News stories from Sunday May 3, 1981

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

Freedom to carry unlicensed guns was rousingly endorsed by members of the National Rifle Assocation in Denver at their annual convention and they voted unanimously to re-elect Harlon Carter, a leading advocate of "firearms rights," as executive vice president of the association, one of the nation's most powerful lobbying organizations. The association is leading the opposition to a renewed campaign to limit legal access to guns that was begun after the assassination attempt on President Reagan. [New York Times] Thousands of protesters in Washington demonstrated against United States military aid to El Salvador, and the Reagan administration's proposed increases in defense spending and budget cuts affecting social programs. At least 20,000 people took part. [New York Times] Information might be harder to get under a change in the Freedom of Information Act, to be announced Monday by Attorney General William French Smith. Mr. Smith is expected to announce that the law, which was established in 1977, is under review by the Reagan administration. The change, expected to give agencies more discretion in the release of government docu-ments, reportedly will rescind the requirement that agencies wanting to withhold information requested must show that the disclosure would be "demonstrably harmful" to the government. [New York Times] Improvements in Alabama's prisons in the past 18 months since a federal judge placed the system in receivership have been remarkable and innovative, according to some corrections experts. Nevertheless, critics say that progress is still inadequate and that failure to comply with the minimum standards set by the judge in 1976, especially those dealing with overcrowding, could result in the release of several hundred prisoners. [New York Times] Robert Sands was in a coma on the 64th day of his hunger strike in a prison near Belfast, his friends said. The British government was preparing for possible violence if the Irish Republican Army leader dies. Prison officials would not confirm that Mr. Sands was in a coma. "My son is dying," his mother said following a visit, and she appealed for calm. [New York Times] The United States might be willing to start talks with the Soviet Union before the end of the year on the reduction of European-based nuclear weapons, according to an impression reportedly given by Secretary of State Alexander Haig in separate talks with NATO's foreign ministers in Rome. The ministers are pressing the United States to set an early date for the talks, which is the No. 1 issue of their meetings tomorrow and Tuesday. [New York Times] The U.S. will have to take a key role and probably provide many of the troops in the formation of an international peacekeeping force in Sinai between Egypt and Israel, a State Department spokesman said. The administration has come to this conclusion, it was said, following consultations at the United Nations. The State Department said that meetings will be held in Washington Monday through Wednesday by Egyptian, Israeli and American military officials to discuss details of the international force, which may amount to 2,500 troops, half of whom might be Americans. [New York Times] A new hypothesis of the Exodus of Israelites from Egypt dates the Biblical legend at 1477 B. C., about 200 years earlier than had previously been assumed, and attributes the Jews' survival to natural phenomena rather than the divine intervention claimed by the Bible. The new interpretation of historical documents by a Johns Hopkins University professor also links the "parting of the waves" that deluged the pursuing Egyptians to a tidal wave, generated by the same volcanic eruption that apparently wiped out the Minoan civilization. [New York Times]