News stories from Thursday February 19, 1976
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- The Senate sustained President Ford's veto of a $6.2 billion public works bill by a vote of 63 to 35, three votes short of the two-thirds margin needed to override a veto. The House earlier had voted by a large margin, 319 to 98, to override, The bill was sponsored by Democratic leaders, mainly in the House. President Ford said afterward that the Senate vote was "commendable." Key Democrats and Republicans said that they would try to draft a smaller public works bill that the President might accept. [New York Times]
- Patricia Hearst invoked the Fifth Amendment's protection against self-incrimination 19 times at her bank robbery trial in San Francisco. She said it would possibly incriminate her to answer any of the prosecution's questions whatever about her movements between September 1974 and her arrest in San Francisco last Sept. 18. The prosecuting attorney was especially interested in the period when she was allegedly living In Sacramento. [New York Times]
- The Justice Department said it would not prosecute Richard Helms for his role in a 1971 domestic burglary, but an official said that congressional testimony of the former Director of Central Intelligence was being reviewed. Justice Department officials, it was said, had decided they had insufficient evidence to prosecute Mr. Helms for a civil rights violation. The statute of limitations in the meantime had been running out. [New York Times]
- Officials at the government's disease control center in Atlanta believe that it is possible that the virus that caused the worldwide flu epidemic of 1918-19, the worst in modern history, may have returned, and they have alerted all state health departments and the World Health Organization. The reason for the alert was the discovery of an unusual strain of influenza virus in four flu cases at Fort Dix, N.J. One of the four patients died. [New York Times]
- The Senate unanimously approved legislation that would substantially change the federal copyright law for the first time in 67 years and bring it up to date by making provision for radio, television, tape recording, photocopying, microfilming, computer storage and many other technological advances since the original law was passed in 1909. But the fight for a modernized copyright law is not over -- Washington lobbyists had sought changes for years. The Senate bill must still be approved by the House. The chairman of the House subcommittee that deals with copyright matters said that he was "quite confident" that the House would act by this summer. [New York Times]
- New York City officials reported that layoffs resulting from the fiscal crisis were having ''devastating" effects on minority employment in government. In the last 18 months, they disclosed, the city lost half of its Spanish-speaking workers, 40 percent of the black males on the payroll and almost a third of its female workers. [New York Times]
- Britain's Labor government announced substantial cutbacks in public spending on the ground that the cost of national social welfare programs was crippling the economy. Denis Healey, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said that the cost of welfare programs was rising to the point where taxes needed to pay for them would "corrode the will to work." He made public a long-awaited white paper on public expenditure. [New York Times]
- A study to be issued by the Brookhaven National Laboratory warns of perils to people, the pine barrens and the resort business if a multimillion dollar cluster of nuclear energy plants is built in Ocean County, N.J., where the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is studying the feasibility of clustered rather than dispersed nuclear energy plants. [New York Times]
- British officials are growing increasingly concerned that the success of Soviet-supported forces in Angola could lead to further wars of liberation engulfing all of southern Africa. They seem convinced that unless the white regime of Rhodesia makes quick and significant concessions to the black majority, the country will become the next target of African nationalists backed by Cuba and the Soviet Union. [New York Times]
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Stock Market Report
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 975.76 (+15.67, +1.63%)
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 18, 1976 | 960.09 | 99.85 | 29.90 |
| February 17, 1976 | 950.57 | 99.05 | 25.46 |
| February 13, 1976 | 958.36 | 99.67 | 23.87 |
| February 12, 1976 | 966.78 | 100.25 | 28.61 |
| February 11, 1976 | 971.90 | 100.77 | 32.30 |
| February 10, 1976 | 968.75 | 100.47 | 27.66 |
| February 9, 1976 | 957.18 | 99.62 | 25.34 |
| February 6, 1976 | 954.90 | 99.46 | 27.36 |
| February 5, 1976 | 964.81 | 100.39 | 33.78 |
| February 4, 1976 | 976.62 | 101.91 | 38.27 |