News stories from Wednesday March 19, 1975

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

South Vietnamese forces have begun rapidly withdrawing from the northernmost part of the country and well-placed military sources said they were being assisted in their evacuation by Communist troops. The sources said all of Quang Tri Province had been occupied. Sources close to the South Vietnamese command said that President Nguyen Van Thieu had decided that 10 or more provinces must be sacrificed if necessary to save the rest. [New York Times] Gen. George Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that South Vietnamese "backs are against the wall" partly for lack of United States military aid. Unless more is provided he predicted that Saigon would be forced into an increasingly defensive position. His speech reflected the administration's linking the military withdrawal from the Central Highlands to congressional cutbacks in military aid. [New York Times] Communist-led insurgent troops broke through government lines to the east bank of the Mekong River across from Phnom Penh's naval base and about two miles east of the capital. They were apparently seeking to improve their position for mortar attacks on the base. Northwest of the capital, government forces were pushing out from Tuol Leap and the insurgents are apparently retreating to defend the positions from which they have been firing missiles against Phnom Penh's airport. [New York Times] The Commerce Department reported that a big increase in the net outflow of private long-term capital threw the nation's basic balance of payments into a record deficit of $5.87 billion in the last quarter of 1974. For the year as a whole, large payments for imported oil and a rise in capital outflows produced a deficit of $10.58 billion, second only to the $11.2 billion deficit of 1972. [New York Times] The Supreme Court unanimously struck down as unconstitutional the Social Security provision that authorizes survivors' benefits for the widow of a deceased worker with children but denies them to a widower in the same position. It said this resulted in women workers who pay Social Security taxes providing less protection for their families than men. It was the Court's strongest stand against discrimination based on sex. [New York Times] The White House, the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency refused any discussion of the attempted salvage of a Soviet submarine by the C.I.A. last year. There was no official reaction in Moscow. Two Senate committee chairman said they planned to investigate the project. Members of the Senate and House publicly disagreed on the intelligence value of the effort. [New York Times] The government has decided to propose a relief-vent system on all jumbo-jet airliners to protect them from explosive decompression when a large hole is punched in a pressurized fuselage. The change would cost an estimated $250,000 a plane. It would reduce the hazard of fuselage ruptures caused by disintegration of a jet engine, a mid-air collision or sabotage. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 769.48 (-9.93, -1.27%)
S&P Composite: 84.34 (-0.79, -0.93%)
Arms Index: 0.92

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	395	4.72
Declines	1,008	11.14
Unchanged	395	3.17
Total Volume		19.03

* 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, 1975	779.41	85.13	29.16
March 17, 1975	786.53	86.01	26.78
March 14, 1975	773.47	84.76	24.84
March 13, 1975	762.98	83.74	18.62
March 12, 1975	763.69	83.59	21.56
March 11, 1975	770.89	84.36	31.28
March 10, 1975	776.13	84.95	25.89
March 7, 1975	770.10	84.30	25.93
March 6, 1975	761.81	83.69	21.78
March 5, 1975	752.82	82.90	24.12