November 7, 1981

A New Jersey Superior Court judge was arrested in front of the Camden County Courthouse yesterday morning and charged with accepting a $12,000 bribe from a defendant who was scheduled to be sentenced by the judge later in the morning. According to the police, the judge, Peter J. Coruzzi, had the money in his pocket as he approached the courthouse in Camden. When asked to explain the money later by the state police detectives who arrested him, the judge shook his head, local police officers said.

British anxieties about American nuclear policy have been deepened by the confusing and seemingly contradictory statements made this week by Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. and Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger. Mr. Haig told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday that under some circumstances an attack by Soviet conventional forces might bring into play a North Atlantic Treaty Organization option of setting off a ''demonstration'' nuclear weapon as a warning. Yesterday, Mr. Weinberger told the Senate Armed Services Committee that ''there is nothing in any of the plans at this time that even resembles this, nor should it.'' The White House and the State and Defense Departments subsequently issued a statement saying that both Mr. Weinberger and Mr. Haig were technically correct, since NATO had considered such a plan, as Mr. Haig stated, but had never ''transferred'' it ''into a military plan,'' as the Secretary of Defense said. Senior American officials in Londonconceded today that many British political leaders, including some key figures in the Government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, were profoundly disturbed by the new disagreement. They made no attempt to hide their belief that Mr. Haig's remarks had been ill timed, coming as they did just after a comment by President Reagan about the possibility of limiting a nuclear war to Europe was receding from the public consciousness.

President Reagan declared today that the Voting Rights Act should be extended for 10 years, but he qualified his position by saying that he would support amendments making it easier for states and counties to be released from certain requirements of the law. The statement was issued after last-minute skirmishing between White House aides and Attorney General William French Smith, who fought to make the statement more conservative than originally planned. An earlier draft of Text of Reagan statement, page 30. the President's statement indicated that he would sign a 10-year extension of the voting law in virtually any form approved by Congress, Administration officials said.

President Reagan, struggling to adjust his fiscal policies to adverse political and economic conditions, today abandoned his long-stated goal of a balanced budget by the 1984 fiscal year. Mr. Reagan, while ruling out additional tax increases for the current 1982 fiscal year, also told Republican Congressional leaders that he would consider imposing new taxes in 1983 and 1984. The President disclosed these decisions at a White House meeting this morning. At the same time he rejected the suggestion of some Senate Republicans that he impose up to $7 billion in new taxes in 1982 rather than depend on another round of budget cuts. The senators had cited stiffening Congressional opposition within his own party to further cuts in Government programs.

The nation's unemployment rate leaped to 8 percent in October, the highest level in almost six years, and Reagan Administration economists said today that they expected the rate to continue to climb as the economy kept declining. The unemployment rate, announced today by the Labor Department, jumped from 7.5 percent in September and has risen a full percentage point since July. The highest unemployment of the 1980 recession was 7.6 percent; in 1975, at the end of the worst recession since World War II, the highest rate was 9 percent. The one-month jump in the unemployment rate is the largest since the rise from 6.9 percent to 7.6 percent in May 1980, near the bottom of last year's recession.