News stories from Saturday December 26, 1981
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- Government employment is declining for the first time since the end of World War II, bringing about major implications for government employees and Americans in general, experts on the workplace say. In the 12-month period ended Nov. 1, employment at federal, state and local levels declined by 316,000 workers -- 40,000 at the federal level, 30,000 in state government and 246,000 in local government. [New York Times]
- A reduction in offshore leasing to oil and gas developers has been recommended by the General Accounting office. The congressional watchdog agency, in a report requested by members of Congress, questioned the Interior Department's ability to handle an expanded leasing program proposed by Interior Secretary James Watt. The study was apparently prepared before the disclosure that Mr. Watt has decided to scale back his plans, which would have opened virtually all federal offshore areas to leasing over a five-year period. [New York Times]
- Wayne Williams' murder trial is scheduled to begin Monday in Atlanta. The 23-year-old self-styled music promoter is charged with slaying two of 28 young people who were murdered in Atlanta during two years. [New York Times]
- President Reagan's warning to Moscow that American sanctions will follow if repression continues in Poland has brought a response by letter from Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet leader, an administration official said. He refused to disclose its contents. [New York Times]
- The decline in U.S.-Israeli relations has been caused by the adoption by the United States of Saudi Arabian views toward the Middle East, Israel's next ambassador to Washington said in an interview broadcast by the Israeli radio. Moshe Arens, chairman of Parliament's Foreign Affairs and Security Committee, who is to take up his post early next year, also said that the suspension by the United States of talks on implementing the security agreement with Israel was "unprecedented" and was more appropriate for "countries at war." [New York Times]
- Resistance to martial law continued among the more than 1,000 miners barricaded in the Piast mine in the Silesian coal district, the Warsaw radio said. This was the only remaining area of resistance to martial law in Poland, the radio said. Meanwhile, additional details were provided by clandestine Solidarity union publications about clashes in Gdansk and Wroclaw. They reported that several people were killed in street fighting in the two cities. [New York Times]
- South Africa's intricate labor system, through which blacks are channeled to jobs in white enterprises, has effectively divided the black work force into distinct, legally defined castes, causing a big disparity in earnings among blacks. The system's twin objectives are to regulate the flow of black job hunters to "prescribed" areas that are proclaimed by law to be "white" -- these account for 86 percent of the entire country -- and to concentrate the non-productive part of the black population in underdeveloped rural "homelands" that are economically stagnant. [New York Times]