News stories from Sunday January 27, 1980

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

The hostages' release depends on the United States, which has the major responsibility for ending the crisis, Abol-hassan Bani-Sadr, Iran's Economic and Financial Affairs Minister, said at a news conference following his apparent overwhelming election Friday as Iran's first president. He said "when America decides to put aside its policy of expansionism and violating the sovereignty of other countries then it will be adopting correct policies for the solution to the crisis." [New York Times] United opposition by Islamic nations to the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan was urged by President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan, who addressed the opening session of an emergency meeting in Islamabad of Islamic foreign ministers. President Zia urged all the Islamic countries to demand the withdrawal of Soviet troops, and called for a collective defense arrangement to discourage further intervention in Islamic countries. [New York Times] A national sports festival might be sponsored by the United States Olympic Committee if the United States boycotts the Olympic Games in Moscow this summer. The proposal was approved by the committee's executive board in Colorado Springs. [New York Times] Saudi Arabia is raising the price of its light crude oil, for which the United States is its biggest customer, by $2 a barrel, or about 5 cents a gallon, according to oil industry sources in New York. The new price of $26 a barrel is an increase of more than 8 percent and will be retroactive to Jan. 1, the sources said. [New York Times] A consortium of utilities dropped plans to build four major nuclear power plants in northern Ohio. The four plants would have provided more than half of Ohio's nuclear generating capacity. The group said it decided not to go ahead with construction because of a smaller than expected growth in demand for electricity, steadily rising building costs and "intensified political and regulatory uncertainty" after the accident at Three Mile Island last March. [New York Times] The principal craftsman of the budget that President Carter will submit to Congress tomorrow is James T. McIntyre Jr., director of the Office of Management and Budget, who has become one of the most influential members of the administration. "It is not what would call an austerity budget, not by comparison to last year," Mr. McIntyre said of the budget for next year, which is a cornerstone of the President's re-election campaign. The total budget exceeds $615 billion, contains increases for the military and a few popular domestic programs, cuts the deficit in half to about $15 billion, but is expected to contain no tax cuts. [New York Times] Tremors shook the San Francisco area for the fourth consecutive day. The epicenter each time has been placed five to 10 miles beneath the earth's surface about 30 miles southeast of San Francisco. A seismologist at the University of California in Berkeley said the tremors may last a week, but "it is likely the worst is over." [New York Times] Christopher Boyce's escape from the federal prison in Lompoc, Calif., last Monday, was an intricate plan that relied on precision timing, a forged document and a papier mache dummy, according to knowledgeable sources at the prison. His immediate desination, a fellow inmate said, was Arizona, where he was to pick up classified documents that he had hidden before his arrest for espionage. [New York Times] Most travelers failed to cross despite the opening of the border between Israel and Egypt because they lacked a visa. For the first time since Israel became a nation in 1948, travelers could go by road from Tel Aviv to Cairo, but few of the people making the trip had proper documentation and were turned back by Egyptian officials. [New York Times] Andrew Stein will not seek the Democratic nomination for Senator from New York and will instead endorse Representative Elizabeth Holtzman, who represents the Flatbush area of Brooklyn. Mr. Stein, the Manhattan Borough President, believes that the four-term Republican incumbent, Jacob Javits, will run again and that he could not beat him. [New York Times]