Yet another round of official-level talks to resolve the foreigners issue in Assam commenced with the agitationists threatening to renew the stir if an acceptable solution was not reached by Independence Day. AASU president Prafulla Mahanta, after the three-hour meeting with R D Pradhan, said there was hope of a solution and added, “We are going to talk on Tuesday again. The threat was conveyed to Mr Pradhan.”

Nuclear test ban

The Soviet Communist Party general secretary, Mikhail Gorbachyov, declared that his country had decided to unilaterally stop any nuclear explosion, beginning August 6. In a statement, he called upon the US to do the same. The ban will begin on the 40th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

Jnanpith Award

The twentieth Jnanpith Award for the year 1984 has been given to Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai, popular Malayalam novelist and short story writer. This is the third time that the award has gone to Malayalam. The annual Jnanpith Award of Rs 1.5 lakh, given for the best creative writing by an Indian citizen in any of the 15 languages, has gone four times each to Hindi and Kannada, thrice to Bengali, and once each to Assamese, Gujarati, Marathi, Oriya, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.