News stories from Monday February 4, 1980
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- Senate leaders pledged a "full" and expeditious investigation of allegations that some memers of Congress, including a Senator, were involved in bribery. Senator Howard Heflin, former Chief Judge of Alabama and chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee, accompanied by Representative Charles Bennett, head of the House Ethics Committee, talked with top federal law enforcement officials in efforts to obtain evidence the Federal Bureau of Investigation said it had developed in an undercover operation.
Federal grand juries will soon receive evidence of criminal activity by public officials, including eight Congressmen, law-enforcement authorities said. Evidence will be presented to juries in New York, Philadelphia, New Jersey and Washington.
[New York Times] - Ayatollah Khomeini condemned the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and, in his first statement opposing it, pledged "unconditional support" for the Moslem insurgents fighting the Soviet-backed government. The Ayatollah also inducted Abolhassan Bani-Sadr as the first President of the Iranian republic. [New York Times]
- Syria announced it would withdraw its peacekeeping troops from Beirut, raising the prospect of the renewal of Lebanon's civil war, but the withdrawal, scheduled to be made within 36 hours, was delayed for "a few days" following a protest by Prime Minister Selim al-Hoss. The Prime Minister rushed to Damascus in an attempt to persuade President Hafez al-Assad to change his mind. [New York Times]
- Two political prisoners who fled Argentina told Amnesty International that hundreds of people have been jailed, tortured and killed in the last three years under the repressive military government. They described five secret concentration camps in the Buenos Aires area where they said they were held for 15 months. [New York Times]
- Fifty convicts who survived the carnage and destruction by inmates at the New Mexico State Penitentiary stood outside the smouldering prison yelling about the horrors they had witnessed. "They killed, they butchered,"one man shouted. Inside was a scene of utter destruction, and 35 bodies had been recovered in the worst prison rioting in modern American history. [New York Times]
- A chromosome testing program to protect employees of the Dow Chemical Company's huge plant in Freeport, Tex., was never developed despite the efforts of the plant's medical director to have the testing become company policy. Dr. D. Jack Kilian, now a professor at the University of Texas School of Public Health, said that when he and his associates found that Dow workers exposed to benzene and epichiorohydrin had a disturbing rate of chromsome breakage, company officials became defensive, even hostile, over the findings. [New York Times]
- Draft registration will be limited to persons 18 to 20 years old, according to anti-draft activist who attended a White House briefing. Barry Lynn, chairman of the Committee Against Registration and the Draft, said he was convinced that President Carter would call for the registration of women. [New York Times]
- Chicago's teachers went on strike for the fifth time in 11 years. The city's 25,000 teachers formed picket lines at school throughout the city to protest the school board's efforts to cut costs by dismissing teachers and renegotiating a contract signed last fall. [New York Times]
- A judge rejected a plea to suppress publication of news articles about the Three Mile Island nuclear plant made by the plant's operator, the Metropolitan Edison Company. The company said they could enable terrorists to sabotage the plant. Judge John Dowling of Dauphin County Court in Pennsylvania cited the First Amendment in upholding the right of The Guide, a local weekly, to run them. [New York Times]
- A dispute over Soviet air privileges in New York ended when the Soviet airline, Aeroflot, agreed to suspend scheduled flights into Kennedy International Airport until it could arrange for baggage handling and other ground services, which had been withdrawn by unionized ground crews at Kennedy to protest the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. [New York Times]
- A casino commission member quit in New Jersey following published reports that he, Kenneth MacDonald, was among public officials who accepted money from F.B.I. agents posing as representatives of an Arab sheik seeking to invest in gambling casinos in Atlantic City. Mr. MacDonald was vice chairman of the New Jersey Casino Control Commission. [New York Times]
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Stock Market Report
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 875.09 (-6.39, -0.72%)
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* |
| February 1, 1980 | 881.48 | 115.12 | 46.65 |
| January 31, 1980 | 875.85 | 114.16 | 65.89 |
| January 30, 1980 | 881.91 | 115.20 | 51.17 |
| January 29, 1980 | 874.40 | 114.07 | 55.48 |
| January 28, 1980 | 878.50 | 114.85 | 53.62 |
| January 25, 1980 | 876.11 | 113.61 | 47.09 |
| January 24, 1980 | 879.95 | 113.70 | 59.10 |
| January 23, 1980 | 877.56 | 113.44 | 50.75 |
| January 22, 1980 | 866.21 | 111.51 | 50.61 |
| January 21, 1980 | 872.78 | 112.10 | 48.03 |