News stories from Saturday October 25, 1980
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- American support of Iran could widen the Iranian-Iraqi war, Iraq's Foreign Minister Saadun Hamadi said. He added that Baghdad was disturbed by the Carter administration's efforts to "build serious, friendly relations" with Iran.
Proposals for freeing the hostages prepared by Iran's special hostage commission were reportedly circulated among other members of Parliament for debate tomorrow. Meanwhile, reports peristed that Iran might decide on a stage-by-stage release. Some officials in Washington believed there was a chance some of the hostages would be freed in the next few days as a good-will gesture.
[New York Times] - Farmland erosion has reached levels not seen since the days of the Dust Bowl in the 1930's. In 1977, the most recent year for which data are available, about a third of cultivated land in the United States was eroding at rates that reduced productivity, according to a major soil resources survey released by the Agriculture Department this year. [New York Times]
- A political payroll padding trial in Philadelphia ended with the conviction of three prominent Pennsylvania politicians. The defendants are Peter Camiel, Commissioner of the Pennsylvania Turnpike Authority and former chairman of the Democratic City Committee; Vincent Fumo, Democratic state Senator from South Philadelphia, and Thomas Nolan, a former Democratic state Senator and former majority leader. [New York Times]
- Caesars World was licensed by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission to operate the Boardwalk Regency casino in Atlantic City when the company agreed to the commission's demand that it drop its two chief executives, Clifford Perlman and his brother, Stuart The commissioners charged that the brothers, founders of Caesars, had a continuing business relationship with alleged associates of organized crime. [New York Times]
- The Andrea Doria was poorly designed and this accounted for her swift sinking in the Atlantic off Nantucket, Mass., on July 25, 1956 following a collision with the Swedish liner Stockholm, according to a new book recently published in Sweden. The author is a former employee of Sweden's Brostrom shipping conglomerate, which owned the Stockholm. [New York Times]
- The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan was denounced by the chief delegate from Afghanistan at a United Nations conference in Belgrade. Akhtar Mohammad Paktiawal, also assailed his own government in the presence of a large Soviet delegation, and then went to Belgrade Airport, flew to Munich and asked West Germany for political asylum. [New York Times]
- Communion will be denied to divorced Catholics who remarry if they do not abstain from sexual relations, Pope John Paul II said in an address in Rome at the closing session of the Synod of Bishops. The Pope said such divorced and remarried Roman Catholics cannot be admitted to sacraments unless "they live in a manner which is not opposed to the indissolubility of marriage, live in complete continence, abstaining from acts in which only married couples can engage." [New York Times]