Mes: agosto 2019

(AP) SEOUL, South Korea – It’s a classic tale of a small-town girl who follows her dreams to the big city. But in this case, the girl is a North Korean coal miner, the big city is Pyongyang and her dream is to become a high-flying trapeze artist. “Comrade Kim Goes Flying,” a collaboration between a North Korean director and two European filmmakers, makes its world premiere Saturday at the Toronto International Film Festival before it heads to Pyongyang later this month for its North Korean debut. The film was shot on location with an all-Korean cast, but it avoids overtly political themes and isn’t what foreign audiences might expect to see from North Korea: a feel-good romantic comedy about a plucky young woman who grabs her chance to run off to the circus, only to find her wings clipped by the show’s handsome but arrogant superstar. He seems determined to make sure she doesn’t succeed – until he falls in love with her. Watch: A glimpse at the real North KoreaU.S. scolds North Korea for unauthorized Disney show British co-director Nicholas Bonner called the story an “unexpected fairytale.” “It’s one purely about a girl going about her dream” Bonner told The Associated Press in an interview in Pyongyang. “She’s an individual and rather cheeky character with this dream of hers to fly.” Bonner has been traveling to Pyongyang...

(CBS/AP) BEIRUT – Syrian rebels claim to have shot down a warplane and captured its pilot Monday — a rare but significant event, if proven true, for the lightly armed fighters that would show their increasing ability to combat air attacks from President Bashar Assad’s forces. The Syrian government denies the rebels’ claim, saying the warplane experienced malfunctions and the pilot was forced to eject. Earlier Monday, activists released a video which they said shows a government Soviet-made MiG warplane catching fire after it apparently was hit by ground fire over Deir el-Zour province. The warplane appears to spiral into a ball of flames. It was impossibly to independently verify the video. Rebels carve out large enclave in north SyriaVideo: Clinton in Turkey for talks on SyriaU.S. imposes new Syria sanctions; U.K. boosts aidSyrian gov’t forces appear to gain upper hand in battle for Aleppo SANA, Syria’s state news agency, said the plane was on a training mission when a “technical failure occurred” and the pilot had to eject. It added that a search was under way to find the pilot. Another video issued by Syrian rebels and shown on the pan-Arab network Al-Arabiya purports to show the captured pilot. The video also could not be independently confirmed. In the video, a man identifies himself as the pilot as he is surrounded by three armed men. He says he...

(CBS/AP) NEW YORK – When you heard that Pulitzer Prize winner Philip Levine was appointed America’s new poet laureate, you probably wondered just what a poet laureate does. Well, for starters, he – or she – receives $35,000 and is known officially from October through May as the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry for the U.S. The laureate has few official duties and poets before Levine have used the job to pursue a range of personal projects. For example, Billy Collins (2001-2003) started the Poetry 180 program which encourages the reading of verse in high school. The 180 refers to the 180 poems Collins selected for the program. Collins also wrote a poem to commemorate the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and read it aloud at a special joint session of Congress on Sept 6, 2002. Another previous poet laureate, Robert Hass (1995-1997) went around the country lecturing on poetry and ecological awareness and organized a nationwide “Watershed” conference on nature writing. He also wrote a column about poetry for the Washington Post. What is Levine planning? “I don’t want to overextend myself, but at the same time I would like to use the ‘bully pulpit,’ as they call it, to bring attention to some of my concerns,” the 83-year-old poet told the Associated Press. “There’s a great deal of American poetry that’s hardly known and that should be known....