News stories from Thursday May 16, 1974

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

Former Attorney General Richard Kleindienst pleaded guilty to a minor charge for failing to give full and accurate answers in testifying before a Senate committee investigating the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation case. Mr. Kleindienst, who was apparently allowed to plead guilty to the lesser offense rather than perjury because of his cooperation with the Watergate prosecutor, was Acting Attorney General at the time of his testimony in 1972. [New York Times] The House Judiciary Committee met in secret session to hear evidence on how funds. from President Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign were allegedly used in an effort to buy the silence of the Watergate burglars. The chairman, Representative Peter Rodino, said the hearings would probably continue in private through next week despite a request by President Nixon's attorney, James St. Clair, that they be conducted in public. [New York Times] In by far the largest settlement ever made under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the Standard Oil Company of California agreed to pay $2 million to 160 former employees and to rehire 12 of them. The employees maintained that their dismissals violated the 1967 law, which prohibits discrimination against employees between the ages of 40 and 65. [New York Times] In swift reprisal for Maalot, Israeli planes bombed and strafed Palestinian refugee camps and suspected guerrilla hideouts in Lebanon, reportedly killing more than 20 persons and wounding more than 130. It was the heaviest Israeli attack ever carried out against Lebanon, and reports from the attack zone, where bomb targets were said to include roads and bridges, indicated Israel was making good the threat to render southern Lebanon uninhabitable if Lebanon did not repress local guerrilla forces. [New York Times] The death toll of Israelis killed at Maalot rose to 24 as a numbed and grief-stricken nation continued to cry for revenge. Despite the intensity of the air raid against Lebanon, some felt it might be only the first step in what Premier Golda Meir vowed would be an effort to "cut off the hands that want to harm a child, an adult, a settlement, a town or a village."Several hundred angry mourners shouting, "Revenge! revenge!" disrupted a state funeral in Safad for 18 of the Maalot victims and drove the President and Deputy Premier of Israel out of the cemetery. As the crowd, enraged by the government's failure to curb terrorists, forced President Ephrim Katzir and Deputy Premier Yigal Allon to their cars, the ceremonies were cut short. [New York Times] The leader of the Palestinian group that claims responsibility for the attack at Maalot said the mission had been designed to prevent Secretary of State Kissinger from achieving an Arab-Israel settlement that would mean "the surrender of the Palestinian people." Flanked by armed guerrillas, Nayef Hawatmeh, the leader of the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said at a Beirut news conference that the group wanted to demonstrate its rejection of Mr. Kissinger's mission. [New York Times] Secretary of State Kissinger flew to Syria with "new approaches" on a disengagement agreement and then returned to Israel, reporting "some progress," He said he would go back to Syria on Saturday and should know then whether his current mission could produce an agreement. [New York Times] Jamaica, the world's leading exporter of bauxite, the raw material for aluminum, outlined plans to almost triple the taxes and royalties paid by foreign companies. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 835.34 (-10.72, -1.27%)
S&P Composite: 89.72 (-0.73, -0.81%)
Arms Index: 1.30

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	534	3.47
Declines	798	6.76
Unchanged	413	1.86
Total Volume		12.09

* 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*
May 15, 1974	846.06	90.45	11.24
May 14, 1974	847.85	90.69	10.88
May 13, 1974	845.59	90.66	11.29
May 10, 1974	850.44	91.47	15.27
May 9, 1974	865.77	92.96	14.71
May 8, 1974	850.99	91.64	11.85
May 7, 1974	847.15	91.46	10.71
May 6, 1974	844.88	91.12	9.45
May 3, 1974	845.90	91.29	11.08
May 2, 1974	851.06	92.09	13.62