News stories from Sunday December 27, 1981

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

The U.S. sanctions against Poland threatened by President Reagan in response to the imposition of martial law surprised and distressed the country's military rulers, according to Polish government sources. They said that the official view in Poland was that Mr. Reagan's restrictions on trade, Western credits and civil air rights agreements, would further isolate Poland from the West and force it to turn even more to the Soviet trading bloc. A major concern among Polish officials was that the American action would further reduce Poland's living standard, leading to extensive unemployment and social unrest and prolongation of martial law. [New York Times] Leonid Brezhnev's response to President Reagan's warning of economic and political action against the Soviet Union over the imposition of martial law in Poland was "negative" in tone, the President said. But another administration official said the Soviet leader's letter did not seem to preclude further discussion on the crisis. The contents of the were not disclosed. [New York Times] This week In Poland may be a test of whether the authorities can relax some of the restrictions on personal freedom that have kept the opposition from mounting a coordinated anti-government campaign. After a four-day break for the Christmas holiday, work was to resume at factories and coal mines that had been the focus of early open resistance to the military authorities. [New York Times] Reduced meat rations for all Poles except manual workers will take effect next month, the Warsaw radio announced. Officials said that the country faced a serious meat shortage and that large quantities of imports from the Soviet Union and other Communist-bloc countries would be needed to maintain the ration for miners and other manual workers at the December level. [New York Times] Federal judges should have less power to set aside criminal convictions by state courts, Chief Justice Warren Burger said in urging Congress to take action. Justice Burger has previously advocated such restrictions, but this was the first time he specifically suggested that Congress impose them. He asked for the restrictions in his year-end report on the judiciary. [New York Times] Buffer land acquired by Smith College in Whately, Mass., for its small observatory has become the focus of an unusual suit, which has possible implications for the nation's 113 other colleges which, like Smith, admit only women. In the suit, rising from a $450 tax bill for the 86-acre tract which Smith has refused to pay Whately, the town has charged that Smith should be stripped of its tax exempt status because it violates the state's Equal Rights Admendment by admitting only women undergraduates. Smith maintains that the state amendment, which is similar to the proposed national Equal Rights Admendment, which would ban sex discrimination, should not apply to a private women's college. [New York Times] A photo of Gen. James Dozier accompanied a message received by the Milan bureau of an Italian news agency saying that the 50-year-old American general had been placed on trial by the Red Brigades, the leftist guerrilla group, which claimed responsibility for his kidnapping in Verona on Dec. 17. Italian officials regarded it as ominous that the message contained no demands and set no conditions for the general's release. He is deputy chief of staff for logistics and administration at NATO headquarters for southern Europe in Verona. [New York Times] Vietnam is seeking diplomatic ties with the United States. Western diplomats in Hanoi and Vietnamese Foreign Ministry officials indicate that the government's welcome to four visiting American veterans of the Vietnam war was an initial effort to stir American public opinion that would overcome the Reagan administration's stern resistance to normal relations with Vietnam. [New York Times]