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US denies visas to Palestinian Authority leaders for UN general assembly | United Nations

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The US has begun denying and revoking visas from members of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Palestinian Authority (PA) in advance of the UN general assembly meeting in September, the state department said on Friday.

“The Trump administration has been clear: it is in our national security interests to hold the PLO and PA accountable for not complying with their commitments, and for undermining the prospects for peace,” it said in a statement.

The new measure further aligns Donald Trump’s administration with Israel’s rightwing government which adamantly rejects a Palestinian state. Israeli officials have repeatedly equated the broadly secular PA, which exercises partial authority in the occupied West Bank, with its bitter Islamist rival Hamas.

Using a term favoured by Trump to deride his legal troubles while out of office, the state department accused the Palestinians of “lawfare” by raising grievances against Israel at the international criminal court and international court of justice.

It called on the PA to drop “efforts to secure the unilateral recognition of a conjectural Palestinian state”.

The Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, thanked the Trump administration “for this bold step and for standing by Israel once again” in a post on X.

Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, was included in the restrictions. Abbas had been planning to travel to New York to deliver an address to the UN general assembly.

The PA’s ambassador to the UN, Riyad Mansour, told reporters that they were seeking details on what the new US measure means “and how it applies to any of our delegation, and we will respond accordingly”.

Stéphane Dujarric, a UN spokesperson, said it was “important” for all states and observers, which includes the Palestinians, to be represented at a summit scheduled for the day before the general assembly begins. “We obviously hope that this will be resolved,” Dujarric said.

The US statement justifying the new measure echoed claims often repeated by Israeli officials.

“Before the PLO and PA can be considered partners for peace, they must consistently repudiate terrorism – including the 7 October massacre – and end incitement to terrorism in education,” it said.

The PLO was founded in 1964 as an umbrella organisation for Palestinian factions and recognised a decade later as the sole political representative of the Palestinian people. The PA was set up almost 20 years later as an interim body that would provide an institutional framework for a Palestinian state.

Both are likely to be integral to any future Palestinian state. Arab powers, the UK, European countries and others want the PA to take a central role in the administration of Gaza if the conflict can be ended, though they agree it needs reform.

Australia, Canada, the UK and France are to recognise a Palestinian state at the UN general assembly next month if certain conditions are met, in a move that has infuriated Israel.

Israel’s government has rejected any role for the PA in Gaza and said that recognition “rewards Hamas’s monstrous terrorism”.

Though Israel’s government is under mounting pressure at home and abroad to end its offensive in Gaza, Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, has ordered military forces to launch an assault to seize Gaza City. Once a major commercial and cultural hub, it has been reduced to ruins and is home to hundreds of thousands of destitute Palestinians after repeated rounds of fighting.

The Israeli offensive has so far killed 63,000 people, mostly civilians, injured 150,000 and displaced the vast majority of the population. The UN last week declared a famine in and around Gaza City, blaming “systematic obstruction” by Israel of humanitarian aid deliveries.

“We have begun preliminary operations and the initial stages of the attack on Gaza City, and we are currently operating with great force on the outskirts of the city,” Avichay Adraee, an Israeli military spokesperson, said on X.

The war was triggered by a surprise attack by Hamas into Israel in October 2023 which killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and saw 251 abducted. About 50 hostages remain in Gaza, of whom less than half are thought to be still alive.

Under an agreement as host of the UN in New York, the US is not supposed to refuse visas for officials heading to the world body for the general assembly, but the state department said it was complying with the agreement by allowing the Palestinian mission to attend.

Activists each year press the US to deny visas to leaders of countries that they oppose, often over grave human rights violations, but their appeals are almost always rejected.

In a historic step in 1988, the general assembly convened in Geneva rather than New York to hear the then PLO leader, Yasser Arafat, after the US refused to allow him in New York.

Additional reporting by AFP



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MacBook, AirPods, iPhone 16 Pro, Mac mini, iPad, more [Update #2]

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Amazon has now launched its 2025 Labor Day sale, and joining the ongoing rare discounts over at B&H, there a host of notable Apple Labor Day deals up for grabs. While some of the offers below are hangovers from the past couple weeks that have either made a triumphant return or are just still rolling, you’ll find some of the best deals of the year on M4 MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, as well iPhone 16 Pro, AirPods, Mac mini, and even Mac Studio now live. Check it all out below. 

Apple early Labor Day deals

Update 8/29: This post has now been updated again with additional Mac mini deals, lower AirPods prices, an exclusive discount on iPad Air, and more.

  • M4 iPad Pro 11-inch
  • M4 iPad Pro 13-inch


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‘Frankenstein’ Reviews And Reaction To Guillermo Del Toro Netflix Film

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Guillermo del Toro‘s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein launched at the Venice Film Festival this evening and the notices are coming in.

Oscar Isaac stars as Dr. Victor Frankenstein, the brilliant but egotistical scientist who brings a creature (Jacob Elordi) to life in a monstrous experiment that ultimately leads to the undoing of both the creator and his tragic creation.

The early reaction from critics on the Lido has been all over the map, with some raves, some middling scores and some who didn’t gel with the movie — or its leads — at all.

Deadline’s Pete Hammond praised the acting and directing: “[Del Toro’s] love for monsters is unquestioned, and even though Frankenstein has been a horror staple for nearly a century in cinema, del Toro here turns it into a fascinating and thoughtful tale on what it means to be a human, and who is really the monster? Do we have aspects of both in us?”

He continued: “Elordi is very fine in quite a different kind of role for him, and physically he really fits the bill. Isaac is enormously fun to watch as he slips further into madness, with a fake leg, lots of prosthetics and makeup effects, and an ego with no end.”

He was also one of many to laud the production value of the $120M movie but question the running time: “Production values are over the moon, with beautiful production design by Tamara Devenell and great creature design from Mike Hill keeping it all tight. At 2 1/2 hours it perhaps might have been shortened, but del Toro’s sandbox is so irresistible, the return to big Hollywood moviemaking so pronounced, it must be hard to stop. Once a filmmaker on the scale of del Toro gets unleashed in the lab, why cut it short?”

The Guardian described the film as “bombastic but watchable” in a three star review: “The visual style of the movie is utterly distinctive and unmistakably that of Del Toro: a series of lovely, intricate images, filigreed with infinitesimally exact cod-period detail; deep focus but also strangely depthless, like hi-tech stained glass or illustrated plates in a Victorian tome; pictures whose luxurious beauty underscores the film’s reverence for the source material and for itself, but which for me impedes the energy of horror.”

HeyUGuys also gave the film three stars: “Del Toro paints a picture of man’s hubris and the monstrosity of those who relentlessly seek something with no consideration for anyone else. Perhaps he could have done this with a more nuanced touch, but subtlety has never been a Del Toro strongpoint. This is true of the screenplay (written by Del Toro), the costumes and the set design (by Tamar Deverell). Think Mary Shelley meets Crimson Peak. If you loved that film, you’ll love this.”

Geoffrey MacNab, writing for the UK’s Independent, was ultimately unimpressed, saying “del Toro’s elegant adaptation is all show and little substance” and that “Isaac’s performance is mannered and uneven”: “Unfortunately, Frankenstein continually risks losing its footing. The film lurches between scenes of lush romantic melodrama and moments of Grand Guignol bloodletting. We know very quickly that the monster cannot die. That means any suspense risks ebbing away. For all Del Toro’s formal mastery, this Frankenstein is ultimately short of the voltage needed really to bring it to life.”

However, The Wrap was a big fan, saying: “The passion drips from every frame of del Toro’s epic reimagining… It’s a filmmaker returning to his roots at a time when he has the skills to make those roots grow into something huge and singular…His Frankenstein is a titanic piece of work, two and a half hours that bend Shelley’s framework to contain nearly everything we’ve loved about this story of the brilliant but foolhardy scientist and his fearsome creation.”

So too was The South China Morning Post which gave it 4.5/5 stars: “This ‘modern Prometheus’ tale, to borrow from Shelley’s subtitle, has been told many times on film, with varied results. But unquestionably, Del Toro’s version is the most beautiful, perhaps the most definitive…Nodding to Milton’s Paradise Lost, and the Fall of Man, Del Toro manages to create a work both scholarly and uproariously entertaining.”

The Times Of London calls the film a “camp and messy reboot” in which “Jacob Elordi lacks menace”, but Games Radar gives it four out of five stars: “Masterfully concocted and pertinent in theme, Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein is a classy, if somewhat safe, adaptation with awards legs.”

Variety says the director’s passion project “has been gestating so long, the master’s creation arrives overstuffed and unwieldy…What should have been the perfect pairing of artist and material proves visually ravishing, but can’t measure up to the impossibly high expectations del Toro’s fans have for the project.”

The trade adds: “In principle, del Toro has gone back to the book for his two-and-a-half-hour magnum opus, which cost more than Titanic and still looks like it was made for TV (as much as that pains me to say).”

The Hollywood Reporter saw more it liked in the movie, calling it an “emotionally charged take” on the classic story, while Indiewire gave the film a B score, praising Elordi and the scale of the film but also finding some flaws, describing it as a “big, juicy, glossy, expensive mounting of the Mary Shelley classic novel for Netflix, that lacks the voiciness, the edge, the perverse streak of del Toro’s great run of films.”

At Netflix’s Tudum event earlier this year, Del Toro called the film “the culmination of a journey that has occupied most of my life,” adding, “Monsters have become my personal belief system. There are strands of Frankenstein through my films.”

Coming off his third Oscar win for Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, another literary adaptation for Netflix, Del Toro’s Frankenstein also stars Mia Goth (X), Felix Kammerer (All Quiet on the Western Front), Lars Mikkelsen (The Witcher), David Bradley (Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio), Christian Convery (Sweet Tooth), Charles Dance (Game of Thrones) and Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds).

Del Toro directed from his own script and produced alongside J. Miles Dale and Scott Stuber.



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New York City declares Harlem legionnaire’s disease outbreak over | New York

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New York City has declared the deadly legionnaires’ disease outbreak in central Harlem over, nearly three weeks since it began.

On Friday, city health officials announced that there have been no new cases among residents who live or work in the area since 9 August. As of Friday, there have been 114 cases of legionnaires’ disease, with 90 people hospitalized – six of those remaining in hospital – and seven deaths.

In a statement on Friday, New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, said: “Today marks three weeks since someone with symptoms was identified, which means New Yorkers should be able to breathe a sigh of relief that residents and visitors to central Harlem are no longer at an increased risk of contracting legionnaires’ disease – but our job here is not done.”

“We must ensure that we learn from this and implement new steps to improve our detection and response to future clusters, because public safety is at the heart of everything we do … This is an unfortunate tragedy for New York City and the people of central Harlem as we mourn the seven people who lost their lives and pray for those who are still being treated,” he added.

The disease is a serious form of pneumonia caused by the legionella bacteria which can be spread from water systems and devices to people. Such water systems include shower heads, sink faucets, hot tubs, decorative fountains, large plumbing systems and cooling towers.

Following an investigation, health officials were able to trace the bacteria back to cooling towers atop the city-run Harlem Hospital and a nearby construction site overseen by the city.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the most common way for someone to get sick is by breathing in mist containing legionella. Another way that the disease can be contracted is if someone accidentally swallows contaminated water and it enters their lungs, also known as aspiration.

Most healthy people who are exposed to the bacteria do not get sick. Those who are more susceptible to contracting the disease include current or former smokers and people 50 years or older, as well as those with specific health issues.

Symptoms usually develop two to 14 days after exposure to the bacteria and include cough, fever, headaches and muscle aches as well as shortness of breath. Other symptoms include confusion, diarrhea or nausea.

Following the outbreak, all facilities with legionella-positive test results completed full cleaning and disinfection as directed by city officials.

Michelle Morse, New York City’s acting health commissioner, said: “As the city’s doctor, my thoughts are with everyone who has been impacted by the spread of legionella, and our hearts are with the families who lost a loved one … We are working with building owners on next steps to protect the health and safety of Harlem residents and to prevent future clusters.”

Following the outbreak, the Adams administration issued a slew of new proposals that include expanding the health department’s capacity to inspect the city’s cooling towers, requiring building owners to test for legionella at least every 30 days during the cooling tower operating period instead of the current 90-day requirement, expanding the health department’s sampling capacity to conduct proactive sampling of building cooling tower systems, and maintaining contracts to surge capacity when faced with novel issues during future clusters.



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