Mes: agosto 2019

(AP) TOLEMAIDA, Colombia – Their peace talks don’t begin until next month, and the Colombian government and the country’s main leftist rebel movement already have run into differences. Just hours after leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia proposed on Thursday that both sides observe a truce during the negotiations, President Juan Manuel Santos firmly rejected the idea. Santos said there would be no end to fighting until a peace accord is agreed on. He said Colombia’s military and police have been told to intensify offensive actions. “There’s not going to be any cease-fire. We will not give anything until we get the final agreement, and I want to make that very clear,” the president told reporters at a military base in central Colombia. Santos, who spoke after meeting with more than 100 generals and colonels, did not respond to questions. There was no immediate comment from the FARC rebels. Leaders of the movement said during a news conference in Cuba that their first item on the negotiations’ agenda would be to propose a truce in Colombia’s half-century of fighting that has killed tens of thousands. “We will propose a cease-fire the moment we sit down at the table,” said Mauricio Jaramillo, a spokesman and top FARC leader. “We are going to discuss it.” Before Santos rejected that idea, he said during a radio interview Thursday that a...

(AP) MOSCOW – Three punk rock-style activists who briefly took over a cathedral in a raucous prayer for deliverance from Vladimir Putin were sentenced to two years in prison for hooliganism on Friday, a decision that drew protests around the world as it highlighted the Russian president’s intensifying crackdown on dissent. Protesters from Moscow to New York and musicians including Madonna and Paul McCartney condemned the prosecution of the three women, members of a band called Pussy Riot. Several countries, including the U.S., and even some Kremlin loyalists decried the verdict. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, Maria Alekhina, 24, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, 고성콜걸 were arrested in March after performing a “punk prayer” in Christ the Savior Cathedral, dancing and high-kicking as they called on the Virgin Mary to save Russia from Putin, who was elected to a third term as Russia’s president two weeks later. Judge Marina Syrova ruled Friday that the band members had “committed hooliganism driven by religious hatred.” She rejected the women’s arguments that they were protesting the Russian Orthodox Church’s support for Putin and didn’t intend to offend religious believers. Putin himself had said the band members shouldn’t be judged too harshly, creating expectations that they could be sentenced to time served and freed in the courtroom. This, however, would have left the impression that Putin had bowed to public pressure, something he has resisted throughout...