News stories from Saturday October 2, 1982

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

The Supreme Court opens a new term Monday with a docket that is the most crowded in its history and the most politically charged in recent years. Among the cases before the Justices are two that have embroiled the Reagan administration in controversy. They concern abortion rights and the tax status of private schools that practice racial discrimination. [New York Times] The preoccupation with fiscal issues over the last 20 months of Congress has caused widespread resentment among members of the House and Senate who felt that they had spent too much time on fiscal matters and not enough on other legislation. [New York Times] A seventh death linked to Tylenol capsules contaminated with cyanide was confirmed as more than 100 state and federal agents fanned across the Chicago metropolitan area in an attempt to reconstruct the medicine's route into the hands of its victims. Suspicions centered on a disgruntled employee or former employee. [New York Times] Democratic House candidates, hoping to unseat incumbent Republicans, are making the 1982 election a referendum on the economy. [New York Times] The white-only policy at Ole Miss, as the University of Mississippi is known, ended 20 years ago this week. Interviews with university officials and students suggested that there are now two Ole Misses. The new one is a university where blacks and white interact. The old is one in which Greek letter clubs are closed and some white students refuse to associate with blacks. [New York Times] Four members of a terrorist group were arrested by agents investigating an attempt to bomb a Cuban diplomat's car in 1980. The Federal Bureau of Investigation refused to link the men to Omega 7, an anti-Castro terrorist group, but law enforcement authorities said the suspects were members. Authorities said they were seeking a fifth suspect. [New York Times] In Teheran, a bomb killed at least 60 people and injured 700 others in that city's main square, the Iranian state radio reported. Most of the casualties occured in nearby hotels, restaurants and passing buses. No group claimed responsibility for the bombing, which ocurred Friday night. But the Teheran radio blamed it on "American mercenaries." [New York Times] Palestinians' anxiety over their fate has been heightened by a number of reports circulating throughout Lebanon that the new government of President Amin Gemayel is considering a plan to oust all but 50,000 of the more than half a million Palestinians who live there. [New York Times] Israel is keeping troops in Baabda, three miles east of Beirut and site of the Lebanese presidential palace, despite United States and Lebanese government policy that it must withdraw its forces "from the Beirut area." Israel said it was maintaining a force of "infantry and armor, the minimum to protect ourselves. " [New York Times] The withdrawal from Lebanon of all Israeli, Syrian and Palestinian forces is expected by Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir of Israel to occur by Dec. 31 under a timetable to be negotiated by the United States. [New York Times] China is damaging its environment in its efforts to quadruple its economic output in the next 20 years, according to a survey of the published writings of more than a score of Chinese scientists. Forests have been denuded and streams polluted. [New York Times]