Permawar: Children and families in a public park in Lahore, Pakistan were targeted in a suicide bombing yesterday in which at least 69 people died and 300 were wounded. An offshoot of the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility.

It was the third bombing in Pakistan this month in a stepped-up campaign that has shaken the country. Pakistani officials deny that Christians were the target, but many Christians were in the park celebrating Easter.

Brussels: Minor violence broke out in Brussels yesterday when right wingers flashing fascist salutes confronted people gathered in memory of the 31 terrorist victims in last week’s attack. The counter-demonstrators lit flares and threw objects. The police commissioner described them as “340 hooligans from different football clubs.” Police used a water cannon to break it up.

Politics: The NY Times reports that even as Republican leaders wring their hands over the prospect of Donald Trump winning their party’s presidential nomination, they aren’t rushing to support Ted Cruz either. Jonathan Martin and Matt Flegenheimer write, “The decision by so many leading Republicans to remain on the sidelines is all the more notable because it appears inversely proportional to the scale of concern about Mr. Trump.”

Cruz, who once called Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a liar on the Senate floor, is possibly the most detested politician in Washington. They don’t like him and don’t think he can win so they are not throwing their weight behind him.

Secy. of State John Kerry said on CBS yesterday that the Republican race has become an embarrassment to America. “Everywhere I go, every leader I meet, they ask about what is happening in America. They cannot believe it.”

The Obit Page: Writer Jim Harrison, a prolific author of prose and poetry who published his latest book, The Ancient Minstrel, only last month, died at home in Arizona at age 78. Harrison was the author of 21 books of fiction, including “Legends of the Fall,” 14 books of poetry, and two books of essays. David Gates wrote earlier this month in the NY Times that, “No one writes more persuasively about the natural world, the ways of animals both wild and domestic, rural roughneck mores, hunting and fishing, food, drinking, the writing life and, of course, male lust: reflexive, resistless, defiantly unfashionable.”

Post Season: March Madness is down to its final four. On April 2, Villanova plays Oklahoma and Syracuse plays the University of North Carolina. Yesterday, Syracuse came from 14 points behind to knock off No. 1 Virginia. Once again, Barackett Obama failed to pick the winner. Kansas lost to Villanova.

>In college hockey it’s down to Quinnipiac v. Boston College and North Dakota v. Denver.

Box Office: The movie “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” raked in an amazing $170.1 million dollars in the US and another $254 million overseas despite reviews that said neither Batman nor Superman could save the show. The Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer gave it a 29 percent positive rating. Jonathan Fischer writes for Slate that, “Batman v Superman should be the nail in the coffin of an entire industry strategy, in which each superhero film’s primary job is to lay breadcrumbs leading toward the next one.”

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