News stories from Saturday May 8, 1982

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

A cutoff in disability benefits for 106,000 families under the Social Security program has been made in the last seven months by the Reagan administration, according to federal and state officials. Critics say that the administration has been overzealous in its efforts to remove ineligible people from the rolls and that thousands have been removed arbitrarily and illegally. [New York Times] How much personal hardship the current jobless rate of 9.4 percent is causing is a question members of Congress, poll takers and political analysts would like to have answered. An indication might be a clue to the effect that high unemployment, which is expected to continue for months, will have on the November elections. The current rate is the highest since 1941, when it was 9.9 percent. The impression is that people today are not so bad off as they were in 1941. [New York Times] Aircraft bases for MX missiles were said to be favored by Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and a panel of specialists outside the Defense Department following a study of ways to base the weapons, administration officials said. [New York Times] An all-out war over the Falklands could be imminent, politicians and diplomats in London said as British ships and planes patrolled the new war zone along the Argentine coast. Efforts to negotiate a settlement continued at the United Nations. Britain's delegate, Sir Anthony Parsons, told a British radio audience that "it is very difficult to be optimistic." Authoritative sources said Britain was now prepared to accept a United Nations trusteeship over the Falklands. [New York Times] Argentina resumed flying supplies to its forces on the Falklands, military spokesmen said in Buenos Aires. They declined to say where the Argentine fleet was, but said that it felt free to move outside the 12-mile coastal limit announced by Britain Friday against all Argentine military ships and planes. [New York Times] Retreat of part of the Iraqi forces that have occupied the southwestern Iranian province of Khuzistan for 18 months was announced by Iraq. This was the second official announcement in six weeks that Iraqi troops have had to withdraw from captured Iranian territory, and it seemed that the Persian Gulf war had turned in favor of Iran. [New York Times]