India and Sri Lanka have resumed negotiations for the Economic and Technology Cooperation Agreement (ECTA) after a five-year hiatus. The 12th round of talks took place in Sri Lanka from October 30 to November 1, following 11 rounds held between 2016 and 2018. During this latest round, both sides reviewed progress and resolved nine issues.
President Zia-uI-Haq of Pakistan stopped just short of openly blaming India for disturbances flowing from protests against his martial law regime but hoped it would not affect the Indo-Pak normalisation process.
Three missiles fired by Soviet fighters brought down the South Korean Airlines jumbo jet carrying 269 people which disappeared the day before, the Kyodo news agency reported.
India’s second three-segment multipurpose satellite Insat-1B has successfully blasted off, aboard the space shuttle Challenger from Kennedy Space Centre in the US.