News stories from Sunday March 9, 1980

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

Iran's Foreign Minister reprimanded the captors of the American hostages for balking at a plan approved by the Revolutionary Council authorizing the United Nations commission in Teheran to visit the hostages. "Any kind of opposition to the Revolutionary Council means disobeying the Imam's line," Sadegh Ghotbzadeh said in a television address. He seemed to be at the center of a fierce struggle among factions in the Revolutionary Council. Spokesmen for Ayatollah Khomeini have said he would be "silent" on the hostage issue. [New York Times] The ideology of the guerrilla group holding the Dominican Republic Embassy in Bogota remains as much of an enigma as when it first appeared in Colombia in 1974, declaring itself the Movement of April 19. The group, which has become known as M-19, has been called nationalist, Trotskyist, romantic, nihilist, Communist and non-Communist by different experts. A former chief of the national political police adheres to the theory that M-19 is a right-wing group in disguise. [New York Times] Moshe Dayan's successor as Israel's Foreign Minister is to be Yitzhak Shamir, the Speaker of Parliament, who has expressed reservations about the Israeli-Egyptian Peace Treaty, and who abstained in parliamentary votes on the treaty. [New York Times] John Connally quit the race for President. He announced his withdrawal at a news conference in Houston after his defeat by the Ronald Reagan, the Republican frontrunner, in the South Carolina primary Saturday, the second time he had been defeated by Mr. Reagan in a primary. Mr. Connally said that he did not think it would "contribute to the good of the party and to the good of the country" for him to carry on. [New York Times] The Draft Ford Committee announced that at least 35 Illinois delegates once pledged to Senator Howard Baker will switch to former President Gerald Ford at the Illinois primary on March 18. Thomas Reed, the committee's chairman, said the switch was "the first step in building an ever-widening coalition to nominate and elect" Mr. Ford. [New York Times] Senator Kennedy sharpened his attack on the Carter administration, focusing on its economic policies, which he called "completely intolerable." In a television interview, Mr. Kennedy, whose presidential campaign is concentrating on the industrial states of the Middle West and Northeast, said that the administration's "inadequate policies" have become the chief issue in the campaign. [New York Times] The District of Columbia plans layoffs and sharply higher business and consumer taxes in an attempt to remain solvent and to comply with a law that makes it illegal for the district to spend money it does riot have. Mayor Marion Berry, announcing that 1,223 municipal jobs would be eliminated, said he would "put the heat on Congress" to get more money. Much of the district's money troubles arise from its narrow tax base. The government owns 55 percent of the city's real estate and pays no taxes. [New York Times] A redevelopment plan for Miami Beach has stirred controversy among the city's 95,000 residents, who will vote on the plan in a referendum in Tuesday's presidential primary. A court decision on a $350 million bond issue is pending. The $850 million project, featuring hotels, would be built in the area known as South Beach, where many low-income senior citizens live. [New York Times] Falsely labeled French wine has been shipped to retailers, mainly in the United States, according to details of an investigation that seems to be leading to to the biggest scandal in the international wine trade in many years. Millions of bottles of cheap white wine are allegedly masquerading as Pouilly-Fuisse, a white Burgundy popular with Americans. [New York Times] Spain's Basque Nationalist Party won a victory in the elections for a 60-member Parliament in the Basque region. The party, which will occupy 25 seats, is a broadly based coalition with strong middle-class support. Two radical parties sympathetic to the Basque separatist cause won 17 seats. [New York Times]