-- A ``double witching'' day plus lack of direction helped push stocks lower Friday, especially technology and transportation issues. The Dow Jones industrials fell 37 points to 10,829. Standard and Poor's 500-stock index was off over 8.5 points at 1330. The New York Exchange composite index was down over 2.5 points at just under 637. Advancers had a slight edge over decliners on volume of 687 million shares. Among the most active stocks: America On Line off 3 1-2...ACM Opportunity Fund unchanged...Cabletron Systems up 1 15-16...AT&T up 1-4. ..Wal-Mart off 1 1-4. The Nasdaq market was sharply lower, but the American Exchange was higher. The 30-year Treasury bond was up almost a point at 92 27/32. The issue's yield fell to 5.75 percent. -- The dollar traded Friday at 1.0578 against the Euro...and 123.82 against the Yen. -- On the New York Comex, June gold was down $1.40 at $273.30. -- The Comex closed May silver down a dime at $5.18. -- Steve Case of America Online gave a deposition Friday in the government's antitrust case against Microsoft. Microsoft's lawyers claim AOL's purchase of Netscape shows that Microsoft is not stifling competition. Case said it's ridiculous to claim AOL plotted with the government to say when it first heard of the deal. -- Winstar Communications and Lucent Technologies are getting together to sell high-speed wireless service to big business customers...those that need a lot of bandwidth. Lucent will provide the equipment to reach Winstar's network. The two figure they could attract $100 million in new business over the next five years. -- Merck & Company has gotten the OK from the Food and Drug Administration to market a new painkiller called Vioxx. It's a prescription medicine that's the second in a new class of painkillers called Cox-2 inhibitors. Vioxx will compete against Monsanto's Celebrex. -- One of the gripes about big mergers is that top executives often end up with fat money packages that raise questions whether they were more interested in their company's future or in lining their pockets. Executives at Global Crossing -- which will merge with U.S. West -- reportedly hope to show their commitment to the new entity by limiting the cash they get. They will tender no more than 30 percent of their shares. -- Burlington Northern Santa Fe is going to chop 3 percent of its work force -- 1,400 jobs -- to cut back on expenses. The railroad expects lower earnings this quarter thanks to lower income. Burlington Northern says 400 of the layoffs will be salaried workers, the rest union workers. -- BASF of Germany has decided on management changes after agreeing Thursday to pay a $225 million fine in the U.S. The fine settled charges that BASF tried to fix world-wide vitamin prices with Roche of Switzerland...which is forking over $500 million. BASF calls its management changes ``a new beginning.'' -- Procter and Gamble has apparently decided that the paper product needs of one-billion Chinese are too big a market to ignore. The company will buy two paper mills and two paper towel and tissue lines from Long Chen Paper Company. P-and-G only got into the Asian market two years ago. -- A new Gallup poll of Americans with ATM or debit cards shows 40 percent do not plan to take out any extra money because of Y2K fears. Others plan to take out as much as they would for a long weekend. The poll found a similar reaction across both economic and educational lines. --  