IRA Withdrawal
The New York Times
and Los
Angeles Times agree that today's top story is the IRA's announcement
that it would reinstate the cease-fire it had observed between August, 1994 and
February, 1996. The Washington Post leads instead with six columns--the
beginning of a multi-part series, with related articles inside--on the sad
state of the Washington D.C. municipal government under Mayor Marion Barry. The
piece runs under a banner headline: "From the Top, a City That Doesn't
Work."
According to the NYT , the IRA cease-fire "announcement came after
British Prime Minister Tony Blair had made several important concessions to
[the IRA's political arm] Sinn Fein to obtain the new cease-fire, notably
saying that disarmament of [IRA and Protestant] paramilitaries would not have
to start before the September talks." And the paper reports that Sinn Fein's
leader, Gerry Adams, and British and Irish officials all said they hoped the
cease-fire would mean Sinn Fein would be joining upcoming peace talks.
Neither the words "bomb" nor "murder" appear in the NYT account. (A
concession to a large Irish-American readership?) By contrast, the LAT
coverage is pretty explicit about what the IRA's been up to lately. Its second
paragraph states that the cease-fire means the IRA is "renouncing a terrorist
campaign that has included bombings, the killings of two policemen and the
disruption of public services in recent months." Which is why it's surprising
that the LAT commits the unclarity of saying that the earlier cease-fire
"ended without warning in February, 1996 with a London truck bomb that killed
two people," without mentioning that the explosion was attributed to the
IRA.
The WP on the D.C. government is a tale of resources amassed but not
delivered. The paper reveals that despite having the highest rates of new AIDS
infection, tuberculosis, and infant mortality in the nation, the city's
Commission on Public Health fumbled spending $89 million in federal grant money
targeted to just these areas. Additionally, in a city with "acres of abandoned
and decrepit housing," local officials failed to spend millions in federal
block grant money intended to rehabilitate housing for the poor. Meanwhile,
says the Post , the city chronically pays high rents to politically
favored landlords. In fact, "The city's Department of Housing and Community
Development spends $1 million a year above the market rate to rent its
office.."
The WP reports that despite revelations at last week's Senate
fundraising hearings, President Clinton and his senior foreign policy advisors
still believe that China did not have a plan to influence U.S. elections
illegally, and hence that "there is so far no cause for taking punitive steps
against Beijing."
The LAT reports on its front page that President Clinton announced
yesterday that Los Angeles will be added to a computerized law enforcement
tracking system that helps cops catch illegal gun traffickers by tracing guns
sold to juveniles. In making the announcement, Clinton stated that "over the
past decades, the number of gun murders by juveniles has skyrocketed 300
percent." The WP reports that according to data already collected in
that system, "More than half of 958 guns recovered at crime scenes in
Washington [D.C.] in a recent period were in the hands of criminals younger
than 25.."
Guess what's one of the hottest shows on German cable television. According
to a piece today in the NYT 's "Week in Review" section, it's "Hogan's
Heroes." Touchy plot lines have been softened with creative dubbing, and the
camp staff's stiff-armed salutes are never accompanied by "Heil Hitler."
Instead what they say is, "This is how high the cornflowers grow!" Meanwhile,
"Seinfeld" was just canceled.
