News stories from Friday April 25, 1980

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

Washington's mood was somber over the failure of the hostage rescue mission. President Carter said in a 7 A.M. statement after he had called off the mission that the United States would persevere through "every possible avenue" to free the hostages. The administration sought to stress that the rescue effort's aim had been humanitarian and should not be regarded as a military operation.Washington intended to land troops in Iran under the guise of the attempt to rescue the hostages, Tass, the official Soviet new agency said in a special statement. The Soviet response to the rescue effort also said that the mission was an "aggressive act," part of a campaign against Iran that brought the United States to the "brink of insanity," creating a "serious danger" to peace. [New York Times] Ayatollah Khomeini warned that another attempt to rescue the hostages would endanger their lives. Over the state radio, he called the unsuccessful rescue operation a "stupid act," saying: "I am warning Carter that if he commits another stupid act we won't be able to control the youths now holding the nest of espionage and the spies, and he will be responsible for their lives." [New York Times] The allies reacted with concern to the failed rescue attempt, which they learned of through radio and press reports. Sympathy was expressed for President Carter, but the overriding feeling was that that the situation had moved into a dangerously incalcuable phase. Congressional reaction to the unsuccessful rescue mission ranged from bipartisan expressions of support to denunciation. President Carter called two dozen congressional leaders to the White House for a briefing on the rescue mission. Senator Alan Cranston said that there was general support for the President's decision to undertake the mission. [New York Times] Assurances were received from Iran by the family of John Earl Graves, one of the hostages at the American Embassy there, that there would be no retribution directed against the hostages for the attempted American rescue mission. "They assured us that none of the hostages will be harmed," said Luzette Graves, daughter of the Embassy's public affairs officer. She said that the message had been relayed through a contact in Paris after her family had spent hours vainly trying to reach friends in Iran from their Virginia home. [New York Times] No signs of survivors were seen following the crash in the Canary Islands of a chartered Boeing 727 carrying 146 British passengers and crew members. Contact with the plane was lost six minutes before it was due to land at Santa Cruz de Tenerife. [New York Times] Cuba hinted that planes could take political refugees to the United States. Granma, the official Communist Party paper, reported that a small plane had arrived from the United States to pick up Cubans hoping for political asylum and said its pilot was told that he could land at Vardero Airport with advance notice.Many distress calls to the Coast Guard came from the small boats crossing the Straits of Florida to carry refugees back from Cuba. The Coast Guard said that least one boat had sunk and that its patrol boats had been towing disabled boats back to Key West all day. [New York Times] Michigan may provide the first test of voters' reaction to the unsuccessful hostage rescue attempt in its caucuses tomorrow that will send 141 delegates to the Democratic National Convention. But both the Carter and Kennedy campaign strategists said they believed that most of the eligible caucus participants had already made up their minds, and both predicted a very close finish. [New York Times] The Justice Department ceased efforts to alter voting arrangements for the 1980 South Carolina state Senate elections. It then announced an intensive review of five pending voting rights cases in light of a new Supreme Court decision, which overturned a district court ruling ordering that the Mobile, Ala., city commissions be changed from at-large voting to voting single-member districts. [New York Times] All of California's laws regulating nuclear power plants were invalidated by a federal judge on the ground that the federal government had exclusive power over nuclear energy. [New York Times] Saudi Arabia's oil-producing capacity has substantially been increased, and it is moving to push its capacity even higher by 1982, according to several oil industry sources in London and Saudi Arabia. The new capacity is expected enable the Saudis to readily replace Iranian production. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 803.58 (+6.48, +0.81%)
S&P Composite: 105.16 (+0.76, +0.73%)
Arms Index: 0.60

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	662	14.30
Declines	779	10.14
Unchanged	387	4.15
Total Volume		28.59

* 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*
April 24, 1980	797.10	104.40	35.79
April 23, 1980	789.25	103.73	42.62
April 22, 1980	789.85	103.43	47.92
April 21, 1980	759.13	99.80	27.55
April 18, 1980	763.40	100.55	26.88
April 17, 1980	768.86	101.05	32.77
April 16, 1980	771.25	101.54	39.72
April 15, 1980	783.36	102.63	26.67
April 14, 1980	784.90	102.84	23.06
April 11, 1980	791.55	103.79	29.96