TEHERAN: It was disclosed here today [Oct 22] that the Persian Government has for the present refused to grant any fresh oil concessions to foreign undertakings and decided to postpone negotiations concerning them until after the war. Mohammed Syed, the Persian Premier, told the Foreign Press that since last January the American Companies, Standard Vacuum Oil and Sinclair Oil, and the British Company, Shell, have each applied for the same concession in the south-east Persian region of Baluchistan. Two American specialists were invited to Persian to draft a model contract for use if the concession was granted. But the Government crisis then occurred and the question of concession was one of the causes of the fall of the former Persian Government. The Parliament opposed the grant of foreign concessions until after the war and the new Persian Government decided to postpone the whole question until the war ended.

[Meanwhile,] a large proportion of the 600 inmates of a leper hospital near Colombo are on hunger strike. The strike started when 24 inmates complained about bad cooking of vegetables served to them and refused to go back to their wards, demanding their complaint be enquired into by an outside authority. (Dawn, Delhi)

Published in Dawn, October 24th, 2014