth mission of the Columbia. Tomorrow's launching will set the stage for the first deployment of satellites from the shuttle, a method of placing spacecraft in earth orbit that will eventually make expendable rockets obsolete. [New York Times] Opposition to Three Mile Island operations continues three and a half years after the nation's worst nuclear accident at the Pennsylvnia power plant. More than 1,000 residents of communities near the crippled plant urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission not to permit operations to resume at the undamaged reactor. [New York Times] The voice of the Teamster union chief, Roy Williams, in a secretly wire-tapped telephone talk with an associate, was heard in federal court in Chicago and supported the government's bribery-conspiracy charges. It was the 11th day of testimony in the trial of Mr. Williams and four other men charged with trying to bribe Senator Howard Cannon, Democrat of Nevada. [New York Times] Jimmy Carter was in the limelight on one of his infrequent visits to Washington since he left the White House. He is on a six-city tour promoting "Keeping Faith," the newly published memoir of his presidency. [New York Times] Frederick Richmond was sentenced to a year and a day in prison and fined $20,000 for income tax evasion, marijuana possession and making an illegal payment to a government employee. The former Representative from Brooklyn had pleaded guilty to the charges and resigned from Congress in a plea bargaining with federal authorities who agreed not to prosecute him over other matters under investigation. [New York Times] Mexico announced an austerity plan as part of an agreement with the International Monetary Fund designed to revive its troubled economy and avert defaulting on its foreign debt of $78 billion. Under the accord, Mexico could draw up to $3.84 billion from the fund over three years in exchange for curbing spending and imports and raising taxes. [New York Times] A Briton pleaded guilty to spying and passing secrets to the Soviet Union for 14 years on the activities of a classified electronics listening post. The defendant, Geoffrey Arthur Prime, a linguistics expert, was sentenced to 35 years in prison by Lord Lane, the Lord Chief Justice, who said that Mr. Prime's treason had caused "incalculable harm" to the security of Britain and its allies. [New York Times] A strike called by Solidarity appeared to be generally unsuccessful in the face of strong warnings by the Polish military authorities and a massive show of police power. [New York Times] Improved Washington-Bonn ties are sought by Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who is flying to the United States this weekend confident he has political control at home and can establish a more trusting relationship with the Reagan administration. In an interview in Bonn, the new Chancellor sounded much like President Reagan on economic policy, nuclear arms control and moral philosophy. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1044.52 (-15.73, -1.48%)
S&P Composite: 141.16 (-1.86, -1.30%)
Arms Index: 1.46

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	764	37.34
Declines	926	66.28
Unchanged	310	9.62
Total Volume		113.24

* 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*
November 9, 1982	1060.25	143.02	111.23
November 8, 1982	1037.44	140.44	75.22
November 5, 1982	1051.78	142.16	96.55
November 4, 1982	1050.22	141.85	149.38
November 3, 1982	1065.49	142.87	137.01
November 2, 1982	1022.08	137.49	104.77
November 1, 1982	1005.70	135.47	73.52
October 29, 1982	991.72	133.71	74.87
October 28, 1982	990.99	133.59	73.59
October 27, 1982	1006.35	135.28	81.66