News stories from Saturday January 16, 1982

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

The hostages will have been home for a year on Wednesday. For some, the cheers and glittering parades have yielded to restless nights. But most of the 52 American hostages, as they may always be known, have resumed normal lives, adjusting remarkably well. Time has healed all but the most deep-seated psychic wounds. [New York Times] The President's "Big Three" advisers are feeling new tensions as a result of a breakdown in communications that led the President to hastily abandon his plan to endorse tax exemptions for segregated schools. [New York Times] A struggle for control of block grants and other federal assistance that the Reagan administration has turned back to the states is underway in a number of states. Legislatures want authority over the grants, but until now governors have chiefly been responsible for administering the federal funds. [New York Times] The major Western trading powers and Japan have agreed not to take unilateral actions to curb imports from other countries. The agreement is an effort to check protectionism, which is growing because of the world economic slump. The chief trade officers from the United States, the European Common Market, Japan and Canada who met in Miami, said that reducing barriers to world trade would increase employment, reduce inflation and improve productivity. [New York Times] Hopes of an early end to martial law were dampened by statments made by the Polish government's chief spokesman. The spokesman, Jerzy Urban, said that although things were improving, "the duration of martial law depends on progress achieved in the stabilization of the situation in Poland." Earlier, a high government official had said that martial law, imposed on Dec.13, might be lifted by Feb. 1. [New York Times] Plans to counter Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights were discussed by Soviet and Syrian officials, according to Syrian Foreign Minister Abdul Halim Khaddam, who said he participated in the talks during his just concluded visit to Moscow. [New York Times] Finns vote Sunday and Monday for the electoral college that will choose their next President amid assurances that their country will adhere to its policy of neutrality and friendship with its neighbor, the Soviet Union. [New York Times]