News stories from Sunday October 4, 1981

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

The Pope celebrated mass in St. Peter's Square for the first time since he was shot there in May. The strictest security in modern times was maintained and, contrary to custom, St. Peter's Square was guarded by two wooden barricades, limiting the public's access to nine narrow openings. During the mass, the Pope beatified, a preliminary to elevation to sainthood, two women and three men born in France and Italy. [New York Times] A potentially tumultuous debate on President Reagan's new strategic defense plan was under way as Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and Senator John Tower expressed disagreement in separate television appearances. Mr. Weinberger asserted that "we have a vastly increased and strengthened program to close this window of vulnerability,"but Senator Tower, a Texas Republican who heads the Armed Services Committee, said that the President's proposal to place the MX intercontinental missiles in existing silos built for the Trident and Minuteman missiles would not "buy you anything much but a little time in terms of vulnerability." [New York Times] Flight delays of 20 to 90 minutes are increasingly tieing up arrivals and departures at the nation's airports since the air controllers' strike began Aug. 3. Government statistics indicate that the delays have increased since the strike, but the figures do not convey the effect that the delays have on the reliability of flight schedules that travelers depend on. [New York Times] Lee Harvey Oswald's corpse was exhumed in Texas and was officially identified by pathologists at Baylor University Medical Center as the body of the man who had been charged with assassinating President Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963. The exhumation followed the expiration of a restraining order against it obtained by Oswald's brother. It was sought by Michael Eddowes, a British writer, who maintained that the grave in Rose Hill Burial Park in Fort Worth contained the body of a Soviet spy who, he said, was President Kennedy's actual assassin. [New York Times] Jewish groups reacted angrily to for-mer President Richard Nixon's statement, in his endorsement Saturday of the proposed Awacs sale to Saudi Arabia, that if it were not for the "intense opposition" of Israel and "parts of the American Jewish community" the sale would be approved by Congress. "Singling American Jews out from the broad spectrum of opposition to the Awacs sale is at best mischievous, at worst mean-spirited," the national director of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith said. Representative Peter Peyser, a Westchester Democrat, said the former President's statement was "an insult to the Congress and the American people." [New York Times] Adjustment of four currencies in Western Europe was agreed to in Brussels by the region's finance ministers, who are attempting to lower speculative pressure on foreign exchange markets that has severely depressed the French franc and the Italian lira. At their special meeting, the ministers decided to raise the West German mark and the Dutch guilder by 5.5 percent and lower the value of the French and Italian currencies by 3 percent in relation to the currencies of other member countries of the European Monetary System. [New York Times] The end of the I.R.A. hunger strike in an Ulster prison announced over the weekend will not diminish the Irish nationalist guerrillas' fight to force Britain from Northern Ireland, they said. During the strike, 10 prisoners starved themselves to death in attempt to get political status. The strike was called off when it became clear that the families of the surviving participants in the strike would not let them die. [New York Times]