News stories from Saturday June 19, 1982

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

A review of U.S. monetary policy by the Reagan administration includes consideration of proposals to restrict or remove the independence of the Federal Reserve Board, Treasury Department officials said. The study is one of the key elements in a major review of economic policy options that the administration might take if interest rates do not decline, thus threatening the economic recovery it expects in the second half of the year. [New York Times] The nuclear freeze movement is expected to be exploited as a political issue by Democrats in the November elections. Democratic and Republican analysts agree that the freeze movement is becoming more partisan and politicized, but they disagree over how prominent a role it will play in the fall campaigns. [New York Times] Federal aid has hastened the decline of the nation's cities, according to a report to Congress being prepared by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Congress will also be told that many grants now being made under the Reagan administration ought to be eliminated. [New York Times] An "unprecedented" series of tests of strategic weapons by the Soviet Union in the past few days have cast doubt on Moscow's pledge not to be the first to use nuclear weapons, Secretary of State Alexander Haig said at the conclusion of talks with Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko in New York. Mr. Haig said that "only a few days after" Mr. Gromyko's speech Tuesday at the United Nations in which the Soviet pledge was made, "the Soviet Union has undertaken an unusually high level of strategic activity." He then specified the kind of weapons tests that he said had been carried out. [New York Times] Efforts to induce the P.L.O. to disarm in return for Lebanese and American assurances that the Israeli army will not invade West Beirut continued among Lebarion's political leaders, but it was doubted that a political solution to the crisis could be found. [New York Times] 4,200 Argentine prisoners of war were transported by Britain to Puerto Madryn in southern Argentina. They made the trip on the British liner Canberra, escorted by two Argentine warships and under a safe-conduct agreement between the two countries. The troops were among the 11,845 Argentines that London officially estimates were captured in the fighting in the Falklands. [New York Times]