El cine se despide de Berlanga: 'No hay nadie tan grande como él'

Hasta las 22.00 horas, por expreso deseo de la familia, ha estado abierta en la Academia del Cine la capilla ardiente en la que se velan los restos de Luis García Berlanga. El cineasta y académico, Premio Príncipe de Asturias de las Artes en 1986 y presidente honorífico de la Academia Española de Cine, enfermo de Alzheimer, ha fallecido en la madrugada de este sábado en su domicilio madrileño, a los 89 años de edad.

Su hijo mayor, José Luis Berlanga, aseguró que su padre ha muerto "tranquilo" en su casa después de haber cenado "su tortilla de patatas"."Y ha amanecido plácidamente con cara de señor dormido", ha añadido. Además, invitó a los ciudadanos a celebrar lo que ha significado su padre para el cine español.

'En el Olimpo de los grandes'

Álex de la Iglesia, presidente de la Academia del Cine, dedicó unas breves y sentidas palabras sobre alguien de quien dijo que "es más importante para mi que Ford".

"Berlanga y Buñuel son el alma del país, de un país sangriento y cruel, ingrato, que nunca aprenderá a amar a sus hijos lo suficiente y a devolverles con reconocimiento el valor incalculable de su aportación artística. Berlanga supo amar y odiar, reír y rodar con la fuerza asombrosa de un hombre libre pese a la dictadura, la intransigencia y la supuesta inteligencia de algunos".

"Berlanga se encuentra en el Olimpo de los grandes, no sólo de este país sino del mundo entero. Nadie en la historia del cine ha llegado tan lejos en talento y tan cerca de nuestras almas malheridas. Buñuel es el único que puede mirarle frente a frente. No hay nadie tan grande como Berlanga".

Mientras tras el féretro, instalado en el escenario del salón de actos, se iban proyectando fotografías de la trayectoria del cineasta, decenas de compañeros de profesión y gente anónima se acercó a darle el último adiós al cineasta.

El Mundo

Cae la red de narcotráfico más fuerte que ha operado en España

El grupo policial Greco de Galicia, en el marco de una operación internacional, ha logrado desmantelar la red "más fuerte que haya operado nunca en España" en el tráfico de drogas y blanqueo de dinero, según aseguró ayer un responsable policial a este periódico. 50 personas de la banda, dirigida desde Madrid por el mexicano Nicolás Rivera, han sido arrestadas, 23 de ellas en Galicia.

El puerto de Vigo era una de las principales vías de entrada de la cocaína. La droga llegaba camuflada en contenedores de manzanas, que luego se vendían a distribuidores legales.

El máximo responsable en Galicia era David Temes Arnosi, de 33 años, hermano de la concejal de Urbanismo en el Ayuntamiento de Mos. Temes, desde Argentina, y el grupo gallego, facilitaron a los responsables de la organización en Madrid la infraestructura para la distribución de la droga en el mercado negro y gestionaron operaciones de blanqueo de dinero, a través de varios concesionarios de vehículos de lujo.

En la operación se han incautado 3.400 kilos de cocaína en Argentina y Brasil, cuyo destino final eran puertos españoles, un alijo de 200 kilos de droga en el puerto de Barcelona y 5,5 millones de euros en efectivo. Los agentes han intervenido, además, empresas de importación y exportación entre España y Argentina que había creado la red para importar la droga.

El País

Call for troop withdrawal in Nicaragua, Costa Rica dispute

Washington (CNN) -- The permanent council of the Organization of American States has approved a resolution asking troops to withdraw from the disputed border area between Costa Rica and Nicaragua.

In a resolution issued early Saturday, the council said both nations should "avoid deployments of the armed forces or security forces in the area where their presence could generate tensions".

Tensions between Nicaragua and Costa Rica have flared over Calero Island, a parcel of land on the Atlantic coast. Managua claims the area is Nicaraguan and denies its troops are in Costa Rican territory. Costa Rica claims it has been invaded.

The resolution supported a report by OAS Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza that said both sides should resume binational talks and not escalate the military and police presence near the disputed area.

The council's Washington meeting was contentious, however, beginning Friday afternoon and lasting until early Saturday as diplomats tried to reach consensus. Ultimately, the resolution passed with 22 votes, the organization said in a statement. Three countries abstained and two voted against it.

Denis Ronaldo Moncada, Nicaragua's ambassador to the Organization of American States, said early Saturday that officials from his country would challenge the resolution.

CNN

Winning $129 million lottery ticket bought at Detroit-area porn store

(CNN) -- A group of friends got lucky when they bought a winning Powerball ticket at a Detroit-area porn shop.

Mike Greer claimed the $128.6 million prize on Friday, on behalf of a group of southeastern Michigan residents that he dubbed "Team Victory Club".  At a press conference in Lansing, Michigan, Greer wouldn't answer questions as to who purchased the ticket at Uptown Book Store in Highland Park, or why they were at the store in the first place.

"Nobody cares," said Greer.

Uptown Book Store, an adult novelty store a few miles north of Detroit that also rents pornographic videos, will get $50,000 from lottery officials for selling the winning ticket. It shares a building with the Deja Vu strip club.

At the same press conference, Steve Mays laid claim to a winning $141 million Mega Millions prize.

Mays, who said he's been retired the past 10 years, said it was "to be determined" what he'd do with his jackpot. He opted for the annuity plan, spreading out his winnings over 26 years, according to CNN affiliate WILX.

Team Victory Club, on the other hand, opted for a lump sum payout of $69.6 million before taxes.

Greer said that the winners planned to give some of their money to an unnamed local church, "and maybe fix some things around the house".

CNN

Monfils upsets Federer to face Soderling in Paris final

(CNN) -- Gael Monfils saved five match points before beating top seed Roger Federer 7-6 6-7 7-6 to reach the final of the Paris Masters on Saturday.

The home hero will play Robin Soderling for the title after the Swede beat another Frenchman, Michael Llodra, in an earlier pulsating encounter at the Bercy arena.

It was truly the great escape for 12th seed Monfils, who was on the ropes as he served at 5-6 down in the deciding set, having broken back after dropping his service for the first time. The opening two sets were shared on tiebreaks.

16-time grand slam champion Federer proceeded to force a succession of match points, all saved by a mixture of dogged defense by his French opponent or uncustomary errors by the world number two.

The partisan crowd breathed a collective sigh of relief when Monfils finally forced the third tiebreak of the match and claimed an early mini-break.

CNN

Death toll rises to 240 from Indonesia volcano

Jakarta, Indonesia (CNN) -- An Indonesian volcano has killed 240 people since it started erupting in October, officials said Saturday, a day after it spewed more hot ash and sent residents fleeing.

More than 390,000 people have been displaced, according to the nation's disaster coordination board.

At least 162 people suffered severe burns, the board said on its website.

Indonesia's Mount Merapi started erupting on October 26. On Friday, it spewed volcanic material for more than an hour.

CNN

Japan hopes for U.S. help in row with China

(CNN) -- The key topic of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit may be trade, but on the sidelines, host nation Japan is stressing the need for U.S. support in its strained relations with China.

And analysts say while the U.S. attempts to play peacemaker, it may see its future with China in Japan's current relationship with the rising superpower.

Japan's prime minister, briefing reporters about his meeting with the U.S. president on Saturday, thanked Barack Obama for his support in territorial disputes with Russia and China.

The disputes with both countries surround islands that Japan claims as sovereign territory, and began with a September skirmish at sea with China.

A Chinese fishing crew collided with two Japan coast guard vessels near islands in the East China Sea. Japan and China both claim the island as their territory. The Japanese coast guard detained the Chinese crew and captain, sparking an international dispute between the two countries and dragging relations to new lows.

China, flexing its growing economic muscle in the region, canceled high level ministerial meetings and, according to multiple Japanese importers, cut off supply of rare earth materials Japan relies on to produce high tech products. Thousands of Chinese tourists canceled vacations to Japan, an increasingly important source of income for Japan's tourism trade.

Japan's prosecutors eventually released the Chinese crew and captain, citing concerns over more diplomatic fallout with China.

CNN

Yahoo to expand its blog network Monday

(CNN) -- As countless print- or TV-based news organizations continue their descent, the future of the news business still seems curiously bright.

Just sniff around online for a look at the multitude of startups and internet giants throwing their bets on the table.

Yahoo, one Web behemoth, plans to add three new blogs to its growing family on Monday.

Yahoo's network expansion was born from a 7-month-old venture called The Upshot. For this blog covering breaking news and analysis, Yahoo recruited several seasoned journalists.

The new properties will live under The Upshot brand, but each take their own names -- The Ticket for politics, The Lookout for national affairs, and The Cutline for media industry coverage.

At the helm of the project is Andrew Golis, a 27-year-old who came from Talking Points Memo, an online-only news network. There, Golis helped steer a rocket ship of a news startup at a time when there was little assurance that the Web needed or wanted another news source.

Now, here he is again, helping to launch another news brand.

"On one hand, it is a very crowded space," Golis said of the news industry. "On the other hand, I think we're actually fairly early in the shift to digital".

There's a lot of noise on the Web, but Yahoo says it has unique attributes that will help it stand out. In addition to a strong team that includes veterans of the Washington Post, Politico and Gawker Media, the 15-year-old Sunnyvale, California, internet company outfits its journalists with tools that analyze search trends and other data from Yahoo visitors.

While helpful, reporters are discouraged from leaning too heavily on those tools, Golis said.

"It's an asset that we have to help us understand what will resonate," he said, but, "it doesn't function as an assignment editor".

Yahoo operates one of the most-visited news websites, according to research firm ComScore. The Upshot accounts for more than a third of the Yahoo News audience, drawing 30 million visitors a month, according to Yahoo's own traffic reports.

Yahoo News (The Upshot excluded) is centered around syndicated articles from The Associated Press, Reuters and others. But just because Yahoo is ramping up efforts to produce more of its own content, don't expect the writing to take a partisan approach, said Golis and his boss.

CNN

Across Afghanistan, a string of deadly attacks; at least 19 dead

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Violence tore through Afghanistan on Saturday in three deadly insurgent attacks, authorities said.

In the south, three international service members were killed. NATO's International Security Assistance Force. The command wouldn't say precisely where the event occurred and identify the nationalities of the troops.

The incident followed an earlier attack in Kunduz province, where a motorcycle bomb detonated in a market, killing at least 10 people, including three children in what the country's Interior Minister called an "un-Islamic and inhumane action." There were 18 people injured as well in the northern province.

ISAF denounced the strike and said insurgents are continuing "to engage in indiscriminate attacks which put Afghan civilians in harm's way" -- despite guidance from the Afghan Taliban leadership's to its fighters to avoid civilian casualties.

ISAF said that since the beginning of the month, "insurgents have engaged in at least 47 acts of indiscriminate violence" in civilian areas.

In Nangarhar province, located in the east, insurgents attacked an ISAF observation post at the Jalalabad airport, and six of the alleged attackers were killed by Afghan and foreign troops.

CNN

The daughter of a hero, Suu Kyi became Myanmar's symbol of hope

(CNN) -- She is small but only in physical stature. Aung San Suu Kyi is the very embodiment of Myanmar's long struggle for democracy.

The 65-year-old human rights activist has defied Myanmar's authoritarian military junta with her quiet demeanor and grace. For that she has endured house arrest for much of the past two decades and, perhaps, has become the world's most recognizable political prisoner.

She has lived quietly by herself at her disintegrating Inya Lake villa in Yangon (the former capital, also known as Rangoon), accompanied solely by two maids.

Before her release Saturday, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate had little outside human contact except for visits from her doctor.

Sometimes, though, she was able to speak over the wall of her compound to her supporters, never once tiring of her crusade to break down the tyranny of dictatorship in her beloved homeland of Burma, the alternate name for Myanmar.

CNN

Zsa Zsa Gabor suffers 'massive blood clot,' publicist says

Los Angeles, California (CNN) -- Actress Zsa Zsa Gabor was rushed to a Los Angeles hospital Friday after her doctor diagnosed her with "a massive blood clot," her publicist said.

Gabor's left leg was "swollen like hell" and she had an infection in her right leg, her husband, Prince Frederic Von Anhalt, said Friday evening, as his wife was being treated in the emergency room at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center.

She had "no blood flow to her leg," Von Anhalt said.

Gabor "was complaining about her leg swelling and hurting her" Friday morning, so a doctor was called to her Bel Air, California, home, publicist John Blanchette said.

The doctor diagnosed Gabor with a "massive blood clot," which he feared could move from her leg to her heart, Blanchette said.

Paramedics took Gabor, 93, to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, where she had undergone hip replacement surgery in July, he said. She spent several weeks in the hospital over the summer.

She has been frail and "pretty much confined to a wheelchair" since a 2002 car accident, Von Anhalt said. The crash happened when the car in which she was riding with her hairdresser slammed into a light pole on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.

The glamorous Hungarian-born actress, the second of the three celebrated Gabor sisters, is most famous for her many marriages. Among her husbands was Oscar-winning actor George Sanders.

Her more prominent films include John Huston's 1952 Toulouse-Lautrec biopic, "Moulin Rouge;" "The Story of Three Loves" in 1953; "The Girl in the Kremlin" in 1957; and Orson Welles' 1958 classic, "Touch of Evil".

CNN

First blood to Hamilton in Abu Dhabi

(CNN) -- McLaren's Lewis Hamilton scored an early boost over his three Formula One world-championship rivals on Friday as he set the fastest time in practice ahead of Sunday's Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

Hamilton's lap time of one minute 40.888 seconds put him clear of Red Bull duo Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber, who finished second and fourth respectively, with Fernando Alonso -- the favorite to take the 2010 crown at the season-ending race -- third fastest.

Two-time champion Alonso, 29, is the only one of the four who can seal the title at the Yas Marina Circuit with a top-two finish regardless of where the others finish, with each of the remaining drivers needing results to go their way for victory.

Hamilton still holds a slim hope of winning his second championship; he is currently fourth in the standings, 24 points behind leader Alonso, with 25 points on offer for the winner of the season's final race.

The 25-year-old had to battle with his Ferrari counterpart as they traded fast laps, but it was the 2008 champion who eventually got the better of the Spaniard.

CNN