News stories from Friday April 20, 1979

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

Johnny Carson's contract with NBC runs through 1981, "and we expect him to honor it," the network said in a terse statement. Mr. Carson had said he intended to leave the highly profitable "Tonight Show" on Sept. 30, after 17 years as its host. [New York Times] A rubber strike was postponed when the United Rubber Workers Union agreed to extend its contract beyond midnight on a day-to-day basis pending further negotiations with four major rubber companies. The administration's anti-inflation wage guidelines are a major issue. [New York Times] A woman is not unfit to practice law because she lives with a man she is not married to, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled unanimously. The woman in the case, Bonnie Cord, a 34-year-old lawyer for the United States Department of Energy, was denied permission by a state trial judge in 1978 to take the Virginia bar examination when he learned that Miss Cord was not married to the man with whom she shared a house. The Supreme Court said Miss Cord's domestic arrangement had no rational connection to her fitness to practice. [New York Times] Proposed pollution controls on diesel engines are too stringent and too costly, the Council on Wage and Price Stability said. The council maintains that the cost estimate of enforcing the controls proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency was too low and that it could be more than twice the E.P.A.'s estimate. [New York Times] Safe transport of nuclear waste through cities and towns to reprocessing plants is the aim of regulations that will be introduced this summer by the Department of Transportation. The department is responding to the fears expressed in many municipalities over the safety of the shipments. New York, New London, Conn., and nearly one-fifth of the towns in Vermont are among the municipalities that have banned such shipments. [New York Times] Primary blame for the midair collision in San Diego last fall was put on the crew of a Pacific Southwest Airlines jet by the National Transportation Safety Board in a 3 to 1 vote. [New York Times] A health emergency in New York City has been caused by a garbage pileup, a state Supreme Court justice said in ordering the striking tugboat operators' union, whose members normally help haul garbage out to sea, to temporarily resume ferrying it to the landfill at Fresh Kills in Staten Island. [New York Times] Flames engulfed an Amtrak engine when it struck a Conrail work car in Edison Township, N.J., on the old Penn Central main line, disrupting rail service for almost three hours. Nearly 200 passengers on the Washington-bound Metroliner were thrown from their seats, injuring 71. [New York Times] War with Algeria is being risked by Moroccan forces in the former Spanish colony of the Western Sahara. They are fighting the Polisario guerrilla movement, which wants independence for the region, annexed by Morocco three and a half years ago. The Polisario guerrillas, who have attacked with impunity in southern Morocco, are armed by Algeria. [New York Times] A bomb badly damaged one of Rome's historic buildings, and both leftist and rightist groups said they were responsible. The blast at the Palace of Senators on the Capitoline Hill, which was designed by Michelangelo, occurred early in the morning as the police started a roundup of suspected leftist terrorists in Rome. During the night bombs also exploded in Milan, Naples and other cities. [New York Times] Israel is showing little interest in helping United Nations peacekeeping forces re-establish Lebanese government control over southern Lebanon because of a sharp rise in attacks by Palestinian guerrillas across its borders. Under pressure from the United States and Western European countries, Prime Minister Menachem Begin reluctantly agreed this week to the deployment of about 500 Lebanese troops to positions near United Nations posts in southern Lebanon. [New York Times] Ian Smith welcomed as "manna from heaven" a South African proposal for a new grouping of southern African nations. The proposal by Prime Minister P. W. Botha of South Africa for a "constellation of states" is interpreted by some Rhodesian officials as opening the way for much broader South African support for Prime Minister Smith's government. [New York Times] Another military disaster faces Col. Muammar Qaddafi, this time in Chad, according to reports received in Paris. The Libyan leader's forces were badly beaten last week in Uganda in an attempt to rescue the regime of Idi Amin. His offensive in Chad was described by French military sources as a pre-emptive strike against northern Moslem guerrillas in Chad who turned against their longtime Libyan supporters in a border dispute. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 856.98 (+1.73, +0.20%)
S&P Composite: 101.23 (-0.05, -0.05%)
Arms Index: 0.68

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	656	14.26
Declines	724	10.67
Unchanged	500	3.90
Total Volume		28.83

* 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*
April 19, 1979	855.25	101.28	31.12
April 18, 1979	860.27	101.70	29.51
April 17, 1979	857.93	101.24	29.27
April 16, 1979	860.45	101.12	28.05
April 12, 1979	870.50	102.00	26.78
April 11, 1979	871.71	102.31	32.87
April 10, 1979	878.72	103.34	31.90
April 9, 1979	873.70	102.87	27.30
April 6, 1979	875.69	103.18	34.72
April 5, 1979	877.60	103.26	34.54