Vote is a major step towards finalising the 2024 federal budget after months of deadlock in the divided Congress.
Lawmakers in the United States Senate passed a spending package shortly before a midnight deadline, averting a partial government shutdown.
The lower house on Friday voted 75-22 to approve a $460bn spending package of six bills that will fund agriculture, transportation, housing, energy, veterans and other programmes through the end of the fiscal year on September 30. The lights would have gone out across several departments and agencies this weekend if the funding was not passed.
The vote was a crucial step towards finalising the 2024 federal budget after months of deadlock in the deeply divided Congress. The bill has been sent to President Joe Biden to sign into law.
In a statement ahead of the bill’s passage, top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer hailed the legislation as a “major step” towards a fully funded government.
“To folks who worry that divided government means nothing ever gets done, this bipartisan package says otherwise: it helps parents and veterans and firefighters and farmers and school cafeterias and more,” he added.
Tonight, the Senate has reached an agreement avoiding a shutdown on the first six funding bills.
We will keep important programs funded for moms and kids, for veterans, for the environment, for housing, and so much more.
The bill easily passed the Republican-controlled House of Representatives earlier this week. Action in the Senate was delayed as some conservative Republicans pressed for votes on immigration and other topics.
Congress must still work out a deal on a much larger package of spending bills, covering the military, homeland security, healthcare and other services. Funding for those programmes expires on March 22.
The package just passed and the pending bills that make up the federal annual budget would cost $1.66 trillion.
All these measures were supposed to have been enacted into law by October 1, the start of the 2024 fiscal year. While Congress rarely meets that deadline, the debate this year has been chaotic with congressional leaders relying on a series of stopgap bills to keep federal agencies funded for a few more weeks or months while struggling to reach an agreement on full-year spending.
Mumbai, India – A grimacing police official, staring into the camera, declares her intent to publicly shoot dead “leftists” while attacking “left-liberal, pseudo-intellectuals” as well as students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), a left-leaning university space in the cross-hairs of the Modi government.
Men in skull caps, the visuals intercut with bloody violence, declare that Rohingya Muslims will soon displace Hindus and make for half of India’s population, while a harrowed Hindu woman fighting against these men says she wants to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
A biopic on the early 20th century Hindu nationalist ideologue Vinayak Damodar Savarkar has a voiceover that insists that India would have freed itself of British colonial rule over three decades before it did, if not for Mahatma Gandhi.
These are scenes from upcoming Hindi films slated for release over the next few weeks.
As India’s nearly one billion voters get ready to pick their national government in general elections between March and May, Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are receiving campaign support from an atypical ally: cinema.
A slew of new films, timed with the elections and often helmed by major production houses, are relying on storylines that overtly either promote Modi and his government’s policies or target rival politicians. Not even national icons like Gandhi or top universities like JNU are spared – the institution has long been a left-leaning bastion of liberal education, often antagonistic to the BJP’s Hindu majoritarianism.
Many of these stories peddle Islamophobic conspiracies commonly circulated among Hindu right-wing networks that are aligned with the BJP’s political agenda. At least 10 such films have either been released recently or are poised to hit theatres and television in this election season
“This is part of a larger attempt to ‘take over’ the Hindi film industry, just as other forms of popular culture have been infiltrated,” said Ira Bhaskar, a retired professor of cinema studies at JNU who also served as a member of the country’s censor board until 2015. Bhaskar was referring to the growing Hindu nationalist narratives found in pop culture forms like music, poetry and books.
The latest films include biopics that glorify the controversial legacies of Hindu majoritarian heroes and BJP leaders. Savarkar, a controversial anti-colonial Hindu nationalist, advocated rape against Muslim women as a form of retribution for historical wrongs.
Two of the upcoming films, Accident or Conspiracy: Godhra, and The Sabarmati Report, claim to “reveal” the “real story” behind the Godhra train burning of 2002 where 59 Hindu pilgrims died in a fire that was the spark for anti-Muslim riots orchestrated by Hindu right-wing groups that claimed over 1,000 lives, mostly Muslims. The riots happened when Modi was the state’s chief minister.
Another film, Aakhir Palaayan Kab Tak? (Until when will we need to flee?), shows a Hindu “exodus” purportedly due to Muslims. Then there’s Razakar, a multilingual release on what it calls the “silent genocide” of Hindus in Hyderabad by Razakars, a paramilitary volunteer force that inflicted mass violence before and after India’s independence in 1947. The film has been produced by a BJP leader.
In late February, Modi himself praised Article 370, a newly released film that lauds his government’s contentious decision to strip Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir of its special status and statehood while placing hundreds under house arrests and imposing lockdowns in the region. Film reviewers have called the movie a “puff piece” and a “thinly veiled propaganda film” in favour of the Modi government while treating its critics and opposition leaders with “derision”.
Bhaskar said the new films were “clear propaganda, no doubt about it”.
A growing trend
The surge in such movies builds on a pattern also seen before the 2019 elections when Modi returned to power for a second time. On the eve of that vote, a clutch of films tried to bolster the BJP’s popularity.
Some tried to take down the ruling party’s critics, like the Accidental Prime Minister (PM), a searing take on Modi’s predecessor, Manmohan Singh. Others stoked jingoism, like Uri: The Surgical Strike, which recreated the military strikes that Indian forces made inside Pakistan-controlled Kashmir in retaliation against a terror attack on an Indian military camp in Kashmir’s Uri region in September 2016. The film ended with a scene of a pleased-looking Modi-resembling prime minister. Both films were released in the same week, days before the elections.
But Bhaskar said that while the trend isn’t new, it has grown since 2014, when Modi came to power, starting off with the changed way that the Indian film industry dealt with historical representations.
“Over the last few years, we have seen a shift in the representation of Muslim rulers who are all, now, portrayed as barbarians and temple-destroyers,” Bhaskar said. “This was also propaganda, though in a not-so-direct way, where the message was: Muslims don’t belong to India, they were invaders.”
These positions align with the Hindu right-wing ecosystem’s publicly-stated aims of purging Mughal history from public consciousness.
Such films, in the past, have faced allegations of amplifying social divisions and hate speech. Screenings of films like The Kashmir Files, depicting the Kashmiri Pandit exodus of the 1990s, often saw audiences, at the end of the film, rising up and calling for violence against Muslims and advocating their boycott.
Another film, The Kerala Story, panned widely for inaccuracies in depicting an alleged ISIL/ISIS conspiracy to lure Christian and Hindu girls to join the group, played a part in igniting societal tensions among communities, leading to violence in the western Indian region of Akola in Maharashtra.
Fear and opportunism
Film industry insiders attribute this new genre of films to a mix of unease, opportunism and a helpful nudge from the establishment.
A number of industry insiders this writer contacted refused to speak on record, for fear of retribution.
Bollywood, in the recent few years, has frequently been a victim of high-decibel campaigns, often endorsed by BJP leaders – from boycotting films to calling for bans on them. Hindu right-wing groups have often targeted films and shows for broadcasting “anti-Hindu” content.
In 2021, BJP leaders had called for the arrest of the director and officials of the Amazon Prime streaming service over a web show Tandav because it had scenes that protesters allege were defamatory towards Hindu gods. Police complaints, calling for their arrest, were filed in six different cities before the country’s top court stayed them.
Many insiders said these instances had produced a “chilling effect” on other creators. “Often, ideas get nixed or get altered at the pre-production stage itself, because makers are now constantly censoring themselves and anticipating the trouble that the content might court in the current political climate,” said a film producer, requesting anonymity.
Others, however, believe that these films are not just a result of such fear but also a tinge of opportunism. A Mumbai-based director, who had been approached to make a film that aligned with a pro-Hindu majoritarian agenda, said makers often get enticed to “cash in” on the current political atmosphere. “With the success of a few such films in the past, many filmmakers are now tempted to try and appease the ruling ideology in the hope that they also find commercial success,” the director said.
Others echoed this sentiment. Speaking to Al Jazeera, a popular Hindi film actor revealed how a streaming service drastically altered a show he was part of, based on the life of a historical character, to portray the character to be a Hindu legend taking on Muslim invaders. “The streaming service thought that such ‘repositioning’ of the character would make it a good sell,” the actor said. The show, the actor said, did “decently well” among rural audiences.
And when movies pander to the ruling party’s ideology, they often receive a leg up from the government. In the past, contentious films like The Kashmir Files and The Kerala Story have been rewarded by BJP governments – taxes were waived off. BJP units also organised free screenings of these films, helping them get wider audiences. Modi has publicly praised both these films, thereby granting them greater legitimacy and insisted that films should be made on the state of emergency imposed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1975 – during which several fundamental rights were suspended – as well as on the Partition of India in 1947.
Al Jazeera sought comments from Sudipto Sen, the director of The Kerala Story. Sen said he would respond but had not done so by the time of publication.
Others, like National Award-winning filmmaker R Balakrishnan, however, believe that the rise of such films reflects a demand for such content from the audience. “Suddenly, people are interested in incidents that they don’t know about. There is an interest in political films and historical films based on incidents,” he said.
The danger, he added, was that this curiosity was being “subverted” since filmmakers were not researching their subjects adequately. “When you make a political film on an event or incident, the onus lies on the filmmaker to do the research and make it accurate. If you use films to subvert the truth and use it for other purposes, then you are depriving people of knowledge of what really happened there,” he said.
Here to stay?
Balakrishnan, the director, said that such “weak films” would stay limited to a few filmmakers. “Some are trying to ride a wave, but this won’t become a mainstream phenomenon. After all, the audience does not want to watch political films every day.”
Others, however, point to a newer trend – that of mainstream films, starring A-listers, also serving propaganda purposes. Fighter, a film released in January, with top actors Hrithik Roshan and Deepika Padukone starring in it, had a character playing PM Modi mouthing bombastic lines, insisting that it was time to show Pakistan who the “boss” was, before deciding to launch air strikes against the neighbour in 2019.
Bhaskar, the retired JNU professor, said this was a sign that the trend was only going to deepen. “This is no longer episodic, or tied to any events like the polls any more,” Bhaskar said. If anything, she added, the scale of such films is now going to grow. “You will now see big-banner, big-budget films being made to serve propaganda purposes.”
Islamabad, Pakistan — It was a brief, formal exchange.
On March 5, two days after Shehbaz Sharif became Pakistan’s 24th prime minister, his Indian counterpart posted a 13-word message on social media platform X. “Congratulations to @CMShehbaz on being sworn in as the Prime Minister of Pakistan,” the Indian premier wrote.
Sharif took two days to respond. “Thank you @narendramodi for felicitations on my election as the Prime Minister of Pakistan,” he wrote on March 7.
Modi’s congratulatory message and Sharif’s response set off questions, even in a US State Department briefing, about the prospect of a detente between the nuclear-armed subcontinental neighbours that have barely functional diplomatic relations. The State Department weighed in, saying it hoped for a “productive and peaceful relationship” between New Delhi and Islamabad.
But even though the Pakistani prime minister’s elder brother Nawaz Sharif has a long history of seeking breakthroughs with India – including with Modi – analysts on both sides of the border say that the direction of ties can only be gauged after India’s upcoming national elections, scheduled to take place in April and May.
Maleeha Lodhi, a retired Pakistani diplomat who has served as ambassador to the United Nations, United States as well as the United Kingdom, said that managing relations with New Delhi will prove the “most vexing” foreign policy test for the current government.
“It’s true that previous PMLN were amenable to engage with India but it used to be reciprocal,” she told Al Jazeera, referring to the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PMLN), the party of the Sharif brothers. “But today there are many obstacles to normalising ties which are not easy to overcome.
“With India going to the polls this year, any significant engagement will have to wait till after the elections.”
Kashmir conundrum
Arguably, the biggest obstacle to any movement towards normalcy between the neighbours remains the question of the Kashmir valley, the picturesque, but contentious Himalayan region over which they have fought multiple wars since gaining independence from British rule in 1947. The region is claimed in full by both, but each only governs parts of it.
New Delhi has accused Islamabad of backing Kashmiri armed rebels fighting either for independence or for a merger with Pakistan. Islamabad has denied the allegations, saying it only provides diplomatic support to the region’s struggle for the right to self-determination.
Relations between India and Pakistan further worsened in 2019 when Modi’s Hindu nationalist government revoked Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which used to give Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir partial autonomy.
Kashmir is at the heart of the differences between India and Pakistan, and is a subject in which each of the neighbours has set conditions for talks that are unacceptable to the other. India insists that the status of Jammu and Kashmir is an internal matter for the country. Pakistani leaders, on the other hand – including the Sharif brothers – have linked progress in ties with India to a reversal of the 2019 decision by New Delhi.
Former Indian high commissioner to Pakistan, Sharat Sabharwal said that if the aim is to improve relations, the ball is in Pakistan’s court, adding that it was Pakistan that suspended trade as well as downgraded diplomatic representation.
“Since then, it has made engagement with India contingent upon India reversing its move to end the special status of Jammu and Kashmir under the Indian Constitution. This is just not going to happen,” he told Al Jazeera. “It is for the Pakistan government to take a more pragmatic and constructive view if things are to move forward.”
The Sharif touch
Yet, despite the tough posturing on both sides, some analysts are cautiously optimistic about the possibility of a renewed attempt by the two governments to improve ties, in large part because of the history that the Sharifs share with Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party.
In February 1999, the then-Indian Prime Minister from the BJP, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, took a bus ride across the border to Lahore to meet Nawaz Sharif, who was then in his second stint as prime minister.
Nawaz and Vajpayee signed a treaty that was seen as an historic confidence-building breakthrough between the two countries, less than a year after both of them conducted nuclear tests that had escalated tensions in the region.
However, three months after the treaty, the two countries engaged in a war in Kargil in Indian-administered Kashmir. India accused Pakistani soldiers of infiltrating into territory it controlled. Nawaz blamed his then-military chief, General Pervez Musharraf and other top commanders for orchestrating the incursion behind his back.
Only a few months later, Musharraf carried out a military coup in October 1999 in which Sharif was removed from power, just two years after assuming charge as the prime minister.
A year after Nawaz finally returned to power in 2013, the BJP, too, came back into office after a decade in opposition – this time with Modi as prime minister. Nawaz joined leaders from across South Asia in travelling to New Delhi for Modi’s oath-taking ceremony.
Nawaz Sharif became the first Pakistani premier to visit India to attend a prime minister’s oath-taking in 2014 [Harish Tyagi/EPA]
Then, on Christmas day in December 2015, Modi stunned both nations with a surprise visit to Lahore to attend the wedding of Nawaz’s granddaughter. The Pakistani government said that the two nations would restart a formal dialogue and announced a meeting of senior diplomats in January 2016.
But merely a week later, four attackers targeted an Indian Air Force base which resulted in the deaths of at least eight Indians, including security personnel.
India once again blamed Pakistan for the incident and demanded it arrest the perpetrators behind the attack. In September 2016, after armed fighters attacked an Indian Army outpost in Kashmir, Indian soldiers crossed over into Pakistani-administered territory to raid what New Delhi described as “militant launch pads”.
Three years later, in February 2019, just before India’s last national elections, tensions soared again, after 46 Indian paramilitary soldiers were killed in a suicide bombing in Indian-administered Kashmir. The Indian Air Force responded with a strike inside Pakistani territory, saying it targeted fighters’ training camps.
Pakistani jets in turn entered Indian airspace the next day. An Indian Air Force jet that chased Pakistani planes was shot down, its pilot captured. The standoff calmed down after Pakistan returned the pilot, Abhinandan Varthaman, two days after his arrest.
This complex history of steps towards talks that have often unravelled before any meaningful progress is made is evidence, to many observers – and Indian diplomats in particular – of the influence of the Pakistani military in the relationship between the two countries. Some Indian analysts have accused the Pakistani army of sabotaging past peace initiatives.
But to others, the February 2019 skirmish underlined how Pakistan figures in Indian election calculations. Modi’s popularity benefitted from the episode, which his party framed as a demonstration of strength against Pakistan. The BJP returned to power in May that year with an even bigger mandate than in 2014.
Signs of a shift?
Despite a formal diplomatic chill, the two countries found some common ground in February 2021, when they renewed a two-decade-old ceasefire pact along the 725km (450 miles) Line of Control, the de facto border that divides Kashmir between the two nations.
Then, in 2022, when Shehbaz Sharif became the prime minister for the first time after the removal of Imran Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) through a parliamentary vote of no confidence, Modi congratulated him and said he wished to work together to bring “peace and stability” to the region.
Radha Kumar, a New Delhi-based foreign policy expert, spots a shift in the Pakistani military’s approach to India, too.
“I would say that there does appear to have been some change in the Pakistan army’s thinking insofar as hostilities have been relatively contained during the past few years. But we do not know how far the containment has been due to heavy security on the Indian side,” she told Al Jazeera.
Yet, considering the political instability in Pakistan and the country’s continuing economic crisis, other analysts say that Shehbaz and his government – which only came to power after cobbling together an alliance with traditional political rivals – have little manoeuvring room.
Islamabad-based foreign policy expert and researcher Muhammad Faisal said that New Delhi has realised it can run its regional foreign policy more effectively while “ignoring” Pakistan. Meanwhile, the Pakistani government will need internal consensus before engaging with India.
“The government needs express support from its ruling partners as well as the military to explore any outreach to India. Rival parties, especially the opposition, will oppose any engagement with India – it is a test of PM Sharif’s political craft if he can build a political consensus,” he told Al Jazeera.
Kumar, who is also the author of Paradise at War: A Political History of Kashmir, acknowledged the political challenges. But, she said, leaders who take the gamble of attempting better ties might find popular support.
“Like India, Pakistan is in a state of high political polarisation. In Pakistan, opposition politicians will seize on anything that can be seen as ‘soft’ towards India, and in India BJP politicians will seize on any opposition ‘softness’ towards Pakistan,” she said. “So if the leaders in both countries want to engage in peacemaking, they will have to be resolute. I think they will both get support from sizable sections of the public.”
Vivek Katju, a former Indian diplomat, said Pakistan also needed to open up its trade borders with India to restore its economic health.
“Pakistan is at a critical point, something the new prime minister acknowledged in his speech. But it cannot transform itself unless it revises its approach and relationship with its neighbours, particularly India, and bring a fresh, objective mindset, viz a viz Jammu and Kashmir,” he told Al Jazeera.
However, Aizaz Chaudhry, who was Pakistan’s foreign secretary during Modi’s 2015 visit, said that any gesture from Pakistan was unlikely to be “reciprocated” by India at the moment.
“Indian leadership is pursuing the goal of Hindu nationalism and has followed a no-contact policy with Pakistan,” he told Al Jazeera. “The government should wait until Indians change their mind and show they want peaceful relations with Pakistan.”
The red carpet has been unfurled for the 96th annual Academy Awards, one of the movie industry’s oldest and most acclaimed ceremonies.
It’s a night of glitz, artistry and controversy, as some of the biggest films in the United States and around the world compete for the golden statuettes known as Oscars.
Taking place in Los Angeles, California, this year’s Academy Awards ceremonies are set to pit box office rivals Barbie and Oppenheimer against one another in a closely watched race for Best Picture.
While Oppenheimer is an early favourite for the win, other categories are harder to predict, with tight races in the two leading actor categories, for instance. And with Israel’s war in Gaza raging into a sixth month, protests and politics are expected to make an appearance at the annual award show, too.
Here’s what you need to know about this year’s Oscars.
Reporters photograph the red carpet roll-out at the Dolby Theatre on March 6 in Los Angeles [Chris Pizzello/AP Photo]
How did the Academy Awards begin?
While the Oscars have become synonymous with glitz and glam, their origins were relatively humble.
It was May 1929, and a crowd of black-tied celebrities crowded into the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood for the very first Academy Awards ceremony. Tickets were only $5. Hollywood heartthrob Douglas Fairbanks hosted the event, which lasted a grand total of 15 minutes — a far cry from today’s three-plus-hour runtime.
It helped, of course, that the winners had been announced three months prior in a bulletin.
The Oscars were born on the cusp of a seismic change in Hollywood: the advent of sound films. One of the films nominated in that first ceremony was 1927’s The Jazz Singer, considered the first “talkie” in cinema.
What organisation is behind the awards?
The “Academy” in the award name refers to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, an organisation for filmmaking professionals that honours achievement in the industry.
Founded in 1927, the Academy was composed of 36 original members, including writers, directors, producers and other industry insiders. The swashbuckling actor Douglas Fairbanks was among them. So too was silent-movie darling Mary Pickford — though, tellingly, she was one of only three women among the 36.
Questions of representation within the Academy’s membership continue to spur criticism, even to this day.
One of the central figures in the early Academy was the head of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) studios, a powerful figure named Louis B Mayer. A Russian-born film producer, he feared how unions might interfere with his work — and he conceived of the Academy in part to address labour issues without union participation.
Why are the trophies called ‘Oscars’?
The nickname for the iconic golden statuette, “Oscar”, became widely used in 1934.
The origins of the name remain unclear, but one popular story credits the moniker to a future executive director of the Academy, Margaret Herrick. She reportedly observed that the statuette resembled her uncle, Oscar, and the nickname quickly caught on.
A worker puts the final touches on an Oscar statue before it is placed out for display [File: Eric Gaillard/Reuters]
How many Oscar categories are there?
At the first Oscars ceremony in 1929, there were only 12 categories, plus two special awards given. But that number tumbled to seven the very next year.
Those original categories included mentions for Best Actor, Best Actress, Art Direction and Outstanding Picture. The directing category was split in two: one for comedy and the other for drama.
Nowadays, there are 24 regular categories, in addition to several special categories that are not awarded every year. But there’s only one Best Director category, unlike in 1929.
How are the nominees picked?
To be eligible to be nominated, a film must be shown at a commercial theatre in Los Angeles County during the calendar year. That means a whopping 321 feature films were eligible in 2023 across two dozen categories.
Members of the Academy participate in an initial vote to determine the nominees, based on their specific industry field. Actors select the acting nominees, for example.
OK, what about the winners? Who picks those?
Once the nominees are picked, all voting Academy members select the winners. There are an estimated 10,500 members in total, with nearly 9,500 eligible to vote.
But marketing campaigns, particularly from large studios, are common practice ahead of the awards ceremony to rally support for a given film or artist.
Critics have therefore slammed the role money plays in the selection process. They have also pointed to the Academy’s membership as indicative of larger diversity problems: A majority of members are white and male, leading to questions about the winners they select.
Director Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer is considered a leader in the Best Picture race [Universal Pictures/AP Photo]
What are some of the biggest films at this year’s Oscars?
There was no bigger moment in the entertainment world last year than the odd-couple double feature known as Barbenheimer. That was the moniker fans gave to Oppenheimer and Barbie, two blockbusters released on the same day in July.
Both have continued to enjoy strong momentum going into Oscars season: Oppenheimer with 13 nominations, Barbie with 8.
But Oppenheimer, a sweeping biopic of nuclear physicist J Robert Oppenheimer, is expected to dominate categories like Best Picture and Best Director, potentially delivering a long-awaited win to director Christopher Nolan.
Barbie, meanwhile, was the highest-grossing film of the year, pulling in more than $1.4b worldwide. But while it got nods for categories like Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor, it was widely seen as snubbed in the Best Actress and Best Director slots.
Legendary director Martin Scorsese is also a frontrunner in this year’s competition with Killers of the Flower Moon, a film based on the real-life story of a killing spree that targeted the Osage Nation in the 1920s.
Fellow auteur Yorgos Lanthimos is back in the running as well with Poor Things, a feminist-inspired Frankenstein tale with steampunk aesthetics. Poor Things received 11 nominations, and Killers of the Flower Moon 10.
Emma Stone stars in Poor Things, the surreal tale of a woman whose brain is replaced with that of a child [Searchlight Pictures/AP Photo]
Which 10 films are up for Best Picture?
The Holdovers
American Fiction
The Zone of Interest
Barbie
Oppenheimer
Poor Things
Past Lives
Anatomy of a Fall
Maestro
Killers of the Flower Moon
Are there any history-makers this year?
One of the stars of Killers of the Flower Moon, Lily Gladstone, is leading the race for Best Actress, after picking up trophies at the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild Awards.
A member of the Nez Perce and Blackfeet nations, Gladstone is the first Native American to be nominated in the Best Actress category. A win would likewise be historic.
The film also received historic nods for its music, which featured Indigenous artists. Osage Nation member Scott George received the first Native American nomination for Best Song, while the late composer Robbie Robertson, whose mother was Cayuga and Mohawk, is believed to be the first Indigenous person nominated for Best Original Score. Robertson died in August 2023.
The social satire American Fiction also garnered a nominating first: Never before have two Black men from the same film received acting nods. Stars Jeffrey Wright and Sterling K Brown are honoured in the Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor categories, respectively.
Colman Domingo, the star of the civil rights biopic Rustin, made history as well, becoming the first Afro-Latino man to score a Best Actor nod.
This year also marks the first time three woman-directed films landed Best Picture recognition. They include Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall, Celine Song’s Past Lives and Greta Gerwig’s Barbie.
Lily Gladstone starred in Killers of the Flower Moon as Mollie Kyle, an Osage woman whose family starts to die in a series of murders [Apple TV via AP Photo]
What was the biggest snub?
Barbie may have been a story of feminist awakening for its titular doll, but the film’s fans have criticised the Academy voters for showing no such awareness on their part.
The biggest box office hit of the year, Barbie was snubbed in the Best Director and Best Actress categories, despite previous recognition in those domains at the Golden Globes.
Director Greta Gerwig and star Margot Robbie had both generated significant buzz for their roles in the film, too: Gerwig, for instance, became the first woman to direct a billion-dollar film.
Robbie, however, could still receive Oscar gold as a producer if Barbie wins Best Picture — a long shot, but not impossible.
But while the women at the helm of the film got relatively little Oscar love, Barbie’s male lead, Ryan Gosling, earned a nod for Best Supporting Actor. He addressed the apparent snub in February with a statement supporting Robbie and Gerwig.
“There is no Ken without Barbie,” he wrote. “And there is no Barbie movie without Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie, the two people most responsible for this history-making, globally-celebrated film.”
Barbie’s Margot Robbie was snubbed in the Oscars’ leading actress category [Warner Bros Pictures/AP Photo]
What protests are expected this year?
As stars parade down the red carpet at this year’s Oscars, protesters are expected to gather on Los Angeles’s Sunset Boulevard to demonstrate against Israel’s war in Gaza — and remind viewers of the devastation occurring simultaneously in cities like Rafah.
The film Oppenheimer has likewise prompted some backlash, particularly with its depiction of the first successful atomic bomb test in Los Alamos, New Mexico.
Some viewers have criticised the film for failing to portray the long-term devastation Japan experienced as a result of the bomb. Others hope the film’s prominence at the Oscars can help shine a light on the New Mexico residents who suffered radiation exposure as a result of the tests, many of them Hispanic and Indigenous.
Tina Cordova, a cancer survivor who grew up near the test site, told the AFP news agency she felt stories like hers were largely ignored.
“They knew about us when they made the film,” she told the news agency. “They just chose to ignore us again.”
The Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) also launched a campaign in the days leading up to the Oscars ceremony, entitled “For Your Consideration: Make Nukes History”, leveraging the attention Oppenheimer received. It published a letter in the Los Angeles Times calling for nuclear disarmament, with signatures from actors like Jane Fonda, Michael Douglas, Emma Thompson and Lily Tomlin.
Local residents stand near the entrance of White Sands Missile Range where the Trinity test site is located, near White Sands, New Mexico [Valerie Macon/AFP]
Who is hosting?
The notoriously thankless job has again gone to comedian Jimmy Kimmel. It will be his fourth time hosting.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Kimmel said he did not plan to use overtly political material, despite the US facing a heated election year.
“It’s not really the focus of the Oscars. It doesn’t mean I won’t have a joke or two about it. But it’s not really my goal to invoke the name of he-who-shall-not-be-named at the Oscars,” Kimmel said, in an apparent reference to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
When are this year’s Oscars?
The Oscars will be held on Sunday, March 10, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. The ceremony is set to begin at 7pm Eastern Time (22 GMT), an hour earlier than usual.
How can I watch?
The ceremony will be broadcast live on the ABC network and on live TV streaming platforms in the US.
Montreal, Canada – Canada has announced it is lifting a freeze on funding for the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), after facing fierce criticism for cutting assistance during Israel’s war in Gaza.
In a statement on Friday, Canadian Minister of International Development Ahmed Hussen said the government is “resuming its funding to UNRWA so more can be done to respond to the urgent needs of Palestinian civilians”.
Canada had joined the United States and several other countries in cutting funding to UNRWA in late January, after Israel accused about a dozen of the agency’s more than 13,000 employees in Gaza of taking part in a Hamas attack on October 7.
UNRWA immediately sacked the employees in question and announced that it was opening a probe into the allegations, which it described as “shocking” and “serious”. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also appointed an independent panel to investigate.
Israel, however, did not provide concrete evidence to back up its allegations. Canadian broadcaster CBC News also reported in early February that Canada had not seen any intelligence backing the claim before it decided to cut the funding.
The decision to cut funding for UNRWA — which relies on government contributions to fund its operations in the occupied Palestinian territories, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon — drew immediate concern and calls from rights advocates to reconsider.
UNRWA also is the key agency providing critical humanitarian supplies to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, where Israel’s continued bombardment and siege have killed more than 30,000 people and led to widespread hunger and disease.
Humanitarian groups had warned that cutting UNRWA funding would have dire repercussions for Palestinians in Gaza and urged donor countries to reverse their decisions.
Since then, the situation in the Strip has deteriorated further, as Israeli military attacks continue. About a dozen Palestinian children have died in recent weeks due to a lack of food and water in Gaza, according to health authorities in the coastal enclave.
Palestinians gather to inspect a destroyed building following an Israeli attack on Deir el-Balah on March 8 [Ashraf Amra/Anadolu Agency]
‘Reckless political decision’
On Friday afternoon, Canadian human rights advocates welcomed the government’s decision to lift the freeze on UNRWA funding but stressed that the money should not have been cut to begin with.
“Resuming aid to UNRWA is a much-needed decision, and it would not have been possible without the important advocacy from across civil society,” said Thomas Woodley, president of the advocacy group Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East.
“Minister Hussen’s cancellation of funding was a reckless political decision that never should have been made. Canada’s irresponsible actions threatened to collapse the aid infrastructure in Gaza, putting the lives of millions of people at risk,” Woodley said in a statement.
“Canada must significantly increase funding to UNRWA to compensate for the harm its actions have caused to the people of Gaza.”
The head of the National Council of Canadian Muslims also noted that “there are no other agencies that can replicate UNRWA’s central role in the humanitarian response in Gaza”.
“While funding should not have been paused in the first place, the government made the right decision today by renewing and increasing funding,” the group’s CEO, Stephen Brown, said in a statement.
Pressure on Trudeau
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government had faced pressure from pro-Israel lobby groups to maintain its freeze on funding for UNRWA. Members of Trudeau’s own Liberal Party also had urged him to withhold the funds.
Pro-Israel Liberal legislators Anthony Housefather and Marco Mendicino said in a letter on Thursday that they had recommended “that Canada work in lockstep with the United States and other allies”.
They urged the government “to leverage alternate partners and to create new vehicles of humanitarian aid that will meaningfully reach the civilians of Gaza in the short term”.
But experts and humanitarian groups have said UNRWA is best suited to provide much-needed assistance to Palestinians in Gaza.
In a news conference on Friday afternoon, Hussen said the decision to resume funding was “in recognition of the significant and serious processes that the United Nations has undertaken to address the issues in UNRWA”.
It also comes in recognition of “the critical role that UNRWA plays in providing much-needed support to over two million Palestinians in Gaza, as well as … millions more in the broader region”, Hussen told reporters.
Palestinians in Gaza are being starved amidst catastrophic conditions. The need for life-saving aid has never been more urgent.
Today’s announcement by Canada 🇨🇦 on the resumption of funding to United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) will save lives.
Erdogan pitches himself as go-between, Zelenskyy indicates Russia would not be invited to the first meeting.
Turkey is ready to host a summit between Ukraine and Russia to end the war, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said after talks with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Istanbul.
Speaking after their meeting on Friday, Erdogan, who has balanced relations with Moscow and Kyiv throughout the two-year war, spoke of “opportunities that Turkey can provide with its stance”.
“While we continue our solidarity with Ukraine, we will continue our work to end the war with a just peace on the basis of negotiations,” he said.
Zelenskyy said the talks had been “sincere and fruitful”, though he refrained from alluding to the mooted peace summit in a statement released on X after the meeting.
Talks between Ukraine and Türkiye are always sincere and fruitful. Today, we have reached agreements on joint defense projects both at the government level and between companies.
I met with the Turkish defense industry representatives. We are prepared to move quickly to put… pic.twitter.com/mDpYDDEnwi
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) March 8, 2024
However, the Ukrainian leader, who is on a mission to obtain more munitions and weaponry from allies to halt his foe’s advance on the eastern front, was cited by the Reuters news agency as saying that Russia would not be invited to the first meeting of the summit, due to be held in Switzerland.
Zelenskyy also thanked Erdogan for his efforts in negotiating the release of Ukrainian prisoners “held in Russian prisons and camps under extremely harsh and inhumane conditions”.
I am grateful to President @RTErdogan for his efforts to release our citizens from Russian captivity. Thanks to Türkiye’s mediation, we have achieved significant humanitarian results. We are now counting on further efforts.
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) March 8, 2024
Erdogan, who reiterated Turkey’s support for Ukraine’s “territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence”, said he and Zelenskyy had discussed port security, safety in the Black Sea, prisoner exchanges and food security.
Turkey’s strategic location on the Black Sea and its control of the Bosphorus Strait gives it a unique military, political and economic role in the conflict.
Shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Turkey hosted failed ceasefire talks between Kyiv and Moscow.
“Both sides have now reached the limit of what they can achieve through war,” Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said this month.
“We think it’s time to start a dialogue towards a ceasefire.”
In July 2022, Ankara with the United Nations brokered the Black Sea Grain deal, the most significant diplomatic agreement so far reached between Kyiv and Moscow. But Moscow ditched the initiative a year later, complaining that the terms were unfair.
Kyiv has since used an alternative shipping route hugging the coastline to avoid contested international waters.
The Erdogan-Zelenskyy meeting comes a week after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met his Turkish counterpart Fidan at a diplomatic forum in Antalya.
Russian President Vladimir Putin was set to visit Turkey last month, but postponed the trip, according to Turkish and Russian media citing diplomatic sources. The Kremlin said it is rescheduling the visit.
Marc Lamont Hill challenges former head of Israeli navy and former director of Israel’s security service Ami Ayalon.
After five months of Israel’s brutal bombing campaign and siege of Gaza, which has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians and seen Israel facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice, negotiations continue and a ceasefire may be imminent.
In the meantime, the humanitarian situation in Gaza is intensifying with shortages of food, water and basic medicine. And as people near starvation, there are reports of people eating grass and animal feed to survive.
Can Israel realistically achieve its objectives? And will there be accountability for any war crimes committed?
On UpFront this week, Marc Lamont Hill interviews Ami Ayalon, former commander-in-chief of the Israeli navy and former director of Israel’s security service, about Israel’s violations of international law in its war on Gaza.
‘Too many women and young women in Haiti are victims of indiscriminate violence committed by armed gangs,’ UN says.
The United Nations has warned that nearly 3,000 pregnant women could be cut off from essential health services in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, which has been paralysed as a result of surging gang violence.
In a statement on Friday to mark International Women’s Day, the UN Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) said nearly 450 pregnant women could suffer “life-threatening” complications without access to healthcare.
Another 521 survivors of sexual violence — a prevalent problem that has worsened amid the instability in Haiti — also could be cut off from medical services by the end of the month if the violence persists, the UN office warned.
“Today, too many women and young women in Haiti are victims of indiscriminate violence committed by armed gangs,” said Ulrika Richardson, BINUH’s deputy special representative.
Widespread gang violence has plagued Haiti for nearly three years, particularly after the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in July 2021 deepened political instability in the Caribbean nation.
The crisis worsened last weekend when gunmen overwhelmed the main penitentiary in Port-au-Prince and another nearby prison, freeing thousands of inmates in a raid that left several people dead.
Haiti’s de facto leader, Prime Minister Ariel Henry, was out of the country when the recent spate of violence erupted, and gang leaders have called for his immediate resignation.
Henry — who has faced a crisis of legitimacy since he took up his post less than two weeks after President Moise’s killing — has been in the US territory of Puerto Rico since earlier this week, apparently unable or unwilling to return to Haiti.
He had previously travelled to Kenya in late February in an attempt to revive plans for a multi-national security force to help bolster Haiti’s police forces.
On Friday, the US Department of State said Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke to Henry a day earlier and urged the Haitian leader to “expedite a political transition through the creation of a broad-based, independent presidential college”.
This would then help “steer the country toward the deployment of a Multinational Security Support mission and free and fair elections”, the State Department said in a readout of the talks.
“The Secretary [Blinken] urged Henry to support this proposal in the interest of restoring peace and stability to Haiti so the Haitian people can resume their daily lives free from violence and despair.”
Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, 55, has been found guilty in a New York federal courtroom of participating in a scheme to ship cocaine through his country and into the United States.
On Friday, a jury in the Southern District Court of New York rendered its verdict after two weeks of argument, convicting Hernandez on charges related to drug trafficking and weapons possession.
He was convicted on all three criminal counts he faced: the first for conspiring to import cocaine into the US, the second for carrying “machine guns and destructive devices” to help in cocaine shipments, and the third for conspiring to use those weapons to pursue his aims.
The latter two charges carry maximum sentences of life in prison.
US prosecutors had accused Hernandez of partnering “with some of the largest cocaine traffickers in the world” and using his public office to protect shipments passing through Honduras.
In exchange, the prosecutors argued, Hernandez received bribes to further his political career. In one instance, as Hernandez campaigned for his first term as president in 2013, prosecutors said he accepted approximately $1m from Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman, the leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, a powerful drug smuggling syndicate.
Hernandez has denied the charges against him and has instead sought to bolster his image as a tough-on-crime politician, known for “mano dura” or “iron fist” tactics.
His defence team likewise tried to frame damaging testimony as attempts by drug traffickers and other criminals to get lighter sentencing in their own cases.
“They all have motivation to lie, and they are professional liars,” Hernandez said of the prosecution witnesses.
Defence lawyer Renato Stabile used his closing argument this week to make the case that his client had “been wrongfully charged”.
But the prosecution painted Hernandez as using the “full power and strength of the state” to transform Honduras into “a cocaine superhighway to the United States”.
Hernandez’s two terms in office, from 2014 to 2022, had been marked by a series of scandals, and his trial in the US was closely watched by Hondurans at home and in the country’s diaspora, with some appearing outside the court to demonstrate.
“The people suffered so much in Honduras,” one courtroom attendee, Cecilio Alfaro, told Al Jazeera last week. “There’s going to be justice, divine justice.”
Known by his initials JOH, Hernandez campaigned on the slogan of “una vida mejor” — a better life for Hondurans. He also pledged to crack down on drug trafficking within the country’s borders, using his inauguration speech to deliver a message to cocaine smugglers: “The party is over.”
But quickly, his own administration became embroiled in controversy, including allegations he had dipped into funds for the country’s Social Security Institute for personal gain.
US prosecutors said he also used his office to protect his younger brother, former Honduran Congressman Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernandez, from arrest and extradition. The US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) ultimately arrested Tony Hernández in 2018, while his brother was still president.
In 2021, Tony Hernandez was sentenced to life in prison in a US federal court for his role in distributing 185 tonnes of cocaine.
Only weeks after leaving office in February 2022, former President Hernandez surrendered to US authorities who had surrounded his residence in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa. He was extradited that April.
In a news release after Friday’s conviction, the United States Attorney’s Office hailed the jury’s decision as sending a message of justice to “all corrupt politicians who would consider a similar path”.
“Juan Orlando Hernandez had every opportunity to be a force for good in his native Honduras,” said US Attorney Damian Williams. “Instead, he chose to abuse his office and country for his own personal gain.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland likewise said Hernandez had “abused his position” to transform Honduras into a “narco-state”.
“As today’s conviction demonstrates, the Justice Department is disrupting the entire ecosystem of drug trafficking networks that harm the American people, no matter how far or how high we must go,” Garland said in a statement on Friday.
Students from the University of Leeds are occupying a campus building in protest over the university’s involvement with Israel. Among their demands – the dismissal of the school’s Jewish chaplain, who returned to serve in the Israeli Army after Oct. 7.
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