News stories from Sunday October 24, 1982

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

A rise in the payroll tax might be agreed to by some Democratic members of President Reagan's panel on Social Security reform as part of a package to funnel general tax revenues into the Social Security trust fund, sources at the commission said. A proposal to tax part of Social Security benefits might also be considered, although it has been regarded as political suicide by members of Congress. [New York Times] The return to welfare rolls by people who had been removed under Reagan administration policies has been much smaller than had been expected by federal and state welfare officials. They report that 10 to 15 percent of those who lost their welfare payments in the last quarter of 1981 have returned to the rolls, a much smaller percentage than had been forecast by some state officials. [New York Times] A peaceful end to a fight in Arizona between members of a black church and local police units came after the church posted bond for two members sought for traffic violations. Efforts to arrest the violators Saturday led to a gunfight in which two members of the Christ Miracle Healing Center and Church, in an area called Miracle Valley near the Mexican border, were killed and nine persons were injured, including seven Cochise County deputies. [New York Times] The Rapid Deployment Force, a new command assigned to defend American interests in the Middle East, the Horn of Africa and the Persian Gulf, is swiftly expanding in size as well as its potential mission and area of operations as it approaches full-scale military command status on Jan. 1. In addition, the new command will take on an extensive political mission in the Middle East, military sources said. [New York Times] Some of the F.B.I.'s criminal records are incomplete or inaccurate, according to congressional researchers who tested a sample of the records sent to the police, state agencies, banks and other institutions in the United States. The researchers said in a report that these and other problems found in the system of federal, state and local agencies that collect, distribute and use criminal records have raised "difficult questions" about how the system should be managed and controlled if Congress authorizes a national computerized system of recordkeeping and distribution. [New York Times] New York City's Marathon was won by only four seconds by Alberto Salazar, who ran a good part of the race side by side with Rodolfo Gomez. Salazar won his third consecutive title, clocking 2 hours 9 minutes 29 seconds. Grete Waitz of Norway won her fourth women's title. [New York Times] A Socialist victory in Greece appeared to be near for the party that has governed the country for a year. In the second and final round of municipal elections Socialist candidates with Communist backing were firmly ahead of right-wing rivals in Athens, Salonika, Piraeus and the former right-wing stronghold of Ioannina and others. [New York Times] Further repression by Moscow appears to be settling over the Russians as the Kremlin moves in various ways to eliminate stirrings of unorthodoxy and dissent that it had stifled in previous clampdowns. Western diplomats in Moscow say that two principal factors appear to have contributed to more restrictions on Soviet life. These are the uncertainty over who will succeed Leonid Brezhnev as the Communist Party leader, and the deeply strained relations with the United States. [New York Times] Lech Walesa's wife said she was stripped for a search by Polish security agents at a police station as she was returning from a visit to her husband. Danuta Walesa said she believed the female security agents were looking for a smuggled appeal or statement from her husband with which he could be formally charged with with a crime and placed under arrest instead of detention. [New York Times]