Stallone’s Visit Not in the Script

In what could prove to be the plot outline for “Rambo IV,” East German border guards refused to allow Sylvester Stallone entry into East Berlin, apparently afraid that his presence in the Communist city might set off a riot. Stallone was in West Berlin to promote his new film “Rambo III.” The 43-year-old star, who wanted to tour East Berlin’s Pergamon Museum, said: “(President) Reagan called them the ‘evil empire’ yet they let him in. I told it the way it is in movies. So much for glasnost, “ referring to the Soviet policy of openness. Sly’s latest has Rambo socking it to the Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Earlier in the day, Stallone visited a West Berlin museum near the Checkpoint Charlie border crossing that chronicles escapes across the Berlin Wall. There, he met Liane Suendermann, 22, who was describing her flight from East Berlin May 27 under the front seat of her boyfriend’s car. Stallone hugged her and kissed her on the cheek, saying: “In my eyes she is a real hero.”

--At a rainy outdoor commencement ceremony in Cambridge, Mass., Costa Rican President and Nobel laureate Oscar Arias Sanchez urged more than 5,550 graduates of Harvard University to use their education “to contribute to ease suffering in the world.” Arias, who received the 1987 Nobel Prize for his plan to end regional conflict in Central America, also pledged in his remarks to continue to seek peaceful solutions to the turmoil. He told the graduates: “The majority of young people in this world are neither here nor in other university graduations. . . . The privilege of knowledge bears a social responsibility. Upon graduation, every student has an obligation to society. Your actions of the future must make a difference, must contribute to ease suffering in the world.” Arias received an honorary doctor of laws degree.

--Christopher Columbus a spy? That’s what author Augusto Mascarenhas Barreto claims, after spending 14 years examining old documents and deciphering the explorer’s handwriting. Barreto maintains that Columbus was not an Italian navigator but a Portuguese spy working for King Joao II when he set off on his voyage to the New World on Aug. 3, 1492. According to Barreto, Columbus went behind the backs of his Spanish sponsors to make a deal with Joao (John the Perfect). The agreement to split the territories that Columbus found between Spain and Portugal enabled Lisbon to secure its colonial empire in Brazil, Africa and Asia, the author said. Barreto also contends that Columbus was not born in Genoa, Italy, but in the southern Portuguese village of Cuba.