Netflix has scooped 27 Oscar nominations — the most of any studio
Netflix’s mettle versus conventional distributors has demonstrated once again in this year’s Oscar nominations, although the streamers as a whole did not dominate the Academy Awards nominations. Netflix took home the most nominations with 27, including two best picture awards for The Power of the Dog and Don’t Look Up, while it missed out on a third-best picture contender for Tick, Tick Boom!
Apple has six Oscar nominations, the most notable of which is for Siân Heder’s Coda, which is the first best picture nominee in the tech giant’s limited history with the original film and TV content, as well as the first film lead by a largely deaf cast. The Tragedy of Macbeth, directed by Joel Coen, garnered three nominations, including a best actor nomination for Denzel Washington, who now has a record-setting ten Oscar nominations. Although Amazon Studios received three acting nominations for Being the Ricardos and its stars Javier Bardem, Nicole Kidman, and J. K. Simmons, as well as a makeup and hairstyling nomination for Coming 2 America, the streaming service fell short of the dozen nominations it received last year, including best picture. Disney received a total of 23 nominations, with Encanto, Luca, and Raya and the Last Dragon receiving the most in the animated feature picture category. Luca, on the other hand, was the only nominated animated picture with a Disney+ streaming-only release. (Raya was released in cinemas and on Disney+ for an additional price at the same time.)
Despite the lingering influence of the COVID-19 epidemic on release schedules, the major categories saw several films with traditional theatre releases. West Side Story, Nightmare Alley, Licorice Pizza, and Belfast had typical theatrical releases for best picture, but CODA, Don’t Look Up, and The Power of the Dog were streaming-only, with a few limited-release theatre showings. (Don’t Look Up was released in over 750 theatres throughout the United States and Canada, but Netflix does not disclose theatrical box office receipts.) On HBO Max, both King Richard and Dune were part of Warner Bros.’ day-and-date plan, putting them in their category.
The streamers only got one nomination for Jane Campion in the directing category, with the rest going to traditional releases. In the leading actor category, Netflix, Apple TV+, and Amazon Studios did well, whereas, in the lead actress category, there were more submissions from theatrical films, such as Kristen Stewart in Spencer and Penélope Cruz in Parallel Mothers.
Sources: LA Times, Gold Derby.
How mortgage rates are rising now
The hike in interest rates will almost certainly be passed on to consumers by mortgage lenders, which means that if you have a variable rate mortgage, your payments will increase. Many customers’ mortgage rates are poised to climb after the Bank of England stated that interest rates increased from 0.25 percent to 0.5 percent. As the cost-of-living problem worsens, the Bank has raised interest rates for the first time in back-to-back months since June 2004. The increase is in reaction to rising inflation, which reached 5.4% in December, the highest level in over 30 years.
The 0.25 percent hike in interest rates will almost certainly be passed on to borrowers, meaning that if you have a variable rate mortgage, your monthly payment will increase. According to projections by trade group UK Finance, the rate hike on Thursday will add about £26 per month to the repayments of a typical tracker client. If the base rate rises to 1.5 percent, which is probable by the end of 2022, monthly payments will increase by roughly £129.
To tackle high inflation, the Bank of England is hiking interest rates. Financial markets now expect four rate hikes in 2022, bringing rates to 1.25 percent by the end of the year, the highest level since early 2009. Although Omicron rocked the economy in December and early January, the Bank is taking steps to return inflation to its objective of 2%. Governor Andrew Bailey recently warned MPs there were troubling signals that inflationary pressures might last longer than earlier expected, with sky-high wholesale energy costs now expected to last until the second half of 2023.
Rapid rate hikes, according to Laith Khalaf, head of investment analysis at AJ Bell, would be a shock to many borrowers, with 10 million individuals in the UK have never experienced a base rate of inflation above 1% in their whole adult lifetimes. Higher rates will also cause issues for Chancellor Rishi Sunak, with the Office for Budget Responsibility estimating that each 1% increase in rates will cost the UK £23 billion in interest payments on its massive debt mountain.
Sources: NY Times, Investopedia.
Do colder countries always do better at the Winter Olympics?
As the 2022 Winter Olympics near their end, Norway is again on top of the medal standings. It isn’t a one-time occurrence. Since 1992, Norway has only finished outside the top four in a Winter Olympics medal table once and has won it twice, in 2002 and 2018. After Johannes Thingnes B earned his fourth gold of the Beijing 2022 Winter Games in the men’s biathlon 15km mass start, the country has established a new record for most gold medals in a single Winter Games with 15. Norway has a population of only 5 million people, making it one of the least populous countries in the world.
Norway is a prosperous country, with a GDP that ranks in the top 35 and a GDP per capita among the top ten. GDP, on the other hand, does not account for all sorts of wealth. That’s what the UN’s Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index is for; it takes other factors like education, life expectancy, and inequality into consideration
There are two reasons behind Norway’s key to success. The first is the weather, which is maybe self-evident. After all, it’s the Winter Olympics and Norway has an average annual temperature of roughly 2 degrees Celsius. Thus, it is perhaps more suited to winter games.
A country where you could share information and more individuals have access to the finances needed to participate, as Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski initially noted in their book “Soccernomics,” would supply a great selection of athletes. The Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index ranks Norway first. As a result, it should come as no surprise that a wealthy country, with a colder climate, dominates the Winter Games.
Sources: The Economist, The Guardian.
A US married couple has been arrested by federal agents for allegedly laundering $4.5 billion in bitcoin that was stolen during a hack back in 2016.
The U.S. Justice Department unraveled its biggest-ever cryptocurrency theft, seizing a record-shattering $3.6 billion in bitcoin tied to the 2016 hack of digital currency exchange Bitfinex and arresting a husband-and-wife team on money laundering charges.
Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein, 34, and his wife, Heather Morgan, 31, New Yorkers arrested in Manhattan, spent the illegal proceeds on items ranging from gold and non-fungible tokens to a $500 Walmart gift card, prosecutors said. The couple had active public profiles, with Morgan known as rap singer “Razzlekhan,” a pseudonym on her website referred to Genghis Khan “but with more pizzazz.” Both Lichtenstein and Morgan face charges for laundering money and defrauding the United States. The case is in a federal court in Washington, D.C.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Debra Freeman set bond at $5 million for Lichtenstein and $3 million for Morgan at their initial appearances in federal court. The court demanded the couple’s parents should deposit their homes as security for their return. The pair laundered 119,754 bitcoin stolen after a hacker gained access to Bitfinex and initiated over 2,000 unlawful transactions. The transactions were valued at $71 million in bitcoin at the time, according to Justice Department officials, now the value rose to roughly $4.5 billion due to the currency’s growth in value.
According to the Department of Justice, Lichtenstein and Morgan attempted to launder money through a network of currency exchangers or claimed that the funds were payments to Morgan’s startup. Morgan also had side jobs in painting, fashion design, and writing, where she presented herself as a corporate coach, in addition to her rap-singing career.
Morgan and Lichtenstein are under investigation. According to Freeman, they will be under home arrest with electronic surveillance and engaging in cryptocurrency transactions while awaiting trial. She warned that a judge in Washington could impose new conditions later.
Cases like these demonstrate that the Justice Department “can follow money across the blockchain, just as we have always followed it within the traditional financial system,” said Kenneth Polite, the assistant attorney general of the department’s Criminal Division.
Sources: Daily Mail, Reuters.