News stories from Friday April 18, 1980
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- The parents of a hostage in Teheran flew to visit him, ignoring the ban on American travel to Iran announced Thursday by President Carter. Barbara Timm, mother of Marine Sgt. Kevin Hermening, and her husband, Kenneth, flew from Paris to West Germany en route to Iran without waiting for the administration to act on their request for a special travel waiver, administration officials said. [New York Times]
- Prime interest rates were lowered by most major banks to 19½ percent from the record 20 percent of recent weeks. This was another sign that a recession may be here. [New York Times]
- A financial crisis in Alabama has brought the threat of eviction to thousands of nursing home residents, and possible termination of aid for hundreds of thousands of Medicaid recipients. The crisis arises from inadequate and inequitable regressive taxation, an archaic state constitution that requires a referendum on virtually all new taxes, and special interests of the so-called "big mules" -- all intertwined with Alabama's traditional preoccupation with the politics of race. [New York Times]
- Reactor safety will not be aided by President Carter's plan to revamp the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a majority of the commission's members testified at a Senate hearing. [New York Times]
- A sea-based missile system would be a feasible alternative to the controversial land-based MX mobile missile system the administration proposes to build, according to a Pentagon study. A Pentagon official said the sea-based system would be as accurate and as secure from attack as the MX, would cost the same and could be deployed in about the same time.
Moscow tested a "killer satellite" in space, ending its own two-year moratorium on the testing of anti-satellite weapons, administration officials said. They said that preliminary intelligence reports indicated that the test was a failure.
[New York Times] - Refugee flights from Havana were stopped by the Cuban government, which demanded that the thousands of Cubans seeking to leave be flown directly to the countries where they are to settle, not to a staging area in Costa Rica. Diplomats in Costa Rica said the flights may have been canceled to avert adverse publicity on the eve of a big Havana rally. [New York Times]
- Two Irish soldiers of the United Nations peacekeeping force were killed by the Lebanese Christian militiamen in southern Lebanon, in revenge for the deaths of two militiamen in fighting last Saturday, a United Nations spokesman said. A third soldier was wounded. The soldiers had been seized with two United Nations observers and an Associated Press reporter and photographer, who were released unharmed. [New York Times]
- Argentina's government was accused by the Inter-American Human Rights Commission of having killed and tortured many people held in detention. The commission's long-awaited report expressed concern about thousands of Argentines who are missing and "can be presumed to be dead." [New York Times]
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Stock Market Report
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 763.40 (-5.46, -0.71%)
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 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 |
| April 10, 1980 | 791.47 | 104.08 | 33.95 |
| April 9, 1980 | 785.92 | 103.11 | 33.02 |
| April 8, 1980 | 775.00 | 101.20 | 31.69 |
| April 7, 1980 | 768.34 | 100.19 | 29.13 |
| April 3, 1980 | 784.13 | 102.15 | 27.96 |