News stories from Friday February 17, 1978

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

Progress in the coal negotiations was reported by President Carter at his news conference in Cranston, R.I. He said he hoped for a settlement "in the next few hours, or a day or so." But it seemed unlikely that concessions by the coal companies would be readily acceptable to the union's bargaining council. Industry concessions were said to have been rejected by the council in Washington. [New York Times] Climate specialists here and abroad believe that there will be no catastrophic changes in the climate by the end of the century. But they were almost equally divided on whether there will be a warming, a cooling or no change at all. Specialists in seven countries were polled by the Departments of Defense and Agriculture and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. [New York Times] Bert Lance is being sued by Financial General Bankshares Inc., a Washington bank holding company. The former director of the Office of Management and Budget is charged with violating federal and state laws by conspiring to take control secretly of Financial General. The civil suit, filed in Federal District Court in Washington, also names several co-defendants, including the Bank of Credit and Commerce International in London and Agha Hasan Abedi, the bank's president, and Eugene Metzger, a Washington lawyer. [New York Times] An early stock rally faded as the Dow Jones industrial average fell to its lowest level since early April 1975. It lost 0.60 of a point, closing at 752,69 and bringing its loss over a seven-day period to 23 points. [New York Times] Moscow said H. R. Haldeman lied when he wrote in "The Ends of Power," his book about the Nixon administration, that the Soviet Union proposed in 1969 that the United States join it in a nuclear attack against China. Tass, the official Soviet press agency, said, "Haldeman's nonsensical statements are a lie from beginning to end and pursue provocative, and only provocative aims." Tass did not comment on passages by Mr. Haldeman that elaborated on United States aerial reconnaissance photographs of "hundreds of nuclear warheads stacked in piles" along the Chinese border in the fall of 1969 when the Soviet Union seemed to be near a war with China. [New York Times] A new tax break would be given for charitable contributions to taxpayers who claim the standard income tax deduction under a bill that is strongly supported by some of the country's largest charities but strongly opposed by the Treasury. [New York Times] About 3,500 Cuban military advisers are in Ethiopia, according to Western sources in Addis Ababa. Their number is expected to rise to 5,000 in March and maybe 8,000 in the next few months. The information was said to have come from within the Ethiopian government. American observers believe the Cubans will carry the brunt of the Ethiopian counteroffensive in the Ogaden region against Somalia. [New York Times] Congress will approve the controversial Middle East military plane sale, President Carter said, and the sale will not, he said, disrupt the peace effort. "I think Congress will go along with the proposal to sell a limited number of airplanes in the Middle East," the President said at a news conference in Cranston, R.I., a stop on a New England campaign tour to help re-elect Democrats to Congress. [New York Times] At least 14 persons were killed in a Protestant area of Belfast when a bomb exploded in a restaurant where 400 people were dining and dancing. Some of the dead were children. Witnesses said the building turned into an inferno seconds after the blast. Another bomb exploded in a parking lot. Officials believed the bombs were planted by the Provisional wing of the Irish Republican Army. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 752.69 (-0.60, -0.08%)
S&P Composite: 87.96 (-0.12, -0.14%)
Arms Index: 1.28

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	689	6.58
Declines	662	8.10
Unchanged	471	3.82
Total Volume		18.50

* 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*
February 16, 1978	753.29	88.08	21.58
February 15, 1978	761.69	88.83	20.17
February 14, 1978	765.16	89.04	20.47
February 13, 1978	774.43	89.86	16.81
February 10, 1978	775.99	90.08	19.48
February 9, 1978	777.81	90.30	17.94
February 8, 1978	782.66	90.83	21.30
February 7, 1978	778.85	90.33	14.73
February 6, 1978	768.62	89.50	11.63
February 3, 1978	770.96	89.62	19.40