December 19, 1981

The Daily News is being offered for sale, its owner, the Tribune Company of Chicago, announced yesterday. The News, a tabloid, which has the largest circulation in the country for a general-interest newspaper, says it has lost at least $11 million this year. Over the last decade, circulation and advertising income have dropped sharply. The announcement that it was available for sale was another blow to its 3,800 employees. They had been expecting the company to seek contract concessions to bring labor costs in line with the paper's $342 million in annual revenues. There was no immediate comment from The New York Post, also a tabloid, which has been aggressively challenging The News for circulation in the city. The publisher of The Post, Rupert Murdoch, has said that he would not be interested in purchasing The News, a step from which he would probably be barred by Federal antitrust laws.

Attorney General William French Smith said today that the Reagan Administration's effort to revitalize the nation's intelligence agencies was needed to offset a ''dramatic'' increase in Soviet spying in this country and a growing threat posed by international terrorism. Mr. Smith's remarks came in a speech to the World Affairs Council in Los Angeles, the text of which was made available here. He said that the Admin- Excerpts from speech, page 32. istration was increasing the intelligence community's resources and rebuilding personnel levels to counter the ''threat to our Government and its citizens from hostile intelligence services and international terrorist groups.''

The United States publicly called upon Poland's military Government today to free its political prisoners and to let Lech Walesa, the leader of the Solidarity movement, ''speak to his countrymen and to the world.'' The State Department said the Administration was ''deeply concerned for the leaders of Solidarity and the thousands of other prisoners being held in Poland.'' Elsewhere, there were these developments: - The West German Parliament called on Chancellor Helmut Schmidt to put off any action on further economic aid for Poland as long as ''repressive measures'' are in force against the Polish people. (Page 7.)

The Warsaw radio reported today that Poles, worried by the imposition of martial law, were hoarding food, especially bread. Radio broadcasts monitored outside Poland said members of the Polish Communist Party and other unarmed civilian volunteers had joined soldiers and riot police officers in patrolling the streets of Warsaw. Reports reaching Washington indicated that resistance to the martial law authorities continued in the Baltic port city of Gdansk and in the Silesian coal fields, although it was impossible to determine the extent of the resistance. Sabotage Threats Reported The State Department spokesman, Dean Fischer, said today that according to unconfirmed reports Silesian miners were still occupying several mine shafts and had threatened to sabotage the mines. At the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk, he said, workers ''appear to have barricaded themselves in some of the buildings.''

Yesterday, five and a half years after Manuel Vega was paralyzed from the waist down by a police officer's bullet that severed his spinal cord, a jury awarded him $7,014,000 in compensatory damages from New York City. Gerald Seavers, the officer who shot Mr. Vega, was commended for ''meritorious police duty,'' the next to lowest police citation, in connection with the disputed incident in Brooklyn in the summer of 1976. Officer Seavers, 35 years old, has earned 19 commendations and a medal of valor in his 12 years on the force. The award in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn was believed by Mr. Vega's lawyer, Aaron Broder, to be the largest against the city for that type of injury. It was also believed to be the largest award in the nation for a gunshot wound inflicted by a police officer, exceeding an award made last year in Michigan by more than $5 million.