News stories from Monday March 1, 1976
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- The Ford administration will seek congressional approval of a foreign aid bill of $7.8 billion -- $1 billion less than it proposes to spend in the current fiscal year, administration officials said. Detailed military and economic aid requests for the new fiscal year are being sent to Congress this week, they said. But no immediate action is expected because Congress has not yet completed legislative action on major portions of the foreign aid bills for the current fiscal year. [New York Times]
- The Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge to the 1973 Church Amendment, which permits federally aided private hospitals to decline on a religious or a moral ground to perform abortions and sterilizations. This was a setback to proponents of liberalized abortion laws who maintain that the amendment -- named for its sponsor, Senator Frank Church -- infringes on the constitutional right of a woman to decide whether or not to bear a child as guaranteed in the Court's 1973 abortion rulings. Critics have also challenged the law because they believe it violates the Constitution's religion clause. [New York Times]
- Scheduled airlines flying the North Atlantic propose to increase their fares by an average of 6 percent on May 1. The increases, which would be in effect for six months, must first be approved by the governments involved, but this is usually automatic since most of the 35 lines involved are government-owned. Under the increases due May 1, the round-trip fare between New York and London in the peak season from June to August would cost $806 in economy class, a rise of $42 over last year, and $1,250 in first class, a rise of $96. [New York Times]
- Three husband-and-wife teams working independently in New York and Philadelphia have found strong clues linking a virus with multiple sclerosis, an incurable worldwide disease that cripples hundreds of thousands of people, usually at the start of middle age. The researchers have not yet proved that the virus causes the disease, but the British medical journal Lancet says the findings seem to remove multiple sclerosis from the category of diseases whose cause is not known. [New York Times]
- The Dallas Times Herald said that Norman Rees warned its officials shortly before press time Saturday night that he would kill himself if the paper ran an article exposing his alleged double-agent spying activities for the Soviet Union and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The paper printed the story in the Sunday editions, and Mr. Rees, a 69-year-old former engineer for the Mobil Oil Corporation, was found dead Sunday morning at his home in Southbury, Conn. [New York Times]
- The Beame administration was said to be considering the possibility of deferring the large part of the budget cuts it is facing to the final year of its three-year austerity plan, hoping that changes in the administration in Washington and the general economy might ease some of New York City's difficulties. It had been assumed that the estimated deficits still to be cut would be divided evenly between the next two budget years. But city officials said that this might not necessarily be so under the revised austerity plan that Mayor Beame will submit to the state Emergency Financial Control Board in the next two weeks. [New York Times]
- Prime Minister Aleksei Kosygin said in an economic report at the 25th Communist Congress in Moscow that the Soviet Union in recent years had made important gains in its economic competition with the West. He said that the Soviet Union now produced more steel, oil, mineral fertilizers, pig iron, coal, cement, tractors, cotton and wool, in addition to other commodities, than any other country. Over the last five years, he said, Soviet industrial output has grown at an average rate of 7.4 percent. He compared this with what he said was a 1.2 percent annual rate in the last 15 years in the United States and the Common Market countries. [New York Times]
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Stock Market Report
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 975.36 (+2.75, +0.28%)
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 27, 1976 | 972.61 | 99.71 | 26.94 |
| February 26, 1976 | 978.83 | 100.11 | 34.32 |
| February 25, 1976 | 994.57 | 101.69 | 34.68 |
| February 24, 1976 | 993.55 | 102.03 | 34.38 |
| February 23, 1976 | 985.28 | 101.61 | 31.46 |
| February 20, 1976 | 987.80 | 102.10 | 44.51 |
| February 19, 1976 | 975.76 | 101.41 | 39.21 |
| 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 |