News stories from Sunday June 28, 1981
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- States will apparently get more control over federally funded social programs under President Reagan's budget measures approved by the House Friday. The vote appeared to be an important victory toward his goal of increasing authority of the states. The budget measure contained provisions for consolidating dozens of federal grants for social, health, education and urban programs into block grants giving the states greater control over how the funds should be spent. [New York Times]
- The F.B.I.'s Atlanta office was invaded by a gunman who took a dozen bureau employees hostage, then was shot and killed in a gunfight with local and federal officers. The authorities said two of the employees were wounded. John Glover, special agent in charge of the office, said that no positive identification of the gunman was available. The man was armed with a sawed-off shotgun, two pistols, a revolver, and a gun he had taken from a building guard. He made no demands, and his motive was not known. [New York Times]
- Two alleged spies were arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the Los Angeles area and charged with the sale of classified Hughes Aircraft Company documents to the Polish intelligence service. William Bell, 61 years old, a recently dismissed employee of Hughes Aircraft, and Marian Zacharski, 29, head of American operations of the Polish American Machinery Company of Elk Grove Village, Ill., were taken into custody, an F.B.I. specialist in counterintelligence said. Mr. Zacharski had been watched since he arrived from Poland in 1977. [New York Times]
- Terry Fox, a cancer victim whose marathon run halfway across Canada on behalf of cancer victims attracted wide attention, died in a Vancouver hospital. He was 22 years old. He ran despite the loss of one leg to the disease. [New York Times]
- Two Brooklyn Bridge cables snapped, one severely injuring a pedestrian on one of the bridge's walkways. The bridge was closed to traffic for nearly three hours. After engineers assessed the damage caused by the broken diagonal cables, the bridge was opened at about 9:15 P.M. Acid in pigeon droppings caused the cables, described as "redundant," to erode. Pedestrians will be barred from the bridge until the broken footpath is repaired. [New York Times]
- 24 leading Islamic politicians died in a bombing that destroyed the Teheran headquarters of Iran's governing Islamic Republican Party. Among the dead was the party's leader, Chief Justice Ayatollah Mohammed Beheshti. According to witnesses, the explosion occurred as a group of 90 cabinet ministers and members of Parliament, including Prime Minister Mohammed Ali Rajai, were listening to Ayatollah Beheshti as he addressed a weekly meeting. The Prime Minister was reported among the injured, but his office said only that he had survived. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, was the only senior official not present, security sources said. [New York Times]
- Restoration of Indian-Chinese relations was pledged in New Delhi by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Foreign Minister Huang Hua of China. They announced after a 70-minute meeting that they would hold talks soon on their long-deadlocked border dispute. Indian officials said the talks would be held in September in Peking. Mrs. Gandhi announced that she had accepted an invitation to visit China. [New York Times]
- The Christian Democrats lost control in Italy of the Prime Minister's office for the first time in 36 years. Giovanni Spadolini, secretary of the Republican Party, was sworn in to lead the 27-member coalition government. Prime Minister Spadolini said the coalition was "the first secular government in the history of the Republic," and that his appointment was "a historic event because it established for the first time the practice of rotation of the Prime Ministership between the secular and the Catholic forces." [New York Times]