Mes: septiembre 2019

“We have nothing to do,” the talk-show host said. “The writers aren’t here.” To fill the time, he got a shave on the air. Johnny Carson, then host of “The Tonight Show,” was also at a loss. ”It is not fun to come to work when you see your friends who you’ve known for many years standing out on a picket line,” he said on air. “And it’s a weird picket line: The writers are out there holding up these signs and there’s nothing on them.” But the 1988 strike by the Writers Guild of America did not produce so many fresh jokes. For one thing, the airwaves were filled with reruns. And not too much was funny. The strike lasted 22 weeks, reportedly cost the industry $500 million, and caused hardship for individual strikers. “People lost their houses, they weren’t able to send their kids to college,” Dick Wolf, executive producer of Law and Order, told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2001, when a similar strike threatened (but didn’t materialize.) Some were forced to adjust in creative ways. Fran Drescher and her husband Peter Marc Jacobson (later co-creators of “The Nanny”) launched a good business, Loaf & Kisses Gourmet Croutons, which kept going. The strike also resulted in a changed cultural landscape. The fall television season was delayed, and several shows were permanently canceled. Much of the public...

...

(AP) BEIRUT – Armed Shiite clansmen in Lebanon said Wednesday they had captured more than 20 Syrians and will hold them until one of their relatives seized by rebels inside Syria is freed. The tensions were a stark reminder of how easily Syria’s civil war could spill over to neighboring states. In Geneva, a U.N. investigation said Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces and pro-government militiamen were responsible for war crimes during a May bloodbath in the village of Houla that killed more than 100 civilians, nearly half of them children. It also said rebels were blamed for war crimes in at least three other killings. The report by the U.N. Human Rights Council said the scale of the Houla carnage indicated “involvement at the highest levels” of Syria’s military and government. It is first time the U.N. has described events in Syria’s civil war as war crimes and could be used in possible future prosecution against Assad or others. The council also said the conflict is moving in increasingly “brutal” directions on both sides. Hotel used by U.N. observers rocked by explosion in Damascus, Syria’s capital cityPentagon: Iran training militiamen for AssadU.S. lifts sanctions on ex-Syria PM More in After the Arab Spring As the fighting deepens, so do the fears of it triggering unrest in fragile Lebanon, which is deeply divided between supporters and opponents of President Bashar...