News stories from Saturday August 29, 1981

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

The I.R.S. has "substantial doubt" that the tax-free savings incentives of the newly revised tax code will be permissible for the high-interest investment certificates that banks are advertising to attract new customers before the the government's new "All Savers" certificate program becomes effective Oct. 1. [New York Times] Oil and gas exploration in a federally designated wilderness area in northern Wyoming will depend on the Forest Service which, by the end of November, must recommend whether the Interior Department should approve or deny 145 applications from energy companies and speculators seeking to lease more than 350,000 acres of the 687,000-acre Washakie Wilderness. [New York Times] Libya received illegal shipments of 20 tons of plastic explosives from the United States in 1977 for use in the manufacture of terrorist bombs, according to federal investigators and participants in the shipments. The shipments, the federal authorities said, were arranged by Edwin Wilson, a former agent for the Central Intelligence Agency. [New York Times] Ken Stabler, a former quarterback for the Oakland Raiders who has since been traded to Houston, persisted in his association with a well-known gambling figure and an associate of the New Jersey-based Simone DeCavalcante organized crime family, despite warnings from executives of the Raiders. According to federal and local law enforcement officials, as well as the Raiders, Mr. Stabler's association with Nicholas Dudich of Perth Amboy, N.J., began and developed during his last four seasons at Oakland. [New York Times] Lowell Thomas died of a heart attack at his home in Pawling, N.Y. He was 89 years old. He had been a television broadcaster, a writer and an explorer, but he won his most lasting fame as the longest continually operating newscaster in radio. His 6:45 P.M. news broadcast was carried by networks from 1930 to 1976. [New York Times] A Vienna synagogue was attacked by two men identified as Arabs, who threw grenades and fired automatic pistols, killing two persons and wounding 16. Both assailants were captured and both were wounded, the police said. The attack occurred at the end of a bar mitzvah ceremony attended by 200 people. [New York Times] A policy statement on South Africa by the Reagan administration said that despite the administration's opposition to South African apartheid policies it would not take sides between South African blacks and whites or try to undermine the government "in order to curry favor elsewhere." Chester Crocker, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, said the United States wished to remain neutral in order to be in a better position to pursue diplomatic solutions and to protect Western strategic and economic interests in Africa. [New York Times] South African forces killed 240 Angolan troops and destroyed radar installations in their attacks last week in southern Angola, South African army officers told a group of foreign journalists who were taken on a tour of the attack area at the invitation of the Defense Ministry. The assaults took place near the small town of Xangongo, about 60 miles north of the border that separates Angola from the disputed territory of South-West Africa, also known as Namibia. [New York Times]