News stories from Friday October 24, 1980

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

Iraqi forces took complete control of the Iranian oil port of Khorramshahr, according to an announcement by Iraq's Defense Minister. This was the fourth announcement from Baghdad that the city had fallen, and Iran again insisted that the fighting there was continuing. But the latest announcement seemed more forceful and followed reports from Iran that the defenders of Khorramshahr had been forced to yield ground. [New York Times] Release of many of the hostages, but not all, is being considered in Teheran pending final resolution of the yearlong crisis with the United States, according to administration officials. They said that the Iranian proposal had not been conveyed formally to Washington but that the gist of it had been learned from sources with access to Iranian authorities.Iran will never trade the hostages for American help in the war with Iraq, according to a senior Iranian clergyman involved in preparing terms for their release. The clergyman, Hojatolislam Ali Khameini, said at a prayer meeting at Teheran University: "I declare we have never asked America to help us in this war and we never will. We are fighting with America. How is it possible to ask for help?" [New York Times] Consumer prices rose 1 percent in September and were 12.7 percent higher than in September 1979, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said in the last inflation report before Election Day. The increase, which followed a rise of seven-tenths of 1 percent in August, was immediately pounced on by Ronald Reagan, who said it was a demonstration of the "utter failure" of administration policies.Reagan harshly attacked President Carter's economic policies in an attempt to draw public attention in the remaining 10 days of the campaign on pocketbook issues instead of the hostages. In a half-hour television speech, he said that Mr. Carter's economic policies had failed "on a scale so vast, in dimensions so broad, with effects so devastating that it is virtually without parallel in American history." [New York Times] The latest cost of living figures provide a "sharp reminder," President Carter said, of the need to avoid the type of "massive tax cuts" proposed by Ronald Reagan. At a campaign stop in Gloucester, N. J., Mr. Carter acknowledged that the latest figures reflected a new spurt of inflation. He told a group of Gloucester residents that "we've got to deal with inflation in a very effective and very firm way." [New York Times] More flooding is a danger, engineers said in California's Sacramento-San Joaquin river delta, where they were trying to pump flood waters off 6,100 acres of corn and asparagus fields. The tract was inundated Thursday when a railroad embankment that also had been a makeshift levee gave way under a 44-car freight train. [New York Times] A former C.I.A. agent was indicted on a charge that he had provided the Soviet Union with information about a covert operation undertaken by the agency. The one-count indictment accused David Barnett, who had worked at the C.I.A. headquarters outside Washington from 1965 to 1967, with giving secret information to Soviet intelligence agents abroad several times from October 1976 through February 1977. [New York Times] Public education in Boston has been altered by the city's court-imposed desegration order far beyond a change in classroom racial proportions. Despite the turmoil that followed desegregation there are signs of increased achievement and better quality schooling in a city that long has accepted low standards. [New York Times] El Salvador has begun a new offensive against leftist guerrillas who have been roaming freely in remote mountainous areas near the Honduras border. The offensive, one of the largest undertaken against the rebels, is said to involve 5,000 well-armed troops using heavy artillery and helicopter gunships. [New York Times] A Warsaw court formally recognized Poland's new independent union organization called "Solidarity," giving it legal status. But it attached a provision to the organization's charter stipulating that it must recognize the "leading role" of the Communist Party. Union leaders, who had said that would not accept such an attempt to change their statutes, were dismayed. They said their bylaws had been "unlawfully crippled," and that they would appeal the ruling and would in the meanwhile disregard it. [New York Times] Remarried Roman Catholics might be allowed to receive holy communion, a privilege they lose when they divorce. The month-long Synod of Bishops concluded its last working session in Rome urging "a new and far-reaching study" into the possibliiity of restoring holy communion to divorced persons, according to Canadian prelates. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 943.60 (+4.09, +0.44%)
S&P Composite: 129.85 (+0.32, +0.25%)
Arms Index: 0.74

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	717	20.06
Declines	761	15.75
Unchanged	419	5.24
Total Volume		41.05

* 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*
October 23, 1980	939.51	129.53	49.19
October 22, 1980	955.12	131.92	43.06
October 21, 1980	954.44	131.84	51.30
October 20, 1980	960.84	132.61	40.91
October 17, 1980	956.14	131.52	43.96
October 16, 1980	958.70	132.22	65.45
October 15, 1980	972.44	133.70	48.28
October 14, 1980	962.20	132.02	48.79
October 13, 1980	959.90	132.03	31.41
October 10, 1980	950.68	130.29	44.03