News stories from Saturday December 5, 1981
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- With tips from a convicted terrorist, a member of the F.A.L.N. -- the group seeking independence for Puerto Rico -- federal authorities are reviving their investigation into 31 unsolved bombings in New York City. The cases include the 1975 explosion at Fraunces Tavern that killed four persons and injured more than 60. [New York Times]
- Lucrative business contacts abroad have been won by many former American intelligence agents who made their contacts through their extraordinary secret access to foreign officials and to sensitive information. One former agent works as an American company's representative to an African country whose president he helped install in a covert operation. This and other examples have come under scrutiny following disclosures that Edwin P. Wilson and Frank Terpil, former agents, used their intelligence connections in elaborate and in some cases illegal foreign business deals. [New York Times]
- A weakened United Farm Workers is facing a renewed organizing war with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The Teamsters had halted their efforts to organize farm workers, but that moratorium ends in March. Meanwhile, the farm union has had dissension within its ranks and disputes and resignations among some former leaders. [New York Times]
- The woman in the Sakharovs' protest, Yelizaveta Alekseyeva, was briefly detained as she was preparing to board a train from Moscow to Gorky, where Andrei Sakharov, the physicist, was banished two years ago for his dissident activities. Dr. Sakharov and his wife, Yelena Bonner, began a hunger strike two weeks ago on behalf of emigration efforts by Miss Alekseyeva to join her husband by proxy, Alexey Semyonov, in Newton, Mass. [New York Times]
- Polish students have been on strike in about 70 of Poland's 104 institutions of higher learning for nearly three weeks, ostensibly over the immediate issues of the contested election of the rector of an engineering school and delays by the government in submitting to Parliament an education reform bill. Aside from the issues, most students are dissatified with the quality of intellectual life, which they believe is being stifled by ideological barriers. "We need a democratization of culture," one of them said. [New York Times]
- A U.S.-Turkish joint defense group will be established to "enlarge and improve defense cooperation," the two countries announced in Ankara after a visit by Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger. The announcement was the chief concrete result of Mr. Weinberger's three-day visit, but equally as important was his endorsement of Turkey's military regime and its moves to restore democratic rule. [New York Times]
- A government-organized protest in Bucharest brought out hundreds of thousands of demonstrators demanding the removal of all nuclear weapons from Europe. It was the centerpiece of President Nicolae Ceausescu's attempt to present himself and Rumania as a third force prodding East and West toward disarmament. [New York Times]