Cease-fire in eastern Ukraine is holding
KIEV, Ukraine – A renewed cease-fire in eastern Ukraine has held for more than 10 days, creating the possibility that political talks can move forward to resolve the conflict, the head of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said Saturday.
Despite a cease-fire declared in February, both Ukrainian troops and the Russia-backed separatists carried out regular artillery strikes until they pledged anew to implement the truce on Sept. 1, the day children returned to school. About 8,000 people have been killed since the fighting began in April 2014, according to the UN.
OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier said he had just come from the southeastern city of Mariupol and nearby Shyrokyne, a center of recent fighting, and the situation was calm. His group is charged with monitoring the cease-fire.
“So the cease-fire now has being holding for more than 10 days, and that’s good news, because that is opening now the space to make progress on a political level,” he told The Associated Press.
‘Mena’ crew members killed in plane crash
BOGOTA, Colombia – Actor Tom Cruise flew in a helicopter across the Colombian Andes just 10 minutes before a small plane on the same flight path crashed into a jungled mountain, killing 2 crew members from his upcoming movie, civil aviation authorities said.
An official with the aviation agency, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter, said the cause of the crash Friday that killed two people and seriously injured a third is still under investigation.
Those killed were veteran Hollywood pilot Alan Purwin and Venezuelan Carlos Berl, while another American, Jimmy Lee Garland, survived. All three were experienced pilots, the official said.
They crashed while returning to the city of Medellin on the twin-engine Piper-Aerostar 600 after a day of filming with Cruise for the film “Mena,” which stars the actor as American pilot Barry Seal, a drug runner recruited in the 1980s by the CIA to try to capture the late cocaine kingpin, Pablo Escobar.
‘From Afar’ wins big at Venice Film Festival
VENICE, Italy – Venezuelan director Lorenzo Vigas’ powerful Caracas-set drama “From Afar” won the Venice Film Festival’s top Golden Lion prize on Saturday, as filmmakers from the Americas beat established European directors for the main trophies.
The runner-up Grand Jury Prize went to an American film, Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson’s inventive, animated “Anomalisa.” And Pablo Trapero’s “El Clan” (“The Clan”), an Argentine true-crime thriller that has broken box-office records in its homeland, took the Silver Lion for best direction.
“From Afar” – “Desde Alla” in Spanish – is Vigas’ first fiction feature, and charts the unexpected relationship between a middle-aged, middle-class man and a violent street youth. Quietly but powerfully, the film maps the currents of sex, money and violence beneath the surface of Venezuelan society.
Vigas dedicated his prize to his country, which is experiencing political and economic turbulence.
The Associated Press
