News stories from Thursday August 3, 1978

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

In a mass murder-suicide, a mother and six of her seven children died in an 11-story plunge from the balcony of a Salt Lake City hotel. The woman, distraught over the earlier suicide of her husband, reportedly pushed some the children screaming over the rail, while the older children jumped. [New York Times] A severe flood in Texas claimed at least nine lives as rain-swollen rivers spilled over their banks in the state's central hill country, threatening several cities and flooding the burial site of former President Lyndon Johnson. As the Army, National Guard troops, and scores of police officers mounted an airborne rescue effort, heavy rains that totaled 30 inches in two days moved west and caused street flooding in Abilene. [New York Times] More than $20 million was taken in by Atlantic City's first casino in July. Resorts International announced that its take was up 25 percent from June, the first full month of operation. If the pace continues, the casino, which can accommodate 7,000 gamblers at a time, will take in more than $240 million in its first year -- almost three times as much as the annual record ever registered in Nevada. [New York Times] An effort to appease House Speaker Tip O'Neill was made by the White House, which announced the appointment of his close friend, Robert Griffin, to become a "senior assistant" to Robert Strauss, President Carter's special trade representative and counselor on inflation. Mr. Griffin was dismissed over Mr. O'Neill's strong objections from the second-ranking post in the troubled General Services Administration. [New York Times] An ex-envoy from Seoul will testify in writing on the South Korean influence buying investigation. The House ethics committee announced that it had agreed to accept an offer by the Seoul government to make Kim Dong Jo, its former ambassador in Washington, available for written questions about his role in the scandal. [New York Times] The new Senate Office Building is rising on Capitol Hill, and rising with it are costs, delays and controversy. The nine story structure is not expected to be finished until 1981, two years behind schedule, and will cost at least $122 million, compared with the original projection in 1976 of $47.9 million. [New York Times] Israeli jets streaked over Lebanon and bombed an area described as a Palestinian terrorist training camp five hours after a terrorist bomb killed an Israeli and injured 50 persons in a crowded market in Tel Aviv. An Israeli cabinet statement announced that the air strike was in response to the attack in the market. [New York Times] A P.L.O. leader was killed in Paris when terrorists, believed to be linked to Iraq, invaded the French office of the Palestine Liberation Organization. An aide was also murdered, and three other people were wounded in the attack. The assailants were arrested by the French police. [New York Times] Syria supported a Lebanese charge that Israel was obstructing the deployment of Lebanese army units in southern Lebanon. A Lebanese battalion, under bombardment for four days, has been halted by Christian militia gunfire. Lebanon has accused Israel of the shelling, while Israel has said it came from Lebanese Christian forces controlling the border strip. [New York Times] A growing Cambodian exodus to Thailand seems to be due largely to a thinning out of military forces in northwestern Cambodia and the subsequent relaxing of control over the population as troops are moved to the Cambodian-Vietnamese frontier, where fighting has been going on. This is considered a sign that the war is gravely straining Cambodia's military and human resources. [New York Times] The House rejected a bar to aid for Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Uganda. Opponents had charged that the restriction on indirect aid would have required the United States to withdraw from international banks and other funding institutions. The narrow 203 to 198 vote represented a victory for the Carter administration. [New York Times] Moscow fined two U.S. reporters $72.50 a day each for failing to publish retractions of articles they had written about a convicted Soviet dissident. The judge set a new deadline for retractions and indicated, without elaborating, that "other measures" besides fines might be carried out if no retractions were published. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 886.87 (+3.38, +0.38%)
S&P Composite: 103.51 (+0.59, +0.57%)
Arms Index: 0.83

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	1,007	37.89
Declines	636	19.76
Unchanged	321	8.72
Total Volume		66.37

* 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*
August 2, 1978	883.49	102.92	47.50
August 1, 1978	860.71	100.66	34.81
July 31, 1978	862.27	100.68	33.99
July 28, 1978	856.29	100.00	33.31
July 27, 1978	850.57	99.54	33.97
July 26, 1978	847.19	99.08	36.82
July 25, 1978	839.57	98.44	25.40
July 24, 1978	831.60	97.72	23.27
July 21, 1978	833.42	97.75	26.07
July 20, 1978	838.62	98.03	33.34