News stories from Sunday December 20, 1981

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

Approval of $45 billion in new taxes over the next two fiscal years by President Reagan is being sought by several senior White House advisers and administration budget officials. An administration official said that the proposal to generate the taxes was based on new economic forecasts that would be disclosed to Mr. Reagan by midweek. [New York Times] A White House nomination was blocked by an aide to President Reagan, who overruled other administration officials in their choice of a Senate staff member to become a member of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Michael Deaver, the deputy White House chief of staff, intervened. The nominee, William Ris, counsel to the Democrats on the Senate Commerce Committee, was opposed by the head of a trucking organization that had employed Mr. Deaver as a public relations consultant. [New York Times] The Reagan proposals for the aged hospitalized in nursing homes or long-term care facilities raised protests from nursing home associations and state officials. They reacted with dismay and bafflement to the administration's plans to relax or repeal many federal health regulations affecting the treatment of aged patients. [New York Times] Hope for New York City's future has dimmed markedly over the last four years, according to a poll of the city's residents. In addition, nearly half of the participants in the poll said they would rather be living somewhere else four years from now.The Sun Belt as a job center is catching up with the Northeast and for some jobs is paying blue- and white-collar workers higher wages than New York City, traditionally one of the nation's sources of high wages. This reversal is described as "a historical turnaround of quite a fundamental sort" by Samuel Ehrenhalt, Regional Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics in New York, who provided the analysis of the federal data. [New York Times] Violence persists at Santa Fe's prison nearly two years after the most savage prison riot in the nation's history and despite the large amounts of money and manpower the state has provided for its prison system with wide public support, and a reduction in the number of inmates by 500 of its most violent members. [New York Times] The theft of college test materials used to determine the eligibility of foreign students for admission to American colleges and universities has resulted in the arrest in San Francisco of two persons believed to be Taiwanese. The arrests have led to an investigation to determine whether there is a "coaching school" in Taiwan that helps Chinese gain admission to American educational institutions. [New York Times] Prime Minister Menachem Begin charged the Reagan administration with anti-Semitism and with treating Israel like a "vassal state." His statement came in response to the administration's indefinite suspension of further discussion on a strategic accord with Israel because of its annexation of the Golan Heights. [New York Times] Despite Israel's bitter reaction to Washington's suspension of further talks on carrying out the American-Israeli agreement, the Reagan administration said it hoped that the accord would not be canceled. Prime Minister Begin responded to the suspension in terms that no State Department official could ever remember coming from an ally. [New York Times] The U.S. granted political asylum to Romuald Spasowski, the Polish Ambassador to Washington, who was Poland's senior diplomat. He said in Washington in a message to Americans and Poles that his defection was "my expression of solidarity" with Lech Walesa. [New York Times] Steady resistance to martial law was acknowledged by Polish authorities. Tass, the Soviet press agency, reported that Solidarity union activists had blown up the exit from a mine in southern Poland, trapping hundreds of miners. Reports from Poland's official news media, monitored outside the country, indicated that strikes and sit-ins continued on the Baltic coast and in northwest Poland. [New York Times] The issue of the U.S. servicemen still missing in Southeast Asia after the end of the Vietnam War could be resolved in the near future, according to the four American veterans who were invited to Hanoi by Vietnamese officials. Robert Muller, executive director of the Vietnam Veterans of America, the leader of the visiting group, urged the Vietnamese to invite the United States to send personnel to assist in the search for the missing Americans, saying that such action would "substantially improve" Vietnam's relations with the United States. [New York Times]