News stories from Saturday June 27, 1981

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

A balanced national budget by 1984 was predicted by jublilant White House officials after President Reagan's second successive budget victory Friday when the House adopted a Republican package of $38.2 billion in budget cuts, which had been opposed by the Democratic leadership. The officials said the vote would bring savings of $100 billion in spending during the next three years, making possible a balanced budget of $770 billion in 1984. [New York Times] The New York region faces a cutoff of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid under the Reagan budget cuts approved by a Republican-Democratic coalition in the House Friday. Officials in New York and New Jersey said their states would suffer more than Connecticut if a Senate-House conference approves the cuts passed by the coalition. The region's fiscal health will be endangered by the cuts, state officials said, which will affect Medicaid funds, housing subsidies, development grants, welfare payments and other social programs. [New York Times] The plight of New York City's homeless is reaching a crisis point, state and city officials say, as one community after another balks at the prospect of providing shelter for them. The number of the homeless is the greatest problem in New York City today, according to Sarah Connell, regional director of the Officve of Mental Health, but many neighborhoods seem to be increasingly hostile to providing either permanent or temporary shelter for the wanderers. [New York Times] Heavy rains threaten crops in several Middle West states. Much corn planting has been delayed past the time that would allow crops to be harvested before the fall frost. In many areas, fields have been too wet for farmers to use heavy equipment to plant soybeans as a substitute crop, and in some places rain has washed out or severely damaged many acres of corn and soybean fields. [New York Times] The Hispanic American population is rising in the suburbs. The nation's fastest-growing ethnic group is spreading to towns and suburbs that have had little racial or ethnic diversity. According to the 1980 census, about half of the 14.6 million people who described themselves as being of Spanish extraction live in the central cities of the nation's metropolitan areas, but more than five million, or 37 percent, live in the suburbs and rural fringes of the cities, while the remainder, almost 2 million, are in rural counties, mostly in the Southwest. [New York Times] The cause of peace will be endangered by the Reagan administration's decision to sell arms to China, Pravda, the Soviet Communist Party newspaper, said in its most authoritative comment yet on the decision. The newspaper called the move "an escalation of reckless policy" that was "highly dangerous for the cause of peace." It also said "the Soviet Union cannot remain indifferent" to the dangerous turn in Chinese-American relations. [New York Times] Africa's leaders condemned the U.S. for "collusion with the South African racists." The resolution, approved unanimously in Nairobi, Kenya, by the 50 heads of state and government who make up the Organization of African Unity, accused the Reagan administration of trying to engage in "sinister" moves to circumvent efforts by the United Nations to achieve a settlement in South-West Africa that would remove the territory, also known as Namibia, from the control of South Africa. [New York Times] An army coup in Bolivia was thwarted without bloodshed, the government of President Luis Garcia Meza announced. It said the army's Commander and Chief of Staff had been arrested as plotters. Mr. Garcia seized power nearly a year ago. [New York Times]