News stories from Saturday July 4, 1981
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- American values were outlined to the Russians by a senior American diplomat, who used a traditional Fourth of July address over Soviet television to respond obliquely to Soviet propaganda attacks on the Reagan administration. Jack Matlock, charge d'affaires at the American Embassy in Moscow, avoided any direct reference to Poland, Afghanistan or other matters currently at issue between Washington and Moscow. [New York Times]
- Blacks are returning to the South, after decades of migration to Northern and Western cities, and helping to develop a black middle class. The 1980 Census confirms the growth in the South's black population, largely due to people returning. In the Mississippi legislature, for example, all but three of the 17 black members had left the state as youths, returning after the civil rights movement opened better employment opportunities. [New York Times]
- John McEnroe defeated Bjorn Borg for the men's singles championship at Wimbledon, ending Borg's five-year reign and his 41-match winning streak at the tournaments. The scores in the match were 4-6, 7-6, 7-6, 6-4. [New York Times]
- Moscow might grudgingly accept a special Polish Communist Party congress, which has been scheduled to begin July 14, well-informed sources in Warsaw suggested. The speculation came as Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet Foreign Minister, held a second round of talks with Stanislaw Kania, the Polish party leader, and Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, the Prime Minister. The Polish party congress seems destined to return a moderate reformist leadership to power, codify democratic changes in the party's statutes and promulgate as official policy an attitude of cautious approval of the country's democratic "renewal." [New York Times]
- The morality of gene splicing, the new technique that may make possible the genetic alteration of human beings, is troubling theologians. Many theologians say that humanity is obliged to extend its understanding of creation, and most accept medical uses of genetic research such as the production of interferon, but they find few scriptural guidelines as to what constitutes "playing God" in the complex sphere of bio-engineering. [New York Times]
- Argentina's economic troubles and internal divisions have severely strained its military government, which seems to have lost the majority support it once thought it had throughout the country. Since the beginning of the year, unemployment has doubled, the inflation rate rose to three figures and the peso has been devalued by 200 percent. The presidents of both the central and national banks recently resigned. Rumors of other resignations persist, including that of President Roberto Eduardo Viola. [New York Times]