News stories from Sunday May 24, 1981

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

The Pope's alleged assailant, Mehmet Ali Agca, has been associated for at least six years with a xenophobic, fanatically nationalist, neofascist network steeped in violence -- the National Action Party of his native Turkey and its satellite groups there and elsewhere in Europe. Reports by a team of New York Times correspondents show a pattern of connections between Mr. Agca and an international alliance of right-wing Turkish extremists. And a fairly complete picture has emerged of his odyssey from a Turkish prison, through at least seven countries, to the Vatican. [New York Times] The body of a black male was found near Atlanta by the police, and the victim may be added to the case of Atlanta's missing and murdered young people. The authorities said that the body was of a person older than any of the other 27 victims being investigated by a special police unit. [New York Times] Worry about Social Security and the future is common among the millions of elderly people in Florida including about 15,000 people residing in the Century Village retirement community. Many of the retirees who depend on their Social Security pensions do not fully understand what is happening to the retirement program and President Reagan's plans for it. But they feel threatened. [New York Times] New rules in the newsroom are being set up and old rules are being re-emphasised by many American newspapers, distressed by recent disclosures of fabricated articles in The Washington Post and The New York Daily News. The two incidents have inspired a wave of self-examination, both official and unofficial, by journalists who worry that the disclosures provide more ammunition for those who already thought the worst about what they read in newspapers. [New York Times] The President of Equador was killed in an airplane crash in southern Ecuador, the presidential Palace announced. President Jaime Roldos Aguilera, his wife Marta, the Defense Minister, Gen. Marco Subia Martinez, and two military aides were said to have died in the crash near Ecuador's southern border with Peru. Mr. Roldos Aguilera was 40 years old. [New York Times] Soviet advisers are entering Lebanon accompanying large Syrian army units, Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel suggested. Mr. Begin made the charge in a fleeting remark in a speech to a convention of Israeli building contractors in Tel Aviv. It was the first time that Israel had accused Soviet advisers of being inside Lebanon. Mr. Begin's office had earlier disclosed that it gave Lebanese Christians a secret commitment as early as 1978 of protection against air attacks by the Syrians. [New York Times] Spanish police commandos rescued several scores of hostages when they assaulted a bank headquarters and reportedly killed one of the gunmen who had held the building for 36 hours. According to officials, not one of the hostages, who had initially numbered more than 200, was wounded in the attack. [New York Times] A Turkish airliner was hijacked to Bulgaria with 110 passengers aboard, and the four gunmen who seized the plane reportedly have threatened to kill several American bankers aboard the plane. [New York Times] Five demands for prison reform are at the heart of the dispute between hunger strikers at Maze Prison in Belfast and the British government. They include the right to wear civilian clothes and to have time taken off their sentences for good behavior. [New York Times]