News stories from Sunday April 12, 1981
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- Columbia blasted into space from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, manned by two astronauts, John Young and Capt. Robert Crippen of the Navy. The test flight of the world's first reusable spaceship is scheduled for 36 orbits around the earth, lasting 54½ hours and ending at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Soon after the takeoff, the astronauts discovered that more than a dozen heat-shielding tiles on the craft's fuselage had ripped off in launching, but project officials said it would not endanger the flight. [New York Times]
- The space shuttle lost at least a dozen tiles, probably from the stress of its launching, but space agency officials said they were confident that the loss posed no danger to the spaceship or its crew. The tiles are designed to protect against temperature extremes in orbit and on re-entry to the earth's atmosphere. The loss was a vivid reminder of problems with the system that contributed greatly to delays in launching the first shuttle flight. Teams of technicians were gathering all possible data to assess the situation.
Its descent will be as risky as its takeoff, and the condition of its heat-protective tiles will be a crucial factor. If its landing proceeds according to schedule, the shuttle will slow down from a velocity 25 times the speed of sound, drop out of orbit and glide to touchdown on a runway at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert in southern California on Tuesday.
[New York Times] - A possible compromise on tax cuts has been indicated by Representative James Jones, chairman of the House Budget Committee. He said in a television interview that the White House appeared to be willing to consider a one-year tax cut instead of three successive years of tax cuts. However, a White House spokesman said that the administration had not moved away from its position of seeking tax cuts in each of three years. [New York Times]
- Joe Louis died of cardiac arrest at his home in Las Vegas, Nev., at the age of 66. One of the most popular world heavyweight champions, he held the title from 1937 to 1949, defending it 25 times. After pacemaker surgery in 1977 to correct an aortic aneurism, he had been using a wheelchair. [New York Times]
- Tuskegee Institute's 100th anniversary was observed in Alabama. The college was organized for former slaves and their descendants by Booker T. Washington, himself a former slave who became an educator. Vice President Bush, a volunteer for the United Negro College Fund when he was a student in the 1940's, was among the guests. He used the occasion to reassure those present of the administration's concern for civil rights. [New York Times]
- Rioting in London's Brixton area, which is largely black, continued for a second night. Hundreds of youths, most of them black, threw stones, bottles and firebombs at police officers, about 1,000 of whom are on emergency duty. Shops and cars were set afire. Community leaders insisted that race was not the only cause of the riots. They were a "culmination of issues of frustration, unemployment, homelessness and alienation and confrontation with the police," a leader of the Brixton Community Association said. [New York Times]
- Dmitri Shostakovich's son and grandson are seeking asylum in West Germany. The late Soviet composer's 42-year-old son, Maxim, a conductor, and Maxim's 19-year-old son, Dmitri, a pianist, turned themselves over to the police after performing with the Soviet Radio Symphony Orchestra in Furth, near Nuremberg in Bavaria. [New York Times]
- Polish Communists pledged a "political solution" of the confrontation between the independent labor union Solidarity and the government. Under pressure from East Germans who said party action was long overdue in Poland, a Warsaw Politburo member, Kazimierz Barcikowski, told a party meeting in East Berlin that the Polish party was determined to assert its authority and would also "find a way to settle the complicated and difficult problems that have arisen in Poland as a result of the severe social and economic problems." [New York Times]
- Argentina's top foreign policy priority is closer relations with the United State and Europe, but not at the expense of its internal human rights policies, the new Foreign Minister, Oscar Camilion, said. Argentina will maintain an independent position toward the Soviet Union, and will continue to ship it grain and meat while importing Soviet heavy water for Argentina's nuclear reactors, he said. [New York Times]