In brief: Acclaimed author Carlos Fuentes dies

Mexico City – Author Carlos Fuentes, who played a dominant role in Latin America’s novel-writing boom by delving into the failed ideals of the Mexican revolution, died Tuesday in a Mexico City hospital. He was 83.

Fuentes died at the Angeles del Pedregal hospital where he was taken after his personal doctor, Arturo Ballesteros, found him in shock in his Mexico City home. Ballesteros told reporters outside the hospital that the writer had a sudden internal hemorrhage that caused him to lose consciousness.

The prolific Fuentes wrote his first novel, “Where the Air is Clear,” at age 29, laying the foundation for a boom in Spanish contemporary literature during the 1960s and 1970s. He published an essay on the change of power in France in the newspaper Reforma on Tuesday, the same day he died.

“The Death of Artemio Cruz,” a novel about a post-revolutionary Mexico, brought Fuentes international acclaim. His other classics included “Aura,” “Terra Nostra” and “The Good Conscience.” Many American readers know him for “The Old Gringo,” a novel about San Francisco journalist Ambrose Bierce, who disappeared at the height of the 1910-1920 Mexican Revolution.

Brooks, five others at tabloid charged

London – One of Rupert Murdoch’s most trusted lieutenants and five people close to her were charged Tuesday with conspiring to hide evidence of phone hacking.

The charges against former U.K. tabloid editor Rebekah Brooks, her husband Charlie and four aides are the first prosecutions since police reopened inquiries 18 months ago into wrongdoing by the country’s scandal-hungry press.

Brooks, 43, faces three separate allegations of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice – an offense that carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

The law-breaking allegedly involved removing computers and files in the frantic days last summer when Murdoch shut down his tainted 168-year-old News of the World tabloid in an attempt to halt a tide of public disgust over the hacking furor.