News stories from Sunday March 29, 1981
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- Business bankruptcies surged in the first 10 weeks of this year. A total of 2,933 failures were reported, a gain of 63 percent from the comparable period of last year. It was the highest number recorded for the period since 1963. Last year's figure was already 53 percent above the similar period in 1979, according to a report by Dun & Bradstreet. [New York Times]
- Workers are being forced to give back wages and benefits to companies caught between rising costs and falling sales. Wage scales that were recently the pride of the industrial Middle West are now being called "excessive" and "uncompetitive." As frightened workers begin to yield, some union officials predict a period of heightened class consciousness and union militancy is approaching. [New York Times]
- Pressing to retain college aid programs that the Reagan administration proposes to trim as part of its budget-cutting effort, leaders of many of the nation's colleges and universities say they fear that the proposals would cause many impoverished students to drop out of college and drive middle-income students out of the more costly institutions. [New York Times]
- A drift from strict fundamentalism by many Southern Baptists and other evangelicals has caused a rift that has religious and political implications. There have been rising moderate protests against the support that some fundamentalist preachers, such as the Rev. Jerry Falwell of the Moral Majority, have given political candidates. The theological division has resulted from the continuing debate over the infallibity of the Bible. [New York Times]
- An American hostage was shot while trying to escape the hijackers holding an Indonesian jetliner at the airport in Bangkok, Thailand. He was among 57 passengers and crew members aboard the plane when it was seized Saturday by five assailants during a domestic flight over Indonesia. The hijackers originally demanded that Indonesia release 20 people they said were "political prisoners," but after a group of Indonesian officials arrived in Bangock and agreed to the initial demand the number was raised to 84. [New York Times]
- President Jose Napoleon Duarte of El Salvador has gained broad influence in propagating what for his impoverished country are revolutionary and politital changes. The Reagan administration is depending on him to establish a centrist, non-Communist government. The military, the ultimate arbiter in national affairs, has gone along, sometimes grudgingly, with the changes so far, but there is concern among the Christian Democrats that its cooperation might be withdrawn under the encouragement of American arms being provided by the Reagan administraion and the apparently declining popular support for the guerrillas fighting the junta government. [New York Times]
- Poland's Communist leadership was assailed by members of the Central Committee in an unparalleled atmosphere of crisis. But at the end of the meeting that lasted nearly 19 hours the committee accepted no resignations of-fered by some officials on the the governing 10-member Politburo. The meeting produced a standoff between hard-line and moderate factions over how far to go in seeking an accommodation with the Solidarity union, which threatens a national strike on Tuesday. Portions of the speeches made public included charges that the party leade-ship was cut off from the party's lower echelons and was moving too slowly in carrying out the country's liberalization, or "democratic renewal." [New York Times]
- More troops have joined the exercises of Warsaw Pact military forces along Poland's border, according to Secretary of State Alexander Haig and other American officials. The maneuvers were supposed to have ended a few days ago, but they have been extended indefinitely. [New York Times]