12 Years a Slave’ wins big at pre-Oscar Spirit Awards

SANTA MONICA-

“12 Years a Slave” won big at the Independent Spirit Awards Saturday, taking home five trophies including best feature and building up momentum on the eve of the Oscars.

The searing historical drama also earned prizes for British director Steve McQueen, supporting actress Lupita Nyong’o, best cinematography and best screenplay.

The film, inspired by the true story of Solomon Northup, recounts the harrowing tale of a black violinist from New York state who was kidnapped and sold into slavery before the US Civil War.
McQueen dedicated his trophy to Northup, whom he said “inspired me to look and try to find the truth.”

Brad Pitt — who starred in and co-produced the film — said he had been touched from the outset by the story of a “man trapped in completely inhumane circumstances and trying to maintain his dignity.”

“This is a film I personally love. To be part of that doesn’t come along that often,” Pitt, who braved the rain to attend the laid-back ceremony in Santa Monica with his partner Angelina Jolie, told reporters.

Nyong’o, who turned 31 on Saturday, hailed the importance of independent film, saying it is “where stuff really happens, stuff that matters.”

“12 Years a Slave” was not the only big winner of the night.

The two stars of AIDS drama “Dallas Buyers Club,” Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto, took home acting prizes, further cementing their Oscars frontrunner status ahead of Sunday’s Academy Awards.

McConaughey won best male lead for his turn as HIV-positive AIDS activist Ron Woodroof and Leto took home the prize for best supporting actor for playing Woodroof’s transgender business partner.

“There is not a safety net and there is freedom coming with that,” McConaughey said of making the low-budget film.

Leto spoke out in support of anti-government protesters in Venezuela, where clashes have so far left 18 people dead.
“I’m sending good thoughts to the people in Venezuela that are fighting for what they believe. Venezuela is in my heart,” he said.

Cate Blanchett took the prize for best female lead for her role as a disgraced socialite in Woody Allen’s “Blue Jasmine.” She too is a favorite to win an Oscar.

The Australian actress thanked the producers and distributors of “Blue Jasmine” for making a film “led by women.”
“And in fact it can also make money!” she said.

“There is not a safety net and there is freedom coming with that,” McConaughey said of making the low-budget film.
Leto spoke out in support of anti-government protesters in Venezuela, where clashes have so far left 18 people dead.

“I’m sending good thoughts to the people in Venezuela that are fighting for what they believe. Venezuela is in my heart,” he said.

Cate Blanchett took the prize for best female lead for her role as a disgraced socialite in Woody Allen’s “Blue Jasmine.” She too is a favorite to win an Oscar.

The Australian actress thanked the producers and distributors of “Blue Jasmine” for making a film “led by women.”
“And in fact it can also make money!” she said.

Signed copies of Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ auctioned for $64,850

Copies of Adolf Hitler’s manifesto “Mein Kampf” signed by the German Nazi leader sold for $64,850 at an auction on Thursday in Los Angeles, auction house Nate D. Sanders said.

The autographed copies of the two-volume work steeped in anti-Semitism are inscribed as Christmas gifts to Josef Bauer, an officer in the German SS during World War Two and a participant in Hitler’s failed Munich coup in 1923.

Eleven people bid during an online auction that ended on Thursday evening for the signed books, which were estimated to sell for between $20,000 and $25,000, the auctioneer said. The winning bid includes a buyer’s premium, also known as commission fees.

The same Bauer books fetched $25,000 in a sale at Bonhams auction house in London in 2012.

In the two-volume “Mein Kampf” (My Struggle), Hitler lays out his vision for a resurgent Germany after World War One along with his racist National Socialist political ideology.

“Mein Kampf,” unlike Nazi insignia and some Nazi films and songs, is not banned in Germany. Its German copyright has been owned by Bavaria since the end of World War Two, and the southern German state has prohibited sales and printing.

Cuba cigar auction rakes in $1.1 million

HAVANA-

Six luxury humidors fetched more than $1.1 million Saturday at the gala closing the 16th annual Cigar Festival in Havana.
The humidors were packed with Montecristo and other prestigious cigars along with a painting by Cuban artist Zaida del Rio.

As in past years, the $1,102,210 in proceeds went to Cuba’s public health services, said Habanos SA, the exclusive distributor of Cuban cigars in 150 countries.

The festival, which featured tours of tobacco plantations and cigar factories, culminated with a gala dinner and auction that began Friday and lasted into the early morning hours Saturday.

British singer Tom Jones performed at the event, held on the PABEXPO fairgrounds on the outskirts of Havana.

Habanos SA is a joint venture between Cuban state company Cubatabaco and the Franco-Spanish Altadis that was bought in 2008 by the British Imperial Tobacco Group.

As the festival opened on Monday, Habanos SA reported that Cuban cigar sales were up eight percent in 2013, reaching $447 million, with strongest market gains in China.

Tobacco is one of Cuba’s top exports, behind nickel and biotech products.

Iran says abducted border guards freed in Pakistan

TEHRAN-

Five Iranian border guards reportedly seized and held captive in Pakistan for three weeks have been freed, an Iranian military official has been quoted as saying, although Pakistani authorities said they had no knowledge of the incident.

Iran’s official news agency IRNA said the Iranians, abducted by Sunni Muslim militants on February 6 in the restive Sistan-Baluchistan province, were among 11 foreign hostages freed in an operation by Pakistani forces.

Its Fars news agency on Saturday also quoted General M assoud Jazaerisemi as saying: “Five Iranian troops who had been kidnapped on our eastern borders and transferred to Pakistan were freed.”

He did not elaborate on the circumstances of the release, only saying that “the country’s entire police and security apparatus were involved in this matter”.

However, Pakistani authorities appeared to have no knowledge of the operation.

The government-run paramilitary Frontier Corps, which has primary responsibility for security in Baluchistan, said they had freed three Africans kidnapped by drug traffickers in Baluchistan on Saturday but had not recovered the Iranians.

A security official and the foreign office said on Sunday they were unaware of the incident.

The impoverished and relatively lawless Sistan-Baluchistan province has been a hotbed of rebellion by a disgruntled Sunni minority in predominantly Shi’ite Iran.

Angry over a spate of cross-border attacks by the so-called Jaish al-Adl (Army of Justice), Iran warned two weeks ago that it might pursue the rebels into Pakistani territory, provoking an angry warning from Islamabad.

Iran accuses both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia of supporting an armed Sunni rebellion.

Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif enjoys warm relations with Saudi Arabia, which sheltered him after an earlier military coup forced him into exile. Sharif’s cash-strapped government is also hoping for financial aid from the Saudis.

Saudi Arabia and Iran are rivals for influence in the Muslim world.

Canada pulls Ambassador from Moscow over Ukraine

Canada says it is pulling its ambassador from Moscow over the crisis in Ukraine.

A statement issued by Prime Minister Stephen Harper after an emergency Cabinet meeting says Canada also will boycott meetings leading up to the Group of Eight international economic summit being chaired by Russia in June.

Harper strongly condemns Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine and urges President Vladimir Putin to withdraw his troops.

International pressure is growing on Russia after its troops took over the strategic Crimea region Saturday. Russia’s parliament granted Putin authority to use the military to protect Russian interests in Ukraine, where a new government has been named after demonstrations pushed President Viktor Yanukovych from office.

President Barack Obama, U.N. Security Council members and others are asking Russia to de-escalate tensions.

China blames Separatists for Knife Attack; 33 Dead

BEIJING-

More than 10 assailants slashed scores of people with knives at a train station in southern China, drawing police fire, in what authorities called a terrorist assault by ethnic separatists based in the far west, state media said Sunday. Thirty-three people were killed and 130 wounded.

Police fatally shot four of the assailants , arrested one and were searching for the others following the attack late Saturday at the Kunming train station in Yunnan province, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Witnesses described attackers dressed in black storming the train station and attacking people indiscriminately.

The attackers’ identities were not yet confirmed, but evidence at the scene of the attack showed that it was “a terrorist attack carried out by Xinjiang separatist forces,” Xinhua quoted the municipal government as saying. Authorities considered it to be “an organized, premeditated violent terrorist attack.”

The far western region of Xinjiang is home to a simmering rebellion against Chinese rule by separatists among parts of the Muslim Uighur (pronounced WEE’-gur) population.

Most attacks blamed on Uighur separatists take place in Xinjiang, where clashes between ethnic Uighurs and members of China’s ethnic Han majority are also frequent. Saturday’s assault took place more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) to the southeast in Yunnan, which has not had a history of such unrest.

However, a suicide car attack blamed on Uighur separatists that killed five people at Beijing’s Tiananmen Gate last November raised alarms that militants could be changing tactics and aiming to strike at soft targets throughout the country.

In an indication of how seriously authorities viewed the attack — one of China’s deadliest in recent years — the country’s top police official, Politburo member Meng Jianzhu, arrived in Kunming on Sunday morning and went straight to the hospital to visit the wounded and their families, Xinhua reported.

The violence in Kunming came at a sensitive time as political leaders in Beijing prepared for Wednesday’s opening of the annual meeting of the nominal legislature where the government of President Xi Jinping will deliver its first one-year work report.

Xi called for “all-out efforts” to bring the culprits to justice. In a statement, the Security Management Bureau under the Ministry of Public Security said that police will “crack down the crimes in accordance with the law without any tolerance.”

A Xinhua reporter in Kunming said firefighters and emergency medical personnel were at the station and rushing injured people to hospitals, while police were investigating. The news agency said that in addition to the four attackers killed, 29 people described as civilians were confirmed dead and 130 injured.

More than 60 victims were taken to Kunming No. 1 People’s Hospital, where at least a dozen bodies also could be seen, according to Xinhua reporters at the hospital.

Xinhua said some victims were migrant workers who were returning to factories after family reunions over the Chinese New Year.

The attack was the deadliest violence attributed to Uighur-Han conflicts since riots in the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi in 2009, in which Uighurs stormed the streets of the city, targeting Han people in seemingly random violence that included killing women and children. A few days later Han vigilante mobs armed with sticks and bats attacked Uighurs in the same city. Nearly 200 people died

Russia ready to invade Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin demanded and won his parliament’s approval on Saturday to invade Ukraine, where the new government warned of war, put its troops on high alert and appealed to NATO for help.

Putin’s open assertion of the right to send troops to a country of 46 million people on the ramparts of central Europe creates the biggest confrontation between Russia and the West since the Cold War.

Troops with no insignia on their uniforms but clearly Russian – some in vehicles with Russian number plates – have already seized Crimea, an isolated peninsula in the Black Sea where Moscow has a large military presence in the headquarters of its Black Sea Fleet. Kiev’s new authorities have been powerless to stop them.

The United States said Russia was in clear violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and called on Moscow to withdraw its forces back to bases in Crimea. It also urged the deployment of international monitors to Ukraine.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk, leading a government that took power after Moscow’s ally Viktor Yanukovich fled a week ago, said Russian military action “would be the beginning of war and the end of any relations between Ukraine and Russia”.

Acting President Oleksander Turchinov ordered troops to be placed on high combat alert. Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchytsya said he had met European and U.S. officials and sent a request to NATO to “examine all possibilities to protect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine”.

The United States will suspend participation in preparatory meetings for a summit of G8 countries in Sochi, Russia, and warned of “greater political and economic isolation”, the White House said in a statement after President Barack Obama and Putin held a 90-minute telephone call.

Obama told Putin that if Russia had concerns about ethnic Russians in Ukraine, it should address them peacefully, the White House said.

Putin’s move was a direct rebuff to Western leaders who had repeatedly urged Russia not to intervene, including Obama, who just a day earlier had held a televised address to warn Moscow of “costs” if it acted.

Putin told Obama that Russia reserved the right to protect its interests and those of Russian speakers in Ukraine, the Kremlin said.