News stories from Sunday January 11, 1981

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

Algerian intermediaries in Teheran reportedly intensified their their talks with Iranian officials on the hostages as Friday's deadline for a cutoff, imposed by the Carter administration, approached. Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher remained in Algiers, waiting for a decision by Iranian officials. [New York Times] Logs of taped conversations between Alexander Haig and former President Nixon were subpoenaed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after Mr. Nixon's lawyers refused to allow the National Archives to turn them over voluntarily. [New York Times] Ronald Reagan's economic proposals will be timed to set the stage for a dramatic 100 days of congressional action on the federal budget, and aimed at avoiding a legislative stalemate, his economic advisers said. [New York Times] Reagan campaign officials are worried about being left out of sub-cabinet posts after the President-elect's numerous "non-political" nominations to his cabinet, so they told Pendleton James, a professional executive recruiter who served as transition personnel director. [New York Times] Two skeletons have been identified tentatively as those of two of the four black children missing from their Atlanta homes for several months. The Fulton County Medical Examiner, Dr. Robert Stivers, also criticized the way state and federal officers gathered the remains, saying that their carelessness had delayed the identifications and might ultimately endanger the prosecution of a suspect. [New York Times] A Methodist minister and his wife fled his parish in West Virginia, with the encouragement of the police, following what they described as "a six-month campaign of terror" by the Klu Klux Klan. The Rev. Michael Curry was filling his first pastoral call in Smithburg, W. Va., following his graduation from the Harvard Divinity School. The 26-year-old minister and his wife have returned to Masachusetts for a "period of emotional recuperation." [New York Times] Searchers recovered five more bodies from the ruins of the Beachview Rest Home in Keansburg, N.J. The number of persons killed in the fire on there early Friday now totals 29. One person was still missing. The fire's cause was being investigated. [New York Times] Further cuts in the amount of water New York City takes from its principal source, the headwaters of the Delaware River in the western Catskills, are expected to be ordered this week, New York environmental officials said. A reduction of 15 percent is possible following a meeting of the Delaware River Basin Commission in Trenton Thursday to consider a declaring a "drought emergency." [New York Times] New York City businesses prospered in 1980 despite the recession, doing better than their counterparts elsewhere and confounding economists. Retail sales were up 18 percent for the first nine months of 1980, nearly three times the national increase of 6 percent and more than double the suburban increase of 8 percent. Unemployment remained higher than the national average, but the final 1980 figures show that the city's increase was small compared with the national average. [New York Times] Martial law was declared and a dawn-to-dusk curfew imposed in El Salvador after an announcement by leftist guerrillas that they had begun their "final offensive" aimed at overthrowing the United States-backed junta. [New York Times] Polish workers defied the government by not showing up for work, throwing their support behind the independent labor union's demand for a five-day workweek. Most big factories were reported closed in the Baltic ports of Gdansk, Gdynia, and Szczecin, where the union has a strong following, and most workers were out in Wroclaw, a Silesian industrial center, the union said. It estimated that 80 percent of 2,700 factories in the Warsaw area were closed.Poland's private farmers were warned by Stanislaw Kania, the Communist Party leader, not to try to organize an independent labor union modeled after Solidarity, a largely industrial organization. He told them that "we register our categorical opposition to all attempts at inciting the countryside, at sowing anarchy or creating a political opposition." [New York Times] About 1,000 people were slain in Kano, Nigeria, over the last two weeks in fighting between members of an Islamic cult and the authorities. Nigerian officials said they believed Libya fomented the fighting. [New York Times] Israel's Finance Minister resigned in a controversy over raises in teachers' pay, signaling the apparent demise of Prime Minister Menachem Begin's coalition government. Early parliamentary elections seemed certain. When the cabinet voted overwhelmingly for substantial raises for the teachers, Finance Minister Yigael Hurwitz, who had been trying to deal with the world's highest inflation rate, decided to step down, effective Tuesday. [New York Times]