Dow Jones & Co., New York, signed an agreement to become the exclusive North American distributor of the China Economic Information Service, a Chinese business and financial newswire.
Dow Jones Information Services, the company's newswire and electronic publishing arm, continued its strong growth.
Theodore B. Bean, senior vice president, finance, declined to comment on the newswire report.
But Payless officials said that they felt compelled late yesterday to disclose buy-out discussions following a Dow Jones & Co. investor newswire report that the company's management would soon announce a $30-a-share leveraged buy-out proposal.
When the market opened at 9:30 a.m. EST, a reporter for the Reuters newswire miscalculated the industrial average's drop as a 4% decline when it really was down 0.7%.
No ships were at the terminal, according to Dow Jones International Petroleum Report newswire accounts.
Dow Jones & Co. publishes the Journal, as well as Barron's Weekly, community newspapers, newswire and other information services.
Fears of Bank of Japan intervention drew support from an unconfirmed newswire report during European trading that quoted Japanese central bank officials as saying they may need to take some action to keep the yen from falling further.
Solicitor General Francisco Chavez told the Kyodo newswire of Japan the alleged payoffs started as early as 1966 and totaled at least 12.3 billion yen ($93.7 million).