News stories from Sunday March 7, 1982

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

Hope for a bipartisan budget alternative to President Reagan's proposal was expressed by Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico, the Republican chairman of the Budget Committee. At the same time, former Vice President Walter Mondale said the President's economic policies were a "colossal mistake." [New York Times] The energy crisis has eased materially. Broad changes have taken place in the ways that energy is used, and they appear to be basic and long-lasting. "I'm not going to say the energy crisis is over," said James Edwards, the Secretary of Energy, "but we are certainly heading in the right direction. Our dependence on oil imports is at the lowest level in 10 years." [New York Times] A plan to close 75 weather stations has been reversed in part, after it ran into an unpredicted storm of protest. The program, put in motion in January, would have pared the National Weather Service's 5,000-worker payroll by 219 persons and saved an estimated $4.6 million, according to the Reagan administration. Among those stations designated for closing were those at all three major airports in the New York area and O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. [New York Times] Blue-collar Reagan support is eroding. The blue-collar workers, who played an important part in the surging Reagan-Republican coalition in 1980, are becoming increasingly worried over the administration's new budget and the country's economic recovery. A series of polls by the New York Times and CBS News demonstrate that President Reagan has suffered a sharper decline in overall approval ratings among union households than in non-union households and an even more dramatic decline among families with annual incomes below $20,000. [New York Times] The nation's libraries may lose $20 million -- 28 percent of their federal financing -- because of what the Reagan administration called a "mix up," and the New York Attorney General called a "power grab." [New York Times] Iran is receiving military equipment and arms worth millions of dollars from Israel, North Korea, Syria, Libya, the Soviet Union and Western Europe to wage war against Iraq, Western intelligence sources said. These countries, along with the United States, are struggling openly and covertly for influence on Iran's future and over the balance of power in the Middle East. [New York Times] Syria accused the United States and Iraq of supplying Moslem fundamentalists with weapons with which to fight the Syrian government. The Syrian President, Hafez al-Assad, addressing a mass demonstration in the Syrian capital, said that Washington supported the Moslem Brotherhood organization in its "subversive activity" in Syria, and charged that Iraqi agents planted booby-trapped cars in Damascus and other cities in Syria. [New York Times] Guatemalans voted in what are widely being referred to as the country's "last chance" elections. Guatemalans say that if the elections for President and Vice President, for the national Congress and for municipal officials are not tainted by massive fraud, and if the army allows the people's choice to assume the presidency, then there is a possibility of a peaceful solution to the civil war. [New York Times]