News stories from Friday December 25, 1981
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- Efforts to save the Department of Education from the Reagan administration's plan to abolish it have been joined by Republicans who generally support the President. Under proposals Secretary of Education Terrel Bell has discussed with key legislators in recent weeks, the department would be transformed into a "foundation" with sub-cabinet status. But Mr. Bell acknowledged that he faces "a tough fight," because of the opposition of such Republicans as Senator William Roth of Delaware, chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee, which deals with government reorganization proposals. [New York Times]
- A Marxist group dropped a suit against the California Attorney General's office after the agency acknowledged that it had wrongly included the group in a list of left-wing terrorist organizations published in 1979. The Marxists, the Spartacist League, had contended that the state had wrongfully depicted it as prone to violence as part of a campaign of "re-nascent McCarthyism." [New York Times]
- The Pope sent greetings to Solidarity in his annual Christmas message to the world, departing from a prepared text that included an embrace and a prayer for the people of his native Poland. Many Polish flags and a Solidarity banner were waved in the crowd of thousands of pilgrims and tourists in St. Peter's Square. [New York Times]
- Christmas was observed in Poland with the usual church services and family reunions, the Warsaw radio said. It also reported that more than 1,200 coal miners continued a strike protesting martial law. In a broadcast monitored outside Poland authorities said that "there are still 1,276 persons down below" the surface of the Piast coal mine in Katowice Province in southern Poland. The sit-in began Dec. 14, the day after martial law was declared. The radio carried appeals from the miners' wives and mothers urging them to end the strike. [New York Times]
- Resistance to martial law was urged on Polish workers by leaders of the Warsaw branch of the suspended Solidarity union. A Solidarity news bulletin clandestinely distributed in Warsaw reported that negotiations were under way between officials of the Polish Episcopate and the country's top Communist Party officials, who were said to be seeking "a political solution" to the martial law crisis. [New York Times]
- Moscow accused the U.S. of fomenting the unrest in Poland in an attempt to pry Poland from the Soviet bloc. A detailed article in Pravda charged that the events in Poland over the last 17 months were part of a long intricate campaign undertaken by the United States. Western diplomats were more impressed by what the 3,600-word article revealed about the Kremlin's insecurity and suspicion than by its claims of American machinations. [New York Times]
- The U.S.-Israeli agreement on strategic cooperation "formally" still exists, Defense Minister Ariel Sharon said in a newspaper interview. Prime Minister Menachem Begin said earlier this week that he felt the United States had canceled the agreement by announcing a suspension of talks to carry out the pact following Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights. Mr. Sharon said in the interview that the annexation had been prompted by an American plan to force Israel to return all land it conquered in the 1967 Middle East war. He said termination of the strategic agreement required six months notice. [New York Times]
- The refusal to let Ian Paisley, the pro-Ulster Protestant minister in Northern Ireland, who is also a member of the British Parliament, visit the United States has aroused wide resentment in Britain and Ireland. Mr. Paisley was infuriated, and said it was part of an Anglo-American plot to force Northern Ireland into unification with the Republic. The three major London newspapers questioned the wisdom of the decision, and so have a number of other moderates. [New York Times]