Hostage Crisis

CHIANG MAI, Thailand - Former president Jimmy Carter said yesterday that he was pressed by his advisers to attack Iran during the hostage crisis there more than 30 years ago but resisted because he feared 20,000 Iranians could have died. Islamist militants stormed the US Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979, and seized its occupants. Fifty-two Americans were held hostage for 444 days. Carter acknowledged that his failure to bring the hostages home - including a botched rescue mission in which eight US servicemen died - led to his election defeat.

NEW YORK - Sid Moody, a longtime feature writer for the Associated Press who chronicled major events of the 20th century from the assassination of John F. Kennedy to the Iranian hostage crisis, has died. He was 83. His son Clarke said Tuesday that his father died Sunday in a hospital in Morristown, N.J. A longtime resident of Bernardsville, N.J., Mr. Moody spent his last years at a retirement community in Bernards Township, N.J. He joined the AP in Newark in 1956 and later moved to the news features department in New York City.

BESLAN, Russia -- Mothers wailed over the coffins of their children yesterday and dozens of townsmen dug graves in a football field-size piece of scrubland next to the cemetery. Funeral processions snaked through the streets as grief-stricken Russians began to bury victims of the terror attack on a school that left more than 350 people dead. Frantic relatives also were still searching for 180 people, many of them children, who are still unaccounted for, two days after the bloody climax of the hostage crisis that left few families untouched in this tight-knit, mostly industrial town of...

ON WGBH This Old House Hour 5 p.m. WGBH (Channel 2) The Bedford project continues, and master carpenter Norm Abram revisits the oldest "This Old House" project to date, in Acton. RADIO HIGHLIGHTS This American Life noon WGBH-FM (89.7) At the suggestion of a 14-year-old listener, stories from the world of middle school. Boston Symphony Orchestra 7 p.m. Classical New England (99.5) Violinist Gidon Kremer joins the BSO for Robert Schumann's Violin Concerto.

WASHINGTON -- The White House said yesterday that it would not be surprised if the newly elected president of Iran turns out to have been a main participant in the holding of American hostages in Tehran a quarter-century ago, but said it was still trying to determine the facts. Five former American hostages who saw the Iranian president-elect, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in photos or on television said they believe he was among the hostage-takers. One said he was interrogated by Ahmadinejad.

BERLIN -- Hans-Juergen Wischnewski, a German politician best known as the negotiator in the 1977 hijacking of a Lufthansa airliner to Somalia by leftist terrorists, died Thursday. He was 82. Mr. Wischnewski, a lifelong Social Democrat and longtime international troubleshooter for Germany, died at a Cologne hospital from an infection, his spokesman Arnold Joosten said. Born July 24, 1922, in East Prussia, now part of Poland, Mr. Wischnewski was the son of a customs officer.

The Medfield Historical Society has scheduled a special program today at the Peak House on Main Street. In honor of those who lost their lives on Sept. 11, 2001, the group will display its collection of historical flags on the front lawn. One of the flags flew for 444 days in Baxter Park during the US hostage crisis in Iran, from 1979 to 1981. The house, which dates to the 1600s, will be open for tours starting at 2 p.m. After today, the Peak House will be closed - except by appointment - until Nov. 19, when it opens for one day for the society's annual Pantry Sale.

FALMOUTH, Maine - Robert Dyk, a longtime Maine broadcaster and a former television network correspondent who covered the hostage crisis in Iran, died Saturday of cancer. He was 71. Mr. Dyk began his career as an editorial assistant with CBS News during coverage of the 1960 Democratic convention. Through the years, he worked on TV and in radio around the world, covering stories as diverse as the death of Winston Churchill, rioting in Los Angeles, and bloodshed in Beirut. He went to work for ABC News in 1978 and was on the scene for the 1979 takeover of the US Embassy and the seizure of American...

NEW YORK - Sid Moody, a longtime feature writer for the Associated Press who chronicled major events of the 20th century from the assassination of John F. Kennedy to the Iranian hostage crisis, has died. He was 83. His son Clarke said Tuesday that his father died Sunday in a hospital in Morristown, N.J. A longtime resident of Bernardsville, N.J., Mr. Moody spent his last years at a retirement community in Bernards Township, N.J. He joined the AP in Newark in 1956 and later moved to the news features department in New York City.

The Pixar Story 8 p.m., CNBC Ah, Pixar, blessed Pixar. You brought heart and wit back to the movies. Has this remarkable animation studio made a bad film yet? I can’t think of one. I can think of plenty of great ones, though: “Finding Nemo,’’ “The Incredibles,’’ “A Bug’s Life,’’ “Ratatouille,’’ and of course, the “Toy Story’’ series (pictured), especially “Toy Story 2.’’ Even less-than-great Pixar flicks (“Cars,’’ say, or “Monsters Inc.’’)

The Medfield Historical Society has scheduled a special program today at the Peak House on Main Street. In honor of those who lost their lives on Sept. 11, 2001, the group will display its collection of historical flags on the front lawn. One of the flags flew for 444 days in Baxter Park during the US hostage crisis in Iran, from 1979 to 1981. The house, which dates to the 1600s, will be open for tours starting at 2 p.m. After today, the Peak House will be closed - except by appointment - until Nov. 19, when it opens for one day for the society's annual Pantry Sale.

The Pixar Story 8 p.m., CNBC Ah, Pixar, blessed Pixar. You brought heart and wit back to the movies. Has this remarkable animation studio made a bad film yet? I can’t think of one. I can think of plenty of great ones, though: “Finding Nemo,’’ “The Incredibles,’’ “A Bug’s Life,’’ “Ratatouille,’’ and of course, the “Toy Story’’ series (pictured), especially “Toy Story 2.’’ Even less-than-great Pixar flicks (“Cars,’’ say, or “Monsters Inc.’’)

CHIANG MAI, Thailand - Former president Jimmy Carter said yesterday that he was pressed by his advisers to attack Iran during the hostage crisis there more than 30 years ago but resisted because he feared 20,000 Iranians could have died. Islamist militants stormed the US Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979, and seized its occupants. Fifty-two Americans were held hostage for 444 days. Carter acknowledged that his failure to bring the hostages home - including a botched rescue mission in which eight US servicemen died - led to his election defeat.

FALMOUTH, Maine - Robert Dyk, a longtime Maine broadcaster and a former television network correspondent who covered the hostage crisis in Iran, died Saturday of cancer. He was 71. Mr. Dyk began his career as an editorial assistant with CBS News during coverage of the 1960 Democratic convention. Through the years, he worked on TV and in radio around the world, covering stories as diverse as the death of Winston Churchill, rioting in Los Angeles, and bloodshed in Beirut. He went to work for ABC News in 1978 and was on the scene for the 1979 takeover of the US Embassy and the...

QALA-E-KAZI, Afghanistan -- Taliban militants released 12 captives in a series of handovers yesterday, part of a deal with Seoul to free all 19 South Korean hostages that one Afghan minister warned would embolden the insurgents. The South Koreans, Christian aid workers who were kidnapped nearly six weeks ago, were turned over to the International Committee of the Red Cross at three locations in central Afghanistan. None of the 12 spoke to reporters. The remaining South Koreans will be freed over the next 48 hours, Taliban commanders have said.

Power Play , By Joseph Finder, St. Martin’s Press, 384 pp., $24.95 There's a reassuring predictability about the thriller genre. We know these fictional worlds well, having consistently absorbed their formulaic fun through books, movies, and TV shows. We expect the wisecracking hero with his troubled past; we know the hero's dark secrets will create a "complicated" relationship with his love interest; we understand that a diabolical villain will come along, bringing the dramatic tension to a boil; finally, we anticipate the hero and villain squaring off, resolving...

TOKYO -- Vice President Dick Cheney brought a message of solidarity yesterday to a nation torn over its commitment of humanitarian forces in Iraq. The abduction of three Japanese hostages by Iraqi militants cast a long shadow over the start of Cheney's weeklong trip to Asia. While the militants said they would free the Japanese civilians, hundreds of antiwar demonstrators urged their government to withdraw Japanese troops from Iraq to save the lives of the three kidnapped civilians.

LONDON -- President Bush has exploited the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and a timorous American press has not held him to account, former President Jimmy Carter said in an interview published yesterday. Carter was asked by the Guardian newspaper why he failed to win reelection in 1980 against Ronald Reagan after Iranian radicals held US citizens hostage for 444 days, while Bush may win reelection despite misgivings over the Iraq war. "The basic reason is that our country suffered, in 9/11, a terrible and shocking attack . . . and George Bush has been adroit...

Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America's War With Militant Islam By Mark Bowden Atlantic Monthly, 680 pp., illustrated, $26 Before there was Osama bin Laden, America's nominee for the Muslim spot in the pantheon of religious nuts would have been the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran. Those of a certain age will never forget (because Walter Cronkite kept nightly count for us) 444, the sadly symmetrical number of days that 52 Americans were held hostage after student-led mobs stormed the American Embassy in Tehran in November 1979.

WASHINGTON -- The White House said yesterday that it would not be surprised if the newly elected president of Iran turns out to have been a main participant in the holding of American hostages in Tehran a quarter-century ago, but said it was still trying to determine the facts. Five former American hostages who saw the Iranian president-elect, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in photos or on television said they believe he was among the hostage-takers. One said he was interrogated by Ahmadinejad.