Shocked World Reacts To Loss
The reaction around the world to the disappearance of John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife Carolyn and her sister, ranged from blaming the family's so-called "curse" of tragedy to Muammar Gaddafi blaming the United States for not finding the wreckage yet.
People in Britain are shocked at the tragedy, and front pages of all the British newspapers are filled with the story - calling it the inexplicable curse of the Kennedys. Radio and television stations are carrying live coverage from America, saying the United States has suffered a loss akin to losing royalty. Parallels to the death of Princess Diana, they say, cannot be overlooked.
British papers also underlined the relatively "ordinary" life the young Kennedy had chosen. "Kennedy was often regarded as possessing more beauty than brains," said the Sunday Telegraph.
In Italy, the front-page editorial of the newspaper La Stampa lamented, "Like Lady Di, John Kennedy Jr. just wanted to be normal... Destiny denied him normality."
"The curse kills another Kennedy" ran the front-page of Italy's Il Giornale. The newspaper ran five pages of features about the Kennedys, recalling "The royal and cursed dynasty" and "The beautiful and the damned."
In Spain, El Mundo newspaper said: "The curse of the Kennedys devours the son of the assassinated president."
"They had it all, beauty, intelligence, money, culture and charm. The only thing they lacked was the most important - the luck to enjoy it," El Mundo's story began.
Kennedy's disappearance topped French TV news Saturday with reports on the search, profiles of Kennedy's life and special reports devoted to the Kennedys, one about President Kennedy's death by retired CBS News Anchor Walter Cronkite.
In Australia, Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer said in a television interview: "We hope that against all odds there might be some good news, but this Kennedy clan seems to be a very troubled clan... I express sympathy to the Kennedy family."
His foreboding was echoed in Germany's Sunday newspapers, with Bild am Sonntag asking "Kennedy son dead in the sea?
France's only Sunday paper, Le Journal du Dimanche, also listed the mishaps and deaths in the family, running a picture of Kennedy and his wife under the sombre words: "The Kennedy Tragedy."
In Russia, NTV television's coverage of the search included footage of JFK Jr. meeting President Clinton.
Libyan leader Gaddafi said in a statement on the official news agency, Jana, that he had "expressed my sorrow for the loss of John Kennedy, Jr., son of the former president John Kennedy, and his wife."
But he added: "The thing which increased my sorrow is the failure of the USA in establishing the fate of John Kennedy Jr., as the USA claims to know everything, however small, anywhere in the earth or in the space with the huge resources of its communications and spying satellites."
Gaddafi compared the U.S. effort with Libya's successful recovery of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat 15 hours after his plane crashed in the Libyan-Chadian desert on April 7, 1992.