News stories from Sunday March 8, 1981
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- Sharp cuts in federal loan guarantees, especially those provided for housing, are being proposed by the administration, to accompany reductions in direct government lending already announced. The cuts that have been announced and those expected to be announced Tuesday would result in a steep drop in federal lending activity -- one of the administration's aims -- reducing projections for the 1982 budget year by $21 billion, according to budget office figures. [New York Times]
- Extension of the Voting Rights Act will face a fight in Congress. Civil rights advocates have begun devising strategy, lobbying legislators and drafting a bill in anticipation of a long and difficult struggle to continue key provisions of the 1965 law, which is considered one of the most effective pieces of civil rights legislation ever passed. [New York Times]
- A coalition of liberals will campaign against conservatives' moves to limit civil rights legislation and to curb the powers of the federal judiciary. The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights announced a lobbying drive "to defend civil rights and defend the gains made in the civil rights field in the last two decades." The organization represents 150 labor, religious, civil rights and social welfare groups. [New York Times]
- Convicted murderer Steven T. Judy was executed in Michigan City, Indiana early Tuesday morning, becoming the fourth man executed in this country since the Supreme Court restored the death penalty in 1976. Judy, who was convicted of raping and strangling a woman and drowning her three children, had said he felt no remorse for the crime. He had said he prefered the death penalty to life in prison, and made no effort to aid the opponents of his execution. [New York Times]
- Widespread opposition in the Far West to the MX mobile nuclear missile is being felt in Washington, adding to the complexity of what will probably be the administration's most difficult military decision this year. The protest movement started in Utah and Nevada, where the Air Force plans to install 200 MX missiles. [New York Times]
- Radioactive waste is accumulating at the rate of 33 tons per year at the nation's second largest nuclear power station, situated on the Delaware River in Lower Alloways Creek Township in southern New Jersey. Though the plant has enriched the township through tax revenues, the residents are concerned about the storage of nuclear waste on the site. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved the tighter packing of the waste in a sealed-off storage pool, a practice called safe by the commission but potentially hazardous by critics. Two residents are suing to stop the approval. [New York Times]
- The administration dismissed without notice the top United States delegates to the United Nations Law of the Sea Conference, which opens tomorrow in New York. Deputy Secretary of State William Clark told George Aldrich, the acting head of the delegation appointed by the Carter administration, that his resignation was being accepted and that the administration wanted "a clean break with the past." The dismissals followtd the administration's announcement last week that it would would not go along with plans to conclude the treaty dealing with the use of the oceans and their resources. [New York Times]
- West Germany was urged not take part in NATO's plan to station new medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe. The appeal came from a youth group associated with the Free Democratic Party of Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher. The group, called the Young Democrats, attacked Mr. Genscher for his "overeager and factually baseless" rejection of a proposal by the Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, for a moratorium on deploying the missiles. [New York Times]
- Students, professors and unionists held a rally in Warsaw to commemorate the suppression of student demonstrations in March 1968. The gathering of about 3,000 people was almost festive, and speeches advocated tolerance and free speech. At the same time, at another rally in Warsaw, several hundred older men and women, attracted by anonymous posters, gathered to hear speeches attacking the "Zionist clique," the Jews who held positions of power during the Stalinist 1950's and who were said to have murdered and tortured Polish patriots. [New York Times]
- Hijackers of a Pakistani jetliner with more than 100 hostages aboard flew to Damascus, Syria, after holding the plane at the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, for six days. Syrian and Pakistani officials said they were negotiating with the three hijackers, who demand that Pakistan free people who they say are political prisoners. [New York Times]