News stories from Tuesday February 5, 1980
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- France and West Germany demanded a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan "without delay." A joint statement said that "the Soviet military intervention is unacceptable and creates grave dangers for the stability of the region and for peace." It followed the semiannual meeting of President Valery Giscard d'Estaing and Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.
West European support for a boycott of the Olympic Games in Moscow this summer appears to be building up reluctantly and at different speeds. The Foreign Ministers of France and West Germany, whose governments initially opposed a boycott, indicated at a meeting of the European Common Market in Brussels that their position is changing as pressure grows throughout the world grows for punitive measures against the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.
[New York Times] - Syria's troop withdrawal from Beirut will be further delayed by President Hafez al-Assad, who announced Monday that the peacekeeping forces would be withdrawn within a 36-hour period, but changed his mind when the Lebanese Prime Minister, Selim al-Hoss, expressed alarm at the prospect of the renewal of Lebanon's civil war. An initial delay of "a few days" decided on by President Assad has now been extended for "some time." [New York Times]
- The federal bribery inquiry widened when new allegations linked Senator Harrison Williams of New Jersey to a casino project sponsored by Ritz Associates in Atlantic City. Senator Howard Cannon is under inquiry by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to determine whether the Nevada Democrat had been illegally influenced in dealing with trucking deregulation legislation by a Chicago businessman with close ties to organized crime and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, law enforcement officials said. [New York Times]
- There were signs of trouble recently described in a state investigation of conditions at the New Mexico State Penitentiary, where 33 inmates were killed in a riot over the weekend. in addition, an inmates' suit pending in federal court charged charged that overcrowding the prison held a third more inmates than it had been designed for and promoted general violence and homosexual rape. [New York Times]
- The confused state of genetic testing of industrial employees to protect them from toxic chemicals has been emphasized by the surprise and concern ex-pressed by the head of the Federal agency responsible for the health and safety of American workers that a government regulation mandating genetic screening, which industry uses to determine workers' vulnerability to poisons, has been in effect for six years without her knowledge. Dr. Eula Bingham, director of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said that she had been unaware of the regulation until last week when interviewed by a reporter. [New York Times]
- Nearly $30 million in federal funds will be provided for the campaigns of the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees, about $7 million more than the subsidies provided in 1976. Each nominee will receive $29,440,000 this year. [New York Times]
- Original prints were found in Paris and London of Benjamin Franklin's long-lost chart of the Gulf Stream, the first accurate navigational map of the area, that he made in 1769-70 to speed trans-Atlantic mail. Philip Richardson, an associate scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanograpic Institution in Massachusetts, said he had found two prints of the chart at the Biblotheque Nationale in Paris. A third was uncovered at the Naval Library in London. [New York Times]
- Closer military ties with Washington will be considered by Saudi Arabian leaders to offset the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, an American delegation led by Zbigniew Brzezinki, President Carter's national security adviser, was told. [New York Times]
- A long list of human rights abuses in Pakistan, which has received an offer of military aid from the United States to deal with possible Soviet encroachment, was made public by the State Department in its annual report to Congress on the worldwide status of human rights. [New York Times]
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Stock Market Report
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 876.62 (+1.53, +0.17%)
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 4, 1980 | 875.09 | 114.37 | 43.06 |
| February 1, 1980 | 881.48 | 115.12 | 46.65 |
| January 31, 1980 | 875.85 | 114.16 | 65.89 |
| January 30, 1980 | 881.91 | 115.20 | 51.17 |
| January 29, 1980 | 874.40 | 114.07 | 55.48 |
| January 28, 1980 | 878.50 | 114.85 | 53.62 |
| January 25, 1980 | 876.11 | 113.61 | 47.09 |
| January 24, 1980 | 879.95 | 113.70 | 59.10 |
| January 23, 1980 | 877.56 | 113.44 | 50.75 |
| January 22, 1980 | 866.21 | 111.51 | 50.61 |