Mes: agosto 2019

(AP) UNITED NATIONS – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange accused President Barack Obama on Thursday of seeking to exploit the Arab uprisings for personal political gain, as he addressed a sideline meeting of the U.N. General Assembly via videolink from his hideout at a London...

(AP) UNITED NATIONS – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel of ethnic cleansing Thursday for building settlements in east Jerusalem. “It is a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people via the demolition of their homes,” Abbas said in his speech to the U.N. General Assembly. Shortly after, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rebuked Abbas in his own address to the assembly. “We won’t solve our conflict with libelous speeches at the U.N.,” Netanyahu said. Israel rejects criticism of settlementsIran overshadows Palestinian issue at U.N.Israeli defense chief proposes West Bank pullout Israel captured the eastern part of Jerusalem from Jordan during the 1967 Mideast War. It later annexed it but the move has not been internationally recognized. The Palestinians want east Jerusalem to the capital of their future state in the West Bank. Abbas also said he has opened talks on a new bid for international recognition at the U.N., but didn’t specify exactly when he will ask the General Assembly to vote. “Intensive consultations with the various regional organizations and the state members” were underway, he said. The Palestinians will apply to the General Assembly for nonmember state status. That stands in sharp contrast to last year, when they asked the Security Council to admit them as a full member state, but the bid failed. Abbas insisted that the new quest for recognition was “not seeking to...

(AP) MEXICO CITY – Mexican officials say they have struck a major blow against a faction of the hyper-violent Zetas cartel, arresting one of the country’s most-wanted drug traffickers, Ivan Velazquez Caballero, known as “El Taliban,” and placing him on display in a Thursday morning press conference. Velazquez Caballero allegedly has been fighting a bloody internal battle with top Zetas’ leader Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, and officials have said the split was behind a recent surge in massacres and shootouts, particularly in northern Mexico. Masked marines displayed the burly, handcuffed suspect alongside two alleged accomplices and a table of guns and other contraband seized during his arrest. Velazquez Caballero is the third alleged cartel leader to be taken into custody this month. All are accused of leading factions of the Gulf Cartel or Zetas, former allies now feuding over valuable smuggling territory along the U.S. border. The alleged heads of the two main factions of the Gulf group, Mario Cardenas Guillen and Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sanchez, were also seized in Navy operations in northern Mexico. In the waning months of President Felipe Calderon’s presidency, the arrests add to the list of cartel figures taken out of action as part of his U.S.-backed strategy of removing the leadership of drug-smuggling organizations. Calderon and the Obama administration say the strategy is working, but many independent groups say it has helped fuel...

Critic David Edelstein previews the latest offerings from Hollywood, and finds even the comedies are grim: Glum though I am about the end of summer, with fall comes … no superhero movies! And no 3-D! Well, a lot less, which means fewer headaches, so sell your Tylenol stock. Fall opened strong last Friday with “Moneyball,” and next Friday brings another bright comedy called “50/50,” after hero Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s odds of surviving his spinal cancer. Yes, it’s grim, too, obviously. But the film is less about his illness than other peoples’ dumb behavior in the face of it. And in the case of Anna Kendrick as his novice therapist, she’s so lovably dumb you’re almost happy a horrific disease helped ’em meet cute. More downbeat than the cancer movie is “Take Shelter,” from brilliant young director Jeff Nichols, about a man played by Michael Shannon ravaged by visions of apocalypse. It’s arty and creepy and as barmy as its hero in the end. But it might just capture the national mood. The downbeat goes on in George Clooney’s latest as director and actor, a political melodrama called “The Ides of March,” starring Ryan Gosling as a campaign aide to lefty presidential candidate Clooney whose high ideals plummet to Earth, don’t cha know, when it’s time to win. I like the first half, before all that smug cynicism. Hollywood’s money is...