News stories from Sunday December 5, 1982

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

Whether to finance the MX missile and its so-called dense pack basing system will be voted on in the House on Tuesday. But in view of the long history of wrangles over the missiles, advocates and critics say they do not expect the fate of the MX to be quickly resolved. [New York Times] Pork barrel practices inhibit quick progress on the repair of long-neglected public facilities that has been started by federal, state and local governments, according to public works authorities. They said the repair is being carried out under a system in which public money is spent more out of political considerations than need, and encourages new construction instead of repair. [New York Times] Dr. Barney Clark was comfortable after more surgery followed the implanting of a permanent artificial heart, his doctors in Salt Lake City said. [New York Times] People fled overflowing rivers in the Mississippi Valley from Illinois to Louisiana after days of rain. A week of stormy weather has caused about 40 deaths in the nation, including 18 who died when hurricane-force winds and snowstorms hit the West. Rivers were as much as 12 feet above flood stage in the central states. [New York Times] Eleanor Roosevelt took first place among the 42 First Ladies in an appraisal by historians, journalists and former White House aides at a meeting at the Brookdale Health Sciences Center of Hunter College in Manhattan. A recent poll of 100 American history professors also put Mrs. Roosevelt in first place. [New York Times] The U.S. failure to start negotiations for the withdrawal of Israeli, Syrian and Palestinian forces from Lebanon is worrying senior Reagan administration officials. They said that because of the impasse it was now virtually impossible that the troops would leave by the end of the year, the date set by the State Department. [New York Times] Israel cleared a close Lebanese ally of any involvement in the massacre of hundreds of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps near Beirut last September. The state commission investigating the massacre said it had no evidence that forces of Maj. Saad Haddad, leader of a Lebanese Christian militia, had participated in the killings. [New York Times] Widespread human rights abuses continue in Chile, now in its 10th year of military rule, despite budding political expression, according to human rights groups and church officials. The human rights issue has recently taken on added importance because the Reagan administration is considering lifting a 1976 embargo on arms shipments. [New York Times] Guatemala's President pledged to issue new laws on the formation of political parties and the electoral process by next March 23. The President, Gen. Efrain Rios Montt, took power in a military coup on that date this year and suspended all political activity. His announcement by was made after talks in Honduras Saturday with President Reagan. [New York Times] Near-zero growth in the third world has followed the recession in the Western industrialized countries, increasing hardship and political tensions in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Last year the economies of the developing world grew by an average of only six-tenths of 1 percent and, as population growth surged, per capita income fell for the first time in 20 years. This year the figures are even worse. [New York Times] South Africa set free a poet who had served seven years of a nine-year sentence for terrorism. The Prison Services announced that Breyten Breytenbach, widely regarded as the most important living poet in the Afrikaans language, had been released under a new policy that makes it possible for prisoners convicted on political charges to receive remission of sentence. The new policy, however, would not apply to imprisoned leaders of the banned African National Congress. [New York Times] Ian Smith said the police raided his farm in Zimbabwe and seized private papers. Mr. Smith, who was Prime Minister of the country when it was called Rhodesia and ruled by whites, said that a dozen officers searched his home near the city of Gweru and took away papers that included records of his term as Prime Minister. Last week, his passport was withdrawn indefinitely by Prime Minister Robert Mugabe's government. [New York Times]