January 19, 1981, Forty Years Ago: Iran hostage crisis

Iran reported that it has reached an agreement with the US on the terms for releasing the 52 American hostages but US Vice President Walter Mondale said that two issues remained to be resolved before the 442-day-old crisis is resolved. Despite the announcement by Iran’s official agency Pars quoting the chief Iranian negotiator Bahzad Nabavi, there was no word on when the Americans will be released and no details of the reported settlement. Mondale said he wants to hear directly from Iranian official channels before announcing anything on the agreement. He added that the two issues awaiting resolution are “a minor one” on dollar payments and “a legal problem in court jurisdictions”.

Dhaka no to canal

Bangladesh has officially rejected India’s proposal for a Ganga-Brahmaputra link canal proposal of India, the English weekly, Holiday, reported. It said that the rejection has been made known to India in Bangladesh’s review report on the impact of the implementation of the Farakka agreement between the two countries.

Data questions

The cabinet’s Central Statistical Organisation (CSO) has virtually admitted its failure in assessing the magnitude of poverty in the country. In a study on poverty, the agency concludes that,” leave alone measurement, even the concept of poverty is complicated and raises several basic issues which are not easy to resolve”. However, it concedes that the approach taken to measure the poverty line is “one of the simplest” — absolute poverty in terms of minimum requirement of intake of calories.

Desai blames Reddy

The former Prime Minister Morarji Desai has said that the Janata government would have remained in power if President Sanjeeva Reddy had not played mischief.