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In a day where conflicts seem to be the watchword, all eyes were focused at the strange goings-on in San Diego, California.
Thirty-nine members of a cult of computer programmers systematically killed themselves by washing down drugs with vodka and possibly putting plastic bags over their heads, leaving for what they thought was a rendezvous marked by comet Hale-Bopp. “By the time you receive this, we’ll be gone several dozen of us,” a white-haired man who identified himself as a leader of the Heaven’s Gate cult said in a videotaped statement sent earlier this week to Rick Strawcutter, a minister and conservative radio commentator from Adrian, Mich. “We came from the Level Above Human in distant space, and we have now exited the bodies that we were wearing for our earthly task, to return to the world from whence we came task completed. The distance space we refer to is what your literature would call the kingdom of heaven, or kingdom of God.” The 21 female and 18 male cult members died of either a drug overdose or asphyxiation, San Diego County Medical Examiner Brian Blackbourne told a news conference Thursday afternoon, a day after the bodies were found in a $1.3-million mansion in an exclusive neighborhood north of San Diego. Further details of the suicide were forthcoming.
Meanwhile, On the eve of a planned nationwide strike, Russian police assembled extra forces Wednesday to prevent violence when millions of workers protest unpaid wages by walking off their jobs. Union officials predict as many as 17 million Russians will join the one-day strike over paychecks that many workers haven’t received for at least three and sometimes as long as six months. President Boris Yeltsin has expressed sympathy for the strikers plight, which most blame on the economic policies of his government. He has promised that the wage payment crisis would be a top priority of his newly revamped administration.
And a concerned President Clinton sent senior American mediator Dennis B Ross to the Middle East on Wednesday to try to halt violence that threatens to rupture peacemaking between Israel and the Arabs. “1 am concerned about this Everybody in the world who’s worked for peace in the Middle East is concerned about this” the president told reporters. He declined to say whether he might call for an emergency summit of regional leaders. Another option could be to send Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to the region based on an assessment of the report. Ross was instructed to bring back to Clinton by the weekend. The president said he did not want “to comment any more about anything I would consider on the Middle East until I hear back from Mr Ross. He has very explicit instructions I want to see what happens as a result”.
And along with the developing Suicide story from San Diego, that’s just a little of what happened around the world, this March 28, 1997 as reported by the BBC World Service Newsday.
