News stories from Saturday January 31, 1981
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- A sharp reduction in foreign aid for developing countries proposed by David Stockman, director of the Office of Management and Budget, has disturbed the Western allies and is regarded by diplomats and members of Congress as an early test of Secretary of State Alexander Haig's foreign policy leadership. [New York Times]
- Most Polish workers called off strikes following an agreement between the government and the independent union Solidarity that provides a 40-hour, five-day work week next year and several non-working Saturdays this year. The union will also be allowed to present its views on the government-owned radio and television system. [New York Times]
- Stability in northern urban areas was indicated by new census figures. Many central cities suffered sharp population declines in the 1970's, but their metropolitan areas showed more stability, with some registering substantial gains. Of the 39 regions with one million people or more, only seven, including the New York metropolitan area, lost population. [New York Times]
- Warmer relations with South Korea and reaffirmation of American security commitments are expected to follow President Chun Doo Hwan's meeting with President Reagan at the White House on Monday. Officials said the administration intends to use the visit to put an end to the friction that has marked relations with Seoul in recent years and to demonstrate a more subdued approach to human rights issues than that followed by the Carter administration. [New York Times]
- Fire deaths result from lax codes and enforcement, fire protection specialists insist. The nation has about 18,000 separate state, county and local fire safety codes, which are often drawn up and enforced under political and economic pressures. Specialists say that if the Stouffer's Inn conference center, in Harrison, N.Y., where 26 people died in a fire in December, had been built across the road in White Plains, most of the victims would have survived. In White Plains a full sprinkler system is required. In Harrison, it is not. [New York Times]
- Former convicts are driving buses in San Francisco. After one driver was accused of raping a woman who was a passenger, an investigation of his record disclosed that he had served three prison sentences for rape, robbery and kidnapping before being hired. The city's job application forms asked for criminal record information, but the answers were almost never checked. [New York Times]
- An area near Buffalo was saturated with millions of gallons of radioactive contaminated caustic wastes from the atomic bomb project between 1944 and 1946, a legislative panel headed by New York state Assembly Speaker Stanley Fink said. The report said that the Army and a defense contractor had arranged to dump more than 37 million gallons of wastes in shallow wells in Tonawanda, near Buffalo, and that the disposal method was specifically chosen to hide the source of the contamination. [New York Times]