News stories from Thursday January 5, 1978

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

President Carter paid homage to the thousands of Allied soldiers who died fighting on the Normandy beaches in World War II in a visit there accompanied by President Valery Giscard d'Estaing of France. At a cemetery containing the graves of more than 9,000 Americans Mr. Carter declared, "We are determined with our noble allies here that Europe's freedom will never again be endangered." [New York Times] A major policy clash appears to be developing in the Carter administration over a new law prohibiting the dumping of oil and other hazardous materials within 200 miles of the United States coast. The issue pits high-level diplomatic, defense and security officials, and Elliot Richardson, the United States special representative to the United Nations Law of the Sea Conference, against the Environmental Protection Agency. Mr. Richardson is against the law. [New York Times] Treasury Secretary Michael Blumenthal denied a published report that he had told New York City officials to prepare a financing plan based on local sources without additional aid from Washington. "We have never said to the city that they must come up with a plan on the assumption that there will be no federal aid," Mr. Blumenthal said in a call to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, which he repeated in a call to Mayor Koch. [New York Times] The dollar declined on Wall Street against most foreign currencies as skepticism increased among foreign exchange experts over the efficacy of the steps the government said it would take to support the dollar abroad. The dollar, traded actively in New York, closed at the day's lowest quotations against the Swiss franc, the Japanese yen, the British pound and the West German mark, The drop here came after the dollar had rallied strongly in Europe and Tokyo. [New York Times] Detroit's car makers said domestic sales increased 6.1 percent last year over 1976, which was a very good year. But prospects for this year are not so good because of a continuing decline in sales of the 1978 models. The four major companies sold a total of 9,104,454 cars in this country last year. The 1976 total was 8,606,573. In the meantime, sales of foreign cars rose 40 percent to 2.1 million units from 1.5 million in 1976. [New York Times] The stock market declined for the third consecutive session of the new year. The Dow Jones industrial average fluctuated and was almost down to 800, but closed at 804.92, with a loss of 8.66 points. Increasing skepticism about the long-term prospects for a stronger dollar was a factor in the market's poor performance. [New York Times] Radio City Music Hall will close April 12, its owner, Rockefeller Center Inc., announced. Economics is the reason, explained Alton Marshall, Rockefeller Center's president. The 45-year-old theater, the largest in the country with 6,200 seats, has been losing customers over the last 10 years. It had a $2.3 million operating loss in 1977 and a $3.5 million loss was projected for 1978. [New York Times] Second helpings of the milk donated by the Agriculture Department for the school meals of 1.4 million needy children are being stopped. An assistant Agriculture Secretary, Carol Foreman, said that the cutoff, effective Feb. 1, had been ordered because a recent law "expressed the concern of the Congress that some of the free milk has been wasted." The elimination of 230 million half-pints is expected to save the government $25 million. [New York Times] The Soviet Union could not win a strategic nuclear war, but the United States and its allies would have serious problems in their defense against a conventional attack in Western Europe and the Far East, according to a study of the worldwide military balance prepared by the Carter administration. The report is the administration's first comprehensive assessment of potential global military threats and the adequacy of American military forces to meet them. Its findings differ in several respects from views of the East-West military balance held during the Ford administration. [New York Times] The next step in Middle East diplomacy, American officials said, would be to seek Israel's accord to a broad set of principles governing more detailed Arab-Israeli negotiations. President Carter's statement at Aswan Wednesday that basic principles or fundamentals must be observed before a comprehensive Middle East peace was sought could serve as the basis for broader negotiating rules, they said, noting that President Anwar Sadat supported Mr. Carter's statement in principle. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 804.92 (-8.66, -1.06%)
S&P Composite: 92.74 (-0.78, -0.83%)
Arms Index: 1.97

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	559	4.77
Declines	845	14.24
Unchanged	499	4.56
Total Volume		23.57

* 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 4, 1978	813.58	93.52	24.09
January 3, 1978	817.74	93.82	17.72
December 30, 1977	831.17	95.10	23.56
December 29, 1977	830.39	94.94	23.61
December 28, 1977	829.70	94.75	19.63
December 27, 1977	829.70	94.69	16.75
December 23, 1977	829.87	94.69	20.08
December 22, 1977	821.81	93.80	28.10
December 21, 1977	813.93	93.05	24.51
December 20, 1977	806.22	92.50	23.25