News stories from Sunday November 21, 1982
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- A decline in the jobless rate next year is anticipated by President Reagan's chief economist, Martin Feldstein. Without "significant actions by Congress and the administration," he said, the nation's budget deficit could be between $150 billion and $200 billion and the unemployment rate in the 9 percent range next year. He said unemployment, now 10.4 percent of the workforce, could be in the 8 percent range in 1984, the next presidential election year, and for several years after it would remain at 6 or 7 percent because that is now the "structural" rate of joblessness built into the economy, even in periods of high growth. [New York Times]
- A showdown with James Watt over federal land policy will take place Monday when a group of Western Governors meets with the Secretary of the Interior in Denver. The Governors will demand that the federal government retract new rules that they say strip states of a role in shaping the pace of coal development in the region. [New York Times]
- Thirteen football games were played as the season resumed after the end of the National Football League players' 57-day strike, but none of the stadiums were filled. [New York Times]
- President Reagan might announce his approval Monday of a closely spaced basing plan for the first 100 of the nation's proposed MX missiles, White House officials said. They indicated the plan, known as "dense pack," called for placing the new missiles in hardened launching silos in a 14-mile-long area of Wyoming, Nevada or New Mexico. [New York Times]
- A federal gas tax increase was endorsed by state highway and transportation officials at a meeting in Florida. They said that they have more than $6 billion in road and bridge improvement projects ready to start almost immediately. [New York Times]
- A crisis in Arab politics of revolutionary proportions has followed Israel's invasion of Lebanon. A tour of the Middle East indicates that Arabs are deeply humiliated over the lack of any concerted response by Arab governments to the invasion. [New York Times]
- An effort to bolster Poland's economy has reached a crucial point. Political disturbances have cut factory and farm production and, in addition, without the money to meet payments on foreign debts of more than $24 billion, Poland cannot afford to import vital machinery and raw materials from the West. [New York Times]
- The U.S. policy on independence for South-West Africa will continue to be linked to the withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola, Vice President Bush said at the end of three-day visit to Kenya. [New York Times]
- Iraq said five oil tankers were sunk in a combined air and naval attack on Iran's main export terminal on Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf. "The tankers were completely destroyed," a military report over Iraq's state radio said. [New York Times]
- A city in Lebanon was seized by several hundred Lebanese Shiite Moslems who said they were followers of Ayatollah Khomeini. They stormed the town hall of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon in an armed protest against the government of President Amin Gemayel, who is a Maronite Christian. The leaders of the protest said there were no casualties and no exchanges of gunfire in the takeover. Most of Baalbek's 25,000 residents are Shiite Moslems. [New York Times]
- Morris Draper warned Israel's Foreign Ministry representative in Beirut that there would be "horrible results" if Christian Phalangist militiamen were allowed to enter the predominantly Moslem sector of Lebanon's capital. Bruce Kashdan, the representative, testified at the Israeli inquiry into September's slayings of hundreds of civilians at two Palestinian refugee camps. [New York Times]