News stories from Friday March 5, 1976

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

The British pound, once the pillar of the world's economy, fell below $2 for the first time. For the last six months the pound had been close to falling through the psychological barrier. It closed at $1.975 today. Its value declined, it was said, because the Bank of England decided that Britain would be better off with a shrunken pound. [New York Times] The Labor Department said that the employment situation continued to improve in February. The national unemployment rate on a seasonally adjusted basis eased to 7.6 percent from 7.8 percent in January and total employment in February rose slightly to the July 1974 pre-recession peak of 86.3 million. The number of unemployed as estimated by the government's monthly sample survey of households was 7,136,000. This figure was also seasonally adjusted. President Ford, campaigning in Illinois, said the figures were "extremely encouraging." George Meany, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said the "official figures seriously understate employment in America." [New York Times] F. Lee Bailey, Patricia Hearst's chief counsel, accused a government witness of trying "to fix" the Hearst case with a negotiated plea of guilty for a probationary term, and was accused by the witness of having approved of the proposal. Dr. Joel Fort, a medical consultant, and Mr. Bailey called each other a liar. [New York Times] The cancer death rate in the United States rose at a faster rate last year than in any year since 1945, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, which estimates that the 1974-75 increase will be between 2 and 3 percent, perhaps slightly above 3 percent. Not since 1950 has the increase in the cancer death rate been as high as 2 percent, and the rate has not been above 2 percent since 1945 when the Increase over the previous year was 4 percent. [New York Times] The administrative assistant to the Nassau County Republican chairman and seven present or former officials of the town of Hempstead have been indicted by federal and Nassau County grand juries investigating allegations of 1 percent kickbacks to the Nassau County Republican Party. The eight men, named in nine indictments, included Donald Woolnough, administrative assistant to Assemblyman Joseph Margiotta, chairman of the Republican Committees of Nassau County and the Town of Hempstead. [New York Times] The Soviet Minister of Agriculture, Dmitri Polyansky, was abruptly dropped from the governing Politburo apparently as punishment for the country's disastrous grain crop failure last year. His name was conspicuously absent from the list of newly elected Politburo members that Leonid Brezhnev read at the closing session of the 25th Communist Party Congress In Moscow. Two other party figures, Grigory Romanov and Dmitri Ustinov, were promoted to full members of the Politburo. Mr. Romanov, the Leningrad party chief, and Mr. Ustinov, head of the Soviet defense industry complex, were formerly alternate, or non-voting members. [New York Times] The British government announced that it would continue the administration of Northern Ireland indefinitely following the failure of its efforts to politically reconcile the province's Roman Catholics and Protestants. Merlyn Rees, Britain's Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, told the House of Commons that the 78-seat Northern Ireland Convention, which was elected last May to work out a political reconciliation, would be dissolved at midnight and the British would run Ulster "for some time to come." [New York Times] The United States proposed an international pact to combat corporate bribery and promised to eventually answer governments seeking the identities of officials bribed by the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, But Deputy Secretary of State Robert Ingersoll said that the disclosure process would take time and that the government would not tell Japan and the Netherlands which officials were involved in Lockheed bribery charges for at least six months. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 972.92 (+2.28, +0.23%)
S&P Composite: 99.11 (+0.19, +0.19%)
Arms Index: 0.72

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	736	11.72
Declines	709	8.08
Unchanged	408	3.23
Total Volume		23.03

* 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 4, 1976	970.64	98.92	24.41
March 3, 1976	978.83	99.98	25.45
March 2, 1976	985.12	100.56	25.59
March 1, 1976	975.36	100.02	22.07
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