News stories from Thursday December 25, 1980
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- The 52 hostages celebrated Christmas for a second year in Iran, their hopes of release diminished. Many of them met with Catholic and Protestant clergymen. The Papal Nuncio in Iran helped officiate at services and said that those hostages he had seen appeared well, noting that "their morale was very high, really."
About a dozen hostages were seen in a film of Christmas Eve services taken by Iranian television and aired on American commercial and cable networks. The excerpts, the first television pictures of the hostages shown in the United States since Easter, helped to ease the fears of at least one family who had not heard from their hostage relative since April.
[New York Times] - Prayer in schools is being debated and litigated around the country, 17 years after the United States Supreme Court ruled that the organized recitation of prayers and Bible readings in public schools violated the Constitution. Conservative congressional leaders are expected to re-introduce a measure, passed by the Senate last year, that would deny the Supreme Court jurisdiction over prayer cases. [New York Times]
- The coldest Christmas on record for much of the Northeast and parts of the Midwest caused thousands to shiver inside or outside their homes and hampered firemen trying to fight dozens of fires. More than two dozen people were killed. Electrical failures and low pressure in gas lines cut off or reduced power in scattered homes in the New York City metropolitan region. [New York Times]
- Gangs of youths in Philadelphia have created an "aura of lawlessness" with their random attacks on people in recent months, according to law enforcement officials. The gangs generally travel in "wolf packs" made up of a half-dozen youths whose ages range from 19 to 18. While youth gangs have long existed in residential neighborhoods, their recent ventures into the center of the city have attracted public attention. [New York Times]
- Money has helped Pacific Palisades, the hometown of Ronald Reagan, to combat many of the problems most towns have to accept or tolerate. Among the nation's wealthiest communities, the suburb of Los Angeles has fought busing by opening private schools and has waged efforts to prevent construction of highways through the Santa Monica mountains. [New York Times]
- Relatives in Poland are noncommittal about the political situation there, according to members of the large Polish-American community in Hamtramck, Mich. The Polish-Americans share tidbits of information gleaned from letters from Poland. [New York Times]
- Guilty pleas have continued at the same rate in Alaska despite the state's five-year-old ban on plea bargaining in criminal cases. The ban, which is the only one in the nation, has not created an unmanageable court docket, according to a study conducted by the Alaska Judicial Council. [New York Times]
- Death for Chariman Mao's widow was demanded by a man whose father, a former senior Communist Party leader, died after persecution during the Cultural Revolution. The call for the death sentence, published as a letter in the Communist Party newspaper, seemed to be part of a campaign to indicate public support for executing Jiang Qing. [New York Times]
- A review of a death sentence against Kim Dae Jung by the Supreme Court in South Korea may be carried over into 1981. The court had been expected to turn down the appeal by the opposition leader, but officials in Seoul are now predicting that consideration of the appeal may take longer than expected. There has been strong pressure from abroad in Mr. Kim's defense. [New York Times]
- Five Arabs were killed by an Israeli border patrol just across the Lebanese frontier. The Arabs were believed by Israeli military commanders to have been headed toward Israel for a terrorist raid. The interception was the second in less than two weeks. [New York Times]
- Adm. Karl Doenitz died on Wednesday at the age of 89. Admiral Doenitz, who presided over Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender in World War II as Adolf Hitler's personally appointed successor, will be buried without military honors, according to a spokesman for the Defense Ministry in West Germany. The ministry, fearing pro-Nazi demonstrations, has banned soldiers from attending the funeral in uniform. [New York Times]