President Reagan blamed Mikhail S. Gorbachev tonight for the failure to achieve agreement in Iceland on reducing nuclear weapons. But he said his invitation to the Soviet leader to come to the United States for a summit meeting was still in effect. In a nationally broadcast speech a day after the Iceland meeting ended, Mr. Reagan defended his decision to break off the talks rather than compromise on his Strategic Defense Initiative. He said his plan for a space-based anti-missile system “is what brought the Soviets back to arms control talks” in the first place. Mr. Reagan said Mr. Gorbachev’s insistence on “killing” the program, popularly known as “Star Wars,” had prevented an agreement in Iceland. But the President struck a conciliatory tone, saying that “we are closer than ever before to agreements that could lead to a safer world without nuclear weapons.” At several points, Mr. Reagan emphasized his readiness to return to the negotiating table. “I am still optimistic that a way will be found,” he said. “The door is open and the opportunity to begin eliminating the nuclear threat is within reach.”
In his address tonight from the Oval Office, the President noted that he was aware of the interest in “whether there will be another summit,” and added: “There was no indication by Mr. Gorbachev as to when or whether he plans to travel to the United States, as we agreed he would last year in Geneva. I repeat tonight that our invitation stands and that we continue to believe additional meetings would be useful. But that’s a decision the Soviets must make.” Mr. Reagan made it clear that the key obstacle in Iceland had been his refusal to accept Soviet constraints on “Star Wars” development. Mr. Gorbachev had offered to make reductions in long- and medium-range offensive nuclear missiles in return for an agreement that Mr. Reagan said would restrict the development of the missile-defense system. Once the Soviet leader focused on the missile defense, Mr. Reagan said, it became a case of his preferring “no agreement” to a “bad agreement.”
President Reagan spends much of the day working on a speech he is to deliver later in the evening. President Reagan receives word that a quick poll shows his approval ratings spike 8-9 points after the evening’s speech.
As a chilly rain fell Sunday evening on the white stucco building overlooking Reykjavik Bay in Iceland, President Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev stepped outdoors, solemnly shook hands and ended their weekend meeting. “I think you didn’t want a summit,” said Mr. Reagan, according to an aide, referring to the meeting in the United States that was supposed to come out of the Iceland talks. “Well, there is still time,” Mr. Gorbachev replied. “No, there isn’t,” said Mr. Reagan, entering his limousine. This sharp-edged exchange was one of the dramatic highlights of accounts offered by White House officials as they described the Iceland meeting from the American point of view.
American officials expressed hope today that important progress could be made in the Geneva arms talks as a result of the Iceland meetings. They voiced confidence that the Soviet Union would find it difficult to retract its concessions and that they could be built on to achieve agreements on medium-range and long-range nuclear weapons. “Things look much brighter than they did before,” said Kenneth L. Adelman, director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. This outlook was disputed by former arms-control officials who said the Americans were trying to put the best face on the deadlock that emerged over the United States’ space-based missile defense program, known formally as the Strategic Defense Initiative and popularly as “Star Wars.”
Mikhail S. Gorbachev returned from Iceland today to a rising chorus in the press echoing his assertion that President Reagan had let a historic chance at agreement on arms control slip by clinging to his “Star Wars” program. But as word spread about the failure to achieve agreement at the summit meeting, Russians and Western diplomats sought to understand what happened. There were those who wondered why Mr. Gorbachev had gambled so much on blocking the Strategic Defense Initiative, especially if he was aware of Mr. Reagan’s strong attachment to the program. Privately, some Russians expressed disappointment and some dismay as they watched Mr. Gorbachev’s press conference on television and the gloomy sense it gave that Soviet-American dialogue had hit a dead end in Iceland.
Scientists inside and outside the Government sharply disagreed yesterday over what effect a 10-year ban on space testing would have on President Reagan’s missile defense program, known popularly as “Star Wars.” A chief scientist in the program said such a ban, one condition the Soviet Union seeks in exchange for sharp reductions in nuclear weapons, would have no significant effect, but Pentagon officials and other scientists said it would be devastating. Officials have stressed recently that many parts of the program, formally known as the Strategic Defense Initiative, are ready for tests that would be some of the most spectacular of the space age. Surprisingly, some scientists outside the Government said yesterday that a ban on space testing might speed technical progress if showy demonstrations in orbit were foregone for more exacting ones on earth. Soviet officials proposed last weekend that all but laboratory research, testing and development of antimissile systems be halted for 10 years.
The inability of President Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev to attain tangible results at the Reykjavik meeting has left Soviet-American relations in a quandary, in the view of foreign policy experts within and outside the Government. The Russians and the Americans could end up going their own ways for the remainder of the Reagan term, blaming each other — as they have started to do already — for allowing a package of arms control agreements to slip through their hands. And each in coming days will undoubtedly seek to portray the meeting in Iceland as a success for its side and a defeat for the other. Soviet spokesmen are saying that Mr. Gorbachev was able to show that he had a stronger commitment to total arms control than did Mr. Reagan. Mr. Reagan and his spokesmen, meanwhile, are trying to persuade Americans and allies that the meeting was not a setback for American interests.
Secretary of State George P. Shultz briefed the NATO allies on the outcome of the Reykjavik summit meeting today and said later they had viewed it as, in some ways, “a tremendous success.” The Secretary of State, who had appeared dejected and depressed at the end of the talks in Iceland Sunday night, was smiling and optimistic today when he met with journalists after his three-hour meeting with representatives of the other 15 North American Treaty Organization members at the alliance’s headquarters here. His only grim moment came when he was pressed about the proposed summit meeting in the United States later this year, for which the Iceland meeting was to have been a preliminary step. “There is no active plan in being,” he said. “I am not going to comment otherwise.”
Politicians throughout the world expressed disappointment today that the Reykjavik summit meeting had ended in stalemate. But most expressed hope that the Iceland talks could pave the way for far-reaching arms-control agreements. Political commentators also urged both superpowers not to let the space-based missile-defense program being pursued by the United States, popularly known as “Star Wars,” prevent what could be historic arms-control agreements, but few blamed President Reagan for the failure of the talks. “The door to another summit was closed by neither side,” said Friedhelm Ost, the West German Government’s chief spokesman, echoing hope for future progress that was expressed in many capitals today.
President Francois Mitterrand said today that, at this time, he did not intend to be a candidate in the next presidential election, which must be held by spring 1988. Mr. Mitterrand, speaking with reporters at a military exercise in Caylus in southwestern France, did not totally rule out running for a second seven-year term. But his statement was the closest he has come to saying that he does not intend to run again. “Each time that I think about this issue, everything leads me to say to myself: No, I will not be a candidate,” he said. “Will things intervene that make me think this is a mistake? I cannot envisage it.”
Polish authorities freed a Roman Catholic priest and a student who were sentenced in the slaying of a policeman nearly five years ago, church sources said. Father Sylwester Zych, 36, and Stanislaw Matejczuk, 28, were sentenced to six years each in 1982. They were tried with two young men who were charged with shooting the policeman in 1982. Zych learned of the slaying when one of the killers confessed it to him. Under church rules, he could not disclose it. Matejczuk was charged with being a spiritual leader of a youth group to which the two convicted killers belonged.
The British police today stood by the disputed confession of a Jordanian accused of trying to blow up an Israeli airliner, contending that he had admitted receiving aid from Syrian intelligence agents and meeting with the Syrian Ambassador in London shortly before his arrest. The prosecution has offered no independent evidence of any involvement by Syrian authorities in the incident in April. If verified, such evidence would present a major diplomatic problem for the British Government, which has diplomatic relations with Syria and recently repeated its strong stand against state-sponsored terrorism.
Political rivals on both the right and left made gains in local elections at the expense of Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou’s Panhellenic Socialist Movement. Conservative challengers got more than 42% of the votes cast Sunday in the three major cities-Athens, Piraeus and Salonika-and support for incumbent Socialist mayors declined to about 30%. Communist candidates won just over 20% of the vote in each of the three cities, according to nearly complete returns reported by the Interior Ministry. Runoffs will take place Sunday. Analysts said voters are unhappy with Papandreou’s austerity policy.
The ambience and aroma of the Nina emerge from faded documents in archaic script long overlooked in a Spanish archive. The three ships that carried Columbus to the New World were sturdy and highly maneuverable caravels — the major advance in seafaring technology that launched the Age of Discovery.
The Iraqi government took a group of Baghdad-based correspondents to the northern city of Kirkuk to disprove Iran’s claim that its forces smashed oil installations there, the Iraqi news agency reported. Iran had said commando units assisted by Iraqi Kurdish guerrillas penetrated 100 miles into Iraq and destroyed the Kirkuk oil refinery, three oil and gas separation plants, an air base and other targets in Kirkuk on Friday. The Iraqi news agency said the reporters “witnessed normal life and operations at the oil installations.”
Kuwait’s undersecretary of the interior, Major General Youssef Khorafi, said his country will stand fast against terrorist demands for the release of 17 prisoners convicted of bombing the U.S. and French embassies in 1983. The Islamic Jihad (Islamic Holy War) group has demanded freedom for the 17 in exchange for American and French hostages in Lebanon. Meanwhile, Newsweek magazine said that the Beirut kidnappers of three Americans are cousins of one of Kuwait’s prisoners and that they will settle for the release of their cousin and two other Lebanese Shia Muslims. Most of the 17 are Iraqi Shias.
Bangladesh’s martial-law government placed the two main opposition leaders under house arrest on the last day of campaigning for Wednesday’s presidential election after they urged a boycott of the polls. The two women, Sheik Hasina, leader of the Awami League, and Khaleda Zia, head of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, were prevented from addressing rallies in Dhaka, the capital. The campaigning has been marred by scattered incidents of violence. President Hussain Mohammed Ershad, who seized power in a 1983 coup, is one of 11 candidates for president.
Jamaican Prime Minister Edward Seaga announced that he will retire next August. He gave no reason, and leaders of his Jamaica Labor Party said they will try to get him to change his mind. Seaga’s term expires in 1989. His decision could result in the scheduling of new general elections, which the opposition Peoples National Party has been demanding since the Labor Party was badly defeated in municipal balloting last July. Seaga, a conservative, has tried to turn Jamaica’s sluggish economy around through free enterprise and fiscal austerity mandated by the International Monetary Fund.
Over the last couple of years, an organization operating out of a cramped three-room suite in Phoenix with only three regular employees says it has supplied 8,000 “freedom fighter kits” to the contra rebels in Nicaragua. The camouflage-covered kits contain such items as shaving cream, non-melting candy and Spanish-language Bibles. “The Bibles have been a major hit,” Joyce Downey, the executive director, said in an interview last week. The organization, the United States Council for World Freedom, also supplied a refurbished Vietnam-era UH-1B helicopter to rebels fighting the Sandinista Government, for what the group said was unarmed evacuation of the wounded. But the name of the council’s chairman, John K. Singlaub, has frequently cropped up as a possible conduit for covert American aid to anti-Communist forces in Central America that is more deadly than candy and Bibles.
Nicaraguan rebels took full responsibility today for the flight of a military cargo plane that was downed over Nicaragua last week. Bosco Matamoros, the rebels’ Washington spokesman, said that until now, the rebels had remained “totally silent” on the matter. A senior Administration official said the United States had asked the rebels to come forward. Today, the rebel spokesman said the downed C-123 cargo plane carrying military supplies had been “just one of the regular flights to supply our forces, one of numerous flights.” And, echoing remarks over the last week from several Government officials, including Secretary of State George P. Shultz, Mr. Matamoros added, “There was no United States Government connection.”
American officials at least indirectly supported Nicaraguan rebel supply flights out of El Salvador, according to two sources here. They also said a longtime Central Intelligence Agency employee identified by an American jailed in Nicaragua was involved in the operation. The two sources have close knowledge of El Salvador and have contact both with C.I.A. agents and the men flying supplies to the Nicaraguan rebels from El Salvador. Both sources said they strongly support American aid to the rebels and chose to speak because they are angry about the “amateurishness” of operations to aid the rebels.
The United States will allow some Americans working on United States aid programs to return to the Sudan, the official Sudanese press agency said today. Washington evacuated some of its nationals after William Calkins, a United States communications specialist, was shot in Khartoum on April 15, the day American planes attacked targets in Libya. The agency, monitored by the British Broadcasting Corporation, said the United States Ambassador, Norman Anderson, told Foreign Minister Sharif Hindi of the decision during a meeting at which Sudanese-American relations were discussed.
Thousands of students walked out at about 40 high schools in the black township of Soweto today in a coordinated school boycott, but there were no reports of incidents. Following the instructions on pamphlets distributed throughout Soweto, the students showed up at their schools, then walked out en masse. By 11 AM all middle and high schools were deserted, said a local reporter who made a tour of the township. The Department of Education closed 33 schools in Soweto last month and has indicated it will close other black schools if students do not attend. The Soweto Students Congress called on students to boycott classes until the closed schools are reopened, troops are removed from townships and youths detained under the state of emergency are released.
Politicians and political strategists expressed caution today about the effect of the deadlocked summit meeting in Iceland on the 1986 campaign, which has just three weeks to go, though many said the Democrats might make marginal gains. Leaders of both parties said it was clear that President Reagan would not now be able to give Republican candidates the kind of lift he and they had hoped for. But it is equally clear, the leaders said, that it would be perilous for the Democrats to attack Mr. Reagan in such a way as to seem to be taking the Soviet Union’s side. In his address to the nation tonight, Mr. Reagan appeared to be trying to limit whatever political damage might have been caused by the impasse at Reykjavik. He said several times that sweeping arms limitation proposals remained on the table, that agreements were closer than ever, that progress had been made, that he was optimistic.
The panel charged with overseeing the redesign of space shuttle rockets has urged the space agency to explore wholly new designs and expressed “serious concern” about the adequacy of its current testing program. The panel, in a seven-page letter to the Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration that was released today, called for “significant augmentation” of both tests and testing facilities. Among its recommendations was one to build a second testing stand for the rockets. The letter contained the panel’s first official judgment on the merits of the present rocket redesign and its first recommendations on NASA’s testing program. Noting that the agency’s redesign effort was being dictated by the desire to use rocket segments ordered before the shuttle disaster on January 28, the panel said it should explore alternatives in case that effort did not produce a safe and reliable new rocket. The panel, convened by the National Research Council, a prestigious private advisory organization, said that if NASA’s current approach proved successful, the shuttle fleet could resume flying “at the earliest time” because new rocket segments would not have to be ordered and tested.
Finally, 20 months after the overvalued dollar began its long slide, there are scattered but unmistakable signs that America’s trade picture is beginning to improve. A declining dollar should make foreign goods more costly to Americans and American goods less costly to customers abroad. A spot-check by correspondents of The New York Times indicates that companies and consumers here and abroad are altering their buying and selling behavior in response to the dollar’s diminished value. Foreigners are buying more Kodak film. Johnson & Johnson, the pharmaceutical company, says its sales abroad have increased appreciably. Monsanto is shipping more herbicides, and a big French supermarket chain is pushing American food products.
There are 26 billionaires, up from 14 last year, in Forbes magazine’s annual list of the wealthiest Americans. Heading the list is Sam Moore Walton, the founder and chief of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., of Arkansas. Forbes said Mr. Walton’s assets totaled $4.5 billion.
7% unemployment is gaining acceptance after a period of higher rates, experts say. The 7 percent rate, a level long considered intolerably high, has continued for more than two years, and few analysts expect the rate to decline appreciably in the foreseeable future.
Louisiana Governor Edwin W. Edwards ordered most state agencies to reduce annual spending immediately by 10%, an unprecedented cut that will reduce the state’s mounting deficit by about $232 million. Edwards said the cuts would probably require layoffs of state workers and reductions in services, but that it would be up to individual department heads to decide where the cuts will be taken. The state is facing a deficit of $255 million in the current fiscal year and another deficit of about $200 million from last fiscal year, he said. Edwards spared the judiciary and the departments of Corrections and Revenue from any cuts.
A 14-year-old boy in Newton, Iowa, was ordered to stand trial in the death of a schoolmate who collapsed during a school scuffle that allegedly dislodged a plastic valve in his heart. Jasper County Circuit Judge Thomas Mott scheduled the trial for November 24 and ordered Jody Collins to remain in a juvenile detention facility indefinitely. Collins is charged as a juvenile with involuntary manslaughter and assault in the Sept. 26 death of Justin Cupples. If convicted, he could be confined until his 18th birthday.
Backers of a movement to create a new city made up of Boston’s minority neighborhoods called on Massachusetts Governor Michael S. Dukakis to set up a commission to investigate the financial viability of the proposal. The proposal to create a city known as Mandela — named for jailed South African black revolutionary Nelson Mandela — out of the neighborhoods of Roxbury, Dorchester, the South End and several others is on the November ballot as a local referendum in the 10 representative districts involved.
Police used clubs to shove away backers of Nicaragua’s Sandinista government who tried to block the entrance of a building in San Francisco where a fund-raising luncheon was being held for the opposition contras. About 70 police officers, including a unit of mounted police, cordoned off the Union Espanola, where the weekend event was held, and escorted the contra supporters through the crowd of about 1,500. There were no arrests, but at least two protesters were treated for bruises at a hospital and released, authorities said. Leslie Simon said his pro-Sandinista group had called for a nonviolent demonstration, “but when we arrived, there was already a group of people here who wanted to express their anger in an entirely different manner.”
Divers cut open a truck trailer that crashed into the Snake River near Rupert, Idaho, and began to unload its cargo of 16 tons of low-level radioactive uranium that officials said posed no health threat. The uranium was being transported from Ohio to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state Sunday when the tractor-trailer rig plunged off a bridge into about nine feet of water. The uranium was packed in wooden crates in a trailer that ended up partly submerged in the river about 180 miles southeast of Boise.
General Motors Corp. said it has changed its position and is calling on Japan to cut car exports to the United States when voluntary restraints that limit them to 2.3 million cars a year expire at the end of March. GM has been the only one of the nation’s top auto makers to favor lifting the restraints on Japanese car imports. “We haven’t got fair trade,” GM Chairman Roger B. Smith told Automotive News, an industry publication. “The Japanese haven’t done anything to open up their borders.”
Scores of irate farmers dumped more than 80,000 pounds of milk in Derby, Vermont, in the largest such protest yet against federal agricultural policies. “These people are beginning to realize that their milk is almost worthless these days,” said Susan Judd, a protest organizer. Farmers say that shrinking federal milk price supports and increasing costs are making it impossible to stay in business.
Minh Le was a police officer when he fled Saigon in 1975 to escape the Communist takeover. He and a son ended up in Austin, Texas, but he hasn’t seen his wife and four other surviving children for 11 years. The students at Lanier High School, where he now works as a janitor, were moved by his plight and plan to raise $10,000 to bring Le’s family to the United States. The students have enlisted the aid of Senator Lloyd Bentsen (D-Texas) and also plan to write to the Vietnamese government urging it to allow Le’s family to leave. “To me, this is just like a miracle,” said the 56-year-old Le. He said he gets letters from his family about twice a year, but he’s not sure what he’d say if he and his wife are ever reunited. “I would be so moved, I would probably be speechless and I would cry.”
Father Lawrence Martin Jenco, who was held hostage in Lebanon for 19 months before being released in July, had yet another homecoming when he celebrated Mass at the church where he was pastor from 1979 to 1981. “I’m glad to be home,” a teary-eyed Jenco told the 2,000 celebrants at Our Lady of Belen Catholic Church in Belen, New Mexico, who greeted him with masses of yellow ribbons. He asked them to pray for the release of the remaining American hostages. “We made a commitment to each other in captivity that if one were to be released before the others, we would work for the release of all,” he said.
A debate is raging over proposed new rules to regulate the harvest of redfish in federally controlled waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Secretary of Commerce Malcolm Baldrige developed the redfish management plan in response to expressions of fear that the nation’s strong appetite for Cajun cooking, and blackened redfish in particular, may be endangering the future of the species. Federal officials say the plan is designed to prevent overfishing and to benefit recreational and commercial fisherman and consumers. The plan calls for no commercial fishing for redfish beginning in late December, but allows fishermen to catch a small percentage when seeking other fish. The recreational catch would be limited to the levels of harvest dictated by state laws.
Three men in Chamblee, Georgia handcuffed a 54-year-old man and his son and shot them to death, shot and wounded another son, then fatally stabbed a woman and slashed her throat as she summoned the police by telephone, officers said. Dick Hand, the DeKalb Public Safety Director, said the attack today might have been a revenge killing connected with gambling.
Theories expanding liability for negligence is are being advanced in the English-speaking world. Some pioneering courts hold that accountants and contractors owe legal duties to broad classes of people with whom they have never dealt.
David’s Cookies will expand the products it sells, David Liederman, the founder and chairman of the chain, said. He said he planned to sell chocolate from Belgium, David’s Gummy Bears as well as muffins and ice cream in pint-size containers, testing them in his New York shops.
Small blazes set by forestry officials spread yesterday into three forest fires that blackened more than 600 acres near Washington’s Mount St. Helens. About 1,000 firefighters were dispatched to battle the fires, and they expected to bring them under control by this evening, according to a spokesman for the Forest Service. The spokesman said the fires initially had appeared to cover 1,200 acres and their actual sizes were determined through infrared monitoring and improved ground and aerial observation. In Oregon, firefighters battled a wind-whipped brush fire that threatened virgin timber and a power line of the Bonneville Power Administration. The fire burned 30 acres of brush in the right of way of the 500-kilowatt line before being contained, the spokesman said.
Two scientists who have made major contributions to the understanding of substances that influence cell growth and the orderly development of tissues, including the nervous system, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine yesterday. The two are Dr. Rita Levi-Montalcini, a developmental biologist who holds both United States and Italian citizenship, and Dr. Stanley Cohen, an American biochemist. Their studies have proved important in basic research on cancer, disorders of the brain and nerves, birth defects and other health problems. They will share a cash award of 2 million Swedish kronor, about $290,000.
Reba McEntire was chosen as entertainer of the year and top female vocalist at the 20th annual Country Music Association awards show in Nashville, Tennessee. McEntire became the first singer to win No. 1 female vocalist three straight years since Tammy Wynette did so in the late 1960s. George Strait was named top male vocalist for the second consecutive year. Dan Seals won single of the year for his song “Bop” and shared top vocal duo honors with Marie Osmond. The Judds won the award for best vocal group for the second year in a row. Ronnie Milsap’s “Lost in the Fifties Tonight” won album of the year.
The International Olympic Committee announces that baseball will become a full medal sport at the 1992 Summer Games.
Major League Baseball, National League Championship Series, Game 5:
Game Five of the NLCS between the Mets and the Astros is rained out, and rescheduled for tomorrow.
NFL Monday Night Football:
Jeff Hayes, the Cincinnati Bengals’ punter, made up for a blocked kick and a safety by sprinting 61 yards with a fourth-quarter fake tonight to give the Bengals a 24–22 victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers. Pittsburgh, suffering its worst start in 17 years, had built a 19–14 fourth-quarter lead with the help of a touchdown set up by a blocked punt and a safety achieved by chasing Hayes out of the end zone on another punt try. Hayes surprised the Steelers defense by taking a fourth-down snap, eluding a tackler along the left sideline and racing to score with 13 minutes 47 seconds to play. Their fourth consecutive victory over the Steelers kept the Bengals (4–2) tied with Cleveland for first place in the American Football Conference Central Division. The Steelers fell to 1–5, their worst start since Chuck Noll’s team went 1–13 in 1969, his first as Pittsburgh’s coach.
Until Hayes’s fourth-quarter gamble, the Steelers appeared headed for victory behind a rookie quarterback, Bubby Brister. Brister, a third-round draft choice from Northeast Louisiana who was playing his first regular-season game for the injured Mark Malone, dove 1 yard for a first-quarter touchdown that was set up by Hayes’s blocked punt. He completed three of four passes for 40 yards in a third-quarter drive that gave the Steelers their first lead, 16–14. Donnie Shell’s 48th career interception at strong safety set up a 24-yard field goal by Gary Anderson that made it 19–14 late in the third quarter. Hayes’s touchdown put Cincinnati ahead again, and Jim Breech kicked a 40-yard field goal to give Cincinnati a 24–19 advantage.
Pittsburgh Steelers 22, Cincinnati Bengals 24
With trading volume plunging to its lowest level in nearly two years, Wall Street yesterday sleepwalked its way through a session of slightly higher stock prices. Monday was the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur as well as Columbus Day, and that was enough to keep attendance way down in the financial district of Manhattan. “I went out for lunch today for the first time this year,” said Jack Baker, the head trader at Shearson Lehman Brothers, who added that even the restaurants were empty. Only 55 million shares were traded yesterday on the Big Board, easily beating out Jan. 20 for the title of the slowest session of year. On that January day 85.3 million shares changed hands. In fact, yesterday was Wall Street’s slowest session since Dec. 26, 1984, when investors who came back from the Christmas holiday traded just 46.7 million shares. Despite the obvious lack of interest on the part of most investors, the Dow Jones industrial average yesterday managed to rise 5.20 points, to 1,798.37.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1798.37 (+5.2)
Born:
Jon Matsumoto, Canadian NHL centre (Carolina Hurricanes, Florida Panthers), in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
