This is the front page of The Indian Express published on May 5, 1980.

The Yugoslav president, Marshal Josip Broz Tito, died at the age of 87, the Yugoslav news agency Tanjug announced. The tragic announcement read as follows: “The central committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia and the presidency of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia announced tonight the following declaration: To the worker class/ to the working people and citizens/ to the peoples and nationalities/ of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia/ Comrade Tito has died.” Tito had been hospitalised in the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana since January 12 when he was admitted with a blood circulation blockage in his left leg.

Iran unfazed

It now appears that the Khuzistan gunmen who seized the Iranian embassy in London last Wednesday with some 20 persons as hostages are in a mood for compromise, provided the Khomeini-Bani-Sadr regime agrees to negotiate their demands in one form or another. One of the key demands of the gunmen is full autonomy for the south-western region of Iran, Khuzistan, which has Iran’s richest oil fields. The Iranian leaders have categorically said that they would not even acknowledge the existence of their demands and that they were free to blow up not only their London embassy but also the hostages (“who will go straight to heaven”).

AASU warning

The All-Assam Students’ Union (AASU) warned the central government that the current agitation would be intensified if no solution was found to the foreign nationalist issue on the basis of 1951 as the base year. The warning was contained in a statement by the AASU president, Prafulla Kumar Mahanta, and its acting general secretary, Bharat Narah, rejecting Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s charge that their movement was marked by violence. Strongly reacting to Mrs Gandhi’s remarks yesterday at Bhubaneswar, he alleged that she was “trying to crush the present popular and peaceful movement by giving a distorted picture”.