California Dreaming of Peace

Daily Express 5th May 1992

Curfew lifted as life gets back to normal

SLOWLY but surely, life was returning to normal in California yesterday.
In riot-torn Los Angeles, youngsters went back to the beaches for the first time in four days as the curfew was lifted.

Earlier there were outbreaks of violence, but an uneasy calm eventually settled over the city.

The death toll rose to 51 when a motorist was shot dead after trying to mow down National Guardsmen with his car. They fired eight shots at the car.

With at least 2,790 people injured, many still on the critical list, and 2,213 fires, the financial impact was estimated to be soaring towards one billion dollars of damage.
But 100 miles up the coast, it was just like old times for Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev.

The former superpower leaders behaved like a pair of real good buddies, with Reagan kitting out Gorbachev in a cowboy stetson for a Jeep ride.

They relaxed together on Reagan's 688-acre Rancho del Cielo at the start of the former Soviet leader's 14-day tour of the States.

Gorbachev is expected to return to Moscow £600,000 richer from his tour of America's lucrative lecture circuit.

Most of the money will go to the Gorbachev foundation, which is using some of the cash to airlift medical supplies to the former Soviet Union. Later Mikhail and wife Raisa visited the Reagan library in Simi Valley, where the Rodney King court case which sparked the riots was held.

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