News stories from Thursday May 8, 1975
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- President Ford's request for $507 million for Indochina refugee aid was cut to $405 million by a House Appropriations subcommittee that said the relief program should be financed with that sum for the next 14 months. The administration's request was based on cost estimates for the transport and resettlement of 150,000 Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees over the next 28 months. [New York Times]
- Jack Chestnut, a 42-year-old Minneapolis lawyer who managed Senator Hubert Humphrey's 1970 senatorial campaign, was found guilty in Federal District Court in Manhattan of arranging for and accepting an illegal corporate campaign contribution. He faces a maximum of two years' imprisonment and a fine of $10,000. [New York Times]
- The Justice Department advised a House Commerce subcommittee that a "controlled liquidation" or auction sale of the Penn Central and six other bankrupt railroads in the Northeast was the "preferred way" for restoring a competitive rail transportation system in the region. The subcommittee is holding hearings on a preliminary plan for the reorganization of the bankrupt systems into a new federally supported Consolidated Rail Corporation, known as Conrail. [New York Times]
- The victorious Cambodian Communists are carrying out a peasant revolution that has thrown the entire country into upheaval. It is estimated that three to four million people, most of them on foot, have been forced out of the cities and sent on a mammoth and grueling exodus into areas deep in the countryside, where, the Communists say, they will have to become peasants and till the soil. No one has been excluded. The old, young, sick and wounded have been forced on the road. For the moment, money means nothing and cannot be spent. Barter has replaced it. [New York Times]
- For the 800 foreigners who spent two weeks in the French Embassy in Phnom Penh after the Communists took over, the time seemed like a chaotically compressed generation of life. A baby was born, another died. A dozen marriages were performed -- all marriages of convenience to enable Cambodians to get French passports so that they could escape the country and its peasant revolution. There were days of deep sorrow. Friends were torn apart and families were broken up as Cambodian husbands were separated from their European wives and vice versa. Sobbing could he heard in every corner of the compound. [New York Times]
- Leonid Brezhnev said that he hoped the end of the wars in Indochina would lead to a further relaxation of tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States. He made the bid for accommodation in his first public comments on the Communist victory in South Vietnam as he praised the "patriots of Vietnam" for having waged a successful "struggle against foreign interventionists and their henchmen." [New York Times]
- Avery Brundage, past president of the International Olympic Committee, died at his home at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, West Germany, at the age of 87. He was powerful and controversial in international sports and was credited with preserving Olympic ideals and nurturing the Olympic Games through skillful compromise. [New York Times]
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Stock Market Report
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 840.50 (+4.06, +0.49%)
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 7, 1975 | 836.44 | 89.08 | 22.25 |
| May 6, 1975 | 834.72 | 88.64 | 25.41 |
| May 5, 1975 | 855.60 | 90.08 | 22.37 |
| May 2, 1975 | 848.48 | 89.22 | 25.21 |
| May 1, 1975 | 830.96 | 88.10 | 20.66 |
| April 30, 1975 | 821.34 | 87.30 | 18.06 |
| April 29, 1975 | 803.04 | 85.64 | 17.74 |
| April 28, 1975 | 810.00 | 86.23 | 17.85 |
| April 25, 1975 | 811.80 | 86.62 | 20.25 |
| April 24, 1975 | 803.66 | 86.04 | 19.05 |