At the 96th annual Academy Awards ceremony, Christopher Nolan's blockbuster biopic "Oppenheimer" was honored with seven awards, including best picture. The historical drama "Oppenheimer" was a big winner at Sunday's Oscars gala in Hollywood, taking home seven awards, including best picture, best director and best actor. The start of the gala, hosted for the fourth time by Jimmy Kimmel, was delayed by five minutes as pro-Palestinian protesters gathered outside the awards ceremony. Christopher Nolan won the Academy Award for best director for his film "Oppenheimer." The 53-year-old British director had never won an Oscar before.  Cillian Murphy also earned his first Academy Award for his performance in "Oppenheimer" as the physicist who led the development of the atomic bomb in World War II. Meanwhile, Robert Downey Jr. won the Oscar for best supporting actor for his portrayal of Rear Admiral Lewis Strauss in the same film. It was the veteran actor's first Academy Award. And Emma Stone's risky, unapologetic female take on the Frankenstein myth in "Poor Things" won her the Oscar for best actress. Who won other awards? Da'Vine Joy Randolph won the Oscar for best supporting actress for her role as grieving mother Mary Lamb in the boarding school drama "The Holdovers." Hayao Miyazaki won his second Oscar for his semi-autobiographical Japanese animated film "The Boy and the Heron," a fantasy tale about a boy mourning his dead mother. The 83-year-old Japanese anime master, who came from retirement to make "The Boy and the Heron," did not attend the ceremony. The Holocaust drama "The Zone of Interest," which explores questions of complicity while depicting the mundane life of a Nazi family in their home next to the Auschwitz death camp, won the Academy Award for best international film. Mstyslav Chernov's "20 Days in Mariupol," a harrowing first-person account of the early days of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, won the Oscar for best documentary. "This is the first Oscar in Ukrainian history," said Chernov. "And I'm honored. Probably I will be the first director on this stage to say I wish I'd never made this film. I wish to be able to exchange this (for) Russia never attacking Ukraine."

Alarming statistics have once again exposed the inability of both federal and provincial governments to effectively eliminate child labour, with laws falling short of addressing the pressing issue that persists despite recent crackdowns. According to the documents seen by The Express Tribune, more than 700,000 children between the ages of 10 and 14 are subjected to labour in brick kilns and the agriculture sector across the country. Of the total workforce of over 71 million children engaged in various sectors nationwide, a staggering 26 million are employed in agriculture and brick kilns. The disturbing statistics reveal that amid the claims and assurances by government bodies and institutions to curb child labour, the ground reality tells a different story. Data shared by the Federal Bureau of Statistics with the Senate Secretariat outlines the substantial workforce in the agriculture sector, totalling over 2.51 million workers, including 1.47 million men and 1.04 million women. Moreover, approximately 833,000 labourers—689,000 men and 144,000 women—are employed in brick kilns. Over 693,000 children between the ages of 10 and 14 are engaged in forced labour within the agriculture sector, while 24,478 children are compelled to work in brick kilns, according to the report. Disturbingly, over 399,000 girls and 294,000 boys are toiling in the fields. In contrast, 14,500 boys and 10,000 girls are subjected to labour in brick kilns. Despite provincial legislation prohibiting child labour and setting age limits, the numbers remain alarming: 436,000 in Punjab, 113,000 in Sindh, 90,000 in Balochistan, and over 54,000 children in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa are forced to work in the agriculture sector. Moreover, the document points out that over 14.7 million boys and girls above the age of 15 are involved in agriculture, while 648,000 children are working in brick kilns nationwide. In K-P, 2.934 million children above 15 years of age are engaged in agriculture, with 76,500 working in brick kilns. Sindh accounts for 1.103 million boys and girls in the agriculture sector, while Balochistan reports 3,251 children working in agriculture and over 81,000 in brick kilns. Source: TRIBUNE

Popular singer Tahsan Khan recently lost his father. He has many more memories with his father. Which he cannot forget.  This singer is looking for memories only about his father again and again.  So, 15 days after his father's death, Tahsan Khan posted a childhood photo with his father on his social media handle On Friday, April 28. The childhood picture of Tahsan with his father shows, Tahsan sitting on his father's lap.  Point to be noted that, his father Sanaur Rahman Khan breathed his last at his home on Wednesday, April 12.

The 95th Academy Awards has begun at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles. One early award shone light on Russia's invasion of Ukraine, while a worldwide hit from India won best original song.  Smash hit 'Everything Everywhere All at Once' won the Oscar for best feature film on Sunday, capping off a night of several major wins for the film which was a favorite ahead of the 95th Academy Awards. The best picture category was hotly contested, with the unorthodox sci-fi flick trumping including biopic Elvis, psychological drama Tar, action remake Top Gun: Maverick, and Germany's All Quiet on the Western Front, which already picked up four awards earlier in the night. The ceremony was held in the shadow of last year's event, where Will Smith got on stage and slapped host Chris Rock in the face in a incident which made global headlines. Michelle Yeoh wins best actress with Everything Everywhere All at Once Michelle Yeoh, who starred on Oscar-favorite Everything Everywhere All at Once, won the Oscar for best actress in a lead role. "For all the little boys and girls who look like me watching tonight, this is a beacon of hope and possibilities," Yeoh said in an emotional acceptance speech. "This is proof that dreams do come true" Brendan Fraser wins best actor with The Whale Brendan Fraser, who rose to fame in the 1990s before a decade in the Hollywood wilderness, marked a major career comeback by winning the Oscar for best actor. Fraser starred in The Whale, in which he portrayed a morbidly obese man who tries to reconnect with his daughter. "I started in this business 30 years ago and things didn't come easily to me," said Fraser, breathing heavily. "I just want to say thank you for this acknowledgement."  Duo behind Everything Everywhere All at Once win directing Oscar Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, colloquially known as 'The Daniels' for their work together on Everything Everywhere All at Once, won the Academy Award for best direction. "There is greatness in every single person," said Kwan as he accepted the award. "It doesn't matter who we are, there is genius in every single person, you just have to find it. Thank you to the people who unlocked my genius."  Scheinert also made a comment in defense of drag, which has been targeted by new laws in several US states. Everything Everywhere All at Once was nominated for 11 Oscars — the most nominations of the evening — and already nabbed wins for best supporting actor and actress. Indian epic RRR wins best original song The smash hit song "Naatu Naatu" from the Telugu-language epic RRR won the Oscar for best original song. It was the first song form an Indian movie to be nominated for the award. "RRR has to win, pride of every Indian ... and has put me at the top of the world," the song's composer M.M. Keeravani sang to the tune of The Carpenters' "Top of the World" while accepting the award alongside lyricist Chandrabose.  Earlier in the evening, Indian singers Rahul Sipligunj and Kaala Bhairava performed the song live. The performance featured a mix of old and new choreography but still slightly more tame than some of the performances at screenings in India, which featured dancing in the aisles. Rihanna, Lady Gaga and more perform nominated songs Several of the other artists who were nominated for best original song also gave live performances at the Academy Awards. Hot off the back of her Super Bowl halftime performance, Rihanna performed "Lift Me Up" from the film Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Meanwhile, Lady Gaga performed "Hold My Hand" from Top Gun: Maverick. Everything Everywhere All at Once supporting actress Stephanie Hsu also performed "This Is A Life" alongside David Byrne and experimental band Son Lux. All Quiet on the Western Front wins best international film Midway through the evening, German production All Quiet on the Western Front won the Academy Award for best international film. The Netflix original film brought audiences a gruesome anti-war message almost a hundred years after the original book by Erich Maria Remarque was published. Swiss director Edward Berger thanked star Felix Kammerer, an Austrian stage actor who made his cinematic debut in the film. "This was your first movie and you carried us on your shoulders as it was nothing," he told the 27-year-old Austrian actor. "Without you, none of us would be here." All Quiet on the Western Front beat out international film nominees EO from Poland, The Quiet Girl from Ireland, Close from Belgium, and Argentina, 1985 from Argentina. The film also won Oscars for best cinematography, best production design and best original score. Navalny wins best documentary amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine A documentary about jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has won the Oscar for best documentary feature. Navalny explores the poisoning that nearly killed the Kremlin critic in 2020 and his subsequent detention upon his return to Moscow in 2021. "My husband is in prison just for telling the truth. My husband is in prison just for defending democracy," his wife, Yulia Navalnaya, said at the ceremony. "Alexei, I am dreaming of the day when you will be free and our country will be free. Stay strong, my love."  First gongs roll in early for Everything Everywhere All at Once Two supporting actors in Everything Everywhere All at Once, Ke Huy Quan and Jamie Lee Curtis, have won the Oscars for best supporting actor and best supporting actress, respectively. It is the first Academy Award win for either actor. "My journey started on a boat. I spent a year in a refugee camp and somehow I ended up here on Hollywood's biggest stage," Quan said. "They say stories like this only happen in the movies. I can't believe this is happening to me. This is the American dream."  Meanwhile, Curtis became the eight-oldest person to with best supporting actress. "My mother (Janet Leigh) and my father (Tony Curtis) were both nominated for Oscars in different categories," Curtis said through tears. "I just won an Oscar!" Oscars open with thunderous flyover Hollywood's biggest night began with a figher jet flyover in a nod to Top Gun: Maverick. The TV broadcast showed a scene where awards host Jimmy Kimmel is in the cockpit of a fighter jet with Tom Cruise, before he is ejected out and parachutes into the Dolby Theater. "Thank you for inviting me to be a part of it, especially this year, when the world finally got out of the house to see the films you worked so hard to make, the way you intended them to be seen — in a theater," host Jimmy Kimmel said during his opening monologue. He made several jibes at the controversy surrounding last year's awards: "If anyone in this theater commits an act of violence at any point in the show, you will be awarded the Oscar for best actor and permitted to give a 19-minute-long speech." All Quiet on the Western Front shows war's 'guesome relevance' German World War I epic All Quiet on the Western Front is up for nine awards including best picture, making it Netflix's strongest nominee this year. Claudia Roth, Germany’s Minister of Culture, told that such a large number of nominations for the film was the result of its "gruesome relevance" at a time of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine in Europe. "It is a film which really brought me close to the limits of what I could bear," she said. "But that is exactly what war is about — it is dirty, gruesome, brutal, the end of humanity and totally futile." All eyes on Everything Everywhere All at Once Another frontrunner for best picture is Everything Everywhere All at Once, a wacky sci-fi film that follows a Chinese immigrant laundromat owner across multiple universes to defeat an inter-dimensional supervillain who happens to be her own daughter. Star Michelle Yeoh and her castmates Ke Huy Quan, Jamie Lee Curtis and Stephanie Hsu were also nominated for their roles in the film. "It's a group of very likable people behind the movie who it's impossible to not be happy for," Hollywood Reporter awards columnist Scott Feinberg told. James Hong, a co-star in the film, arrived at the Academy Awards with googly eyes on his tie, a reference to one of the film's many absurdist props. "It shows if you wait long enough, you'll make it," the 94-year-old Hong told.

"Parasite" is the first non-English language film to win best picture in the 92-year history of the Academy Awards. Bong Joon Ho's masterfully devious class satire took Hollywood's top prize at the Oscars on Sunday night, along with awards for best director, best international film and best screenplay. In a year dominated by period epics -- "1917," "Once Upon a Time ... In Hollywood," "The Irishman" -- the film academy instead went overseas, to South Korea, to reward a contemporary and unsettling portrait of social inequality in "Parasite." True to its name, "Parasite" simply got under the skin of Oscar voters, attaching itself to the American awards season and, ultimately, to history. The win was a watershed moment for the Academy Awards, which has long been content to relegate international films to their own category. Multiple standing ovations greeted Bong's several wins. "I am ready to drink tonight," Bong said, prompting roars from the crowd. Unexpectedly called up again for best director, Bong saluted his fellow nominees, particularly Martin Scorsese, and concluded: "Now I'm ready to drink until tomorrow." The win for "Parasite" — which had echoes of the surprise victory of "Moonlight" over "La La Land" three years ago — came in year in which many criticized the lack of diversity in the nominees and the absence of female filmmakers. But the triumph for "Parasite" enabled Hollywood to flip the script, and signal a different kind of progress. In doing so, the film academy turned away another history-making event, again denying Netflix its first best-picture win despite two contenders in "The Irishman" and "Marriage Story," and a big-spending awards campaign blitz. All of the acting winners — Brad Pitt, Renee Zellweger, Joaquin Phoenix and Laura Dern — went as expected. Few categories were more certain coming into Sunday's Oscars than best supporting actor, which Pitt has had locked down all awards season. While Pitt (who in 2014 shared in the best picture win for "12 Years a Slave," as was a producer) has regaled audiences with one-liners in the run-up to the Oscars, he began his comments on a political note. "They told me I have 45 seconds to speak, which is 45 seconds more than the Senate gave John Bolton this week," Pitt said, alluding to the impeachment hearings. "I'm thinking maybe Quentin does a movie about it." Pitt said the honor had given him reason to reflect on his fairy-tale journey in the film industry, going back to when he moved to Los Angeles from Missouri. "Once upon a time in Hollywood," said Pitt. "Ain't that the truth." Most of the early awards went according to forecasts, including Dern winning for her performance as a divorce attorney in Noah Baumbach's "Marriage Story." Accepting her first Oscar, Dern thanked her in-attendance parents, "my legends, Diane Ladd and Bruce Dern." For the 87th time, no women were nominated for best director this year, a subject that was woven into the entire ceremony — and even into some attendees' clothing. Natalie Portman wore a cape lined with the names of female filmmakers who weren't nominated for best director, including Lulu Wang ("The Farewell"), Greta Gerwig ("Little Women") and Mati Diop ("Atlantics"). Coming on a rare rainy day in Los Angeles, the ceremony was soggy and song-heavy. Some performances, like Eminem's performance of "Lose Yourself," were unexpected (and drew a wane response from Martin Scorsese). All of the song nominees performed, including Elton John who won with his longtime songwriting partner Bernie Taupin for their "Rocketman" tune. The hostless ceremony opened on a note of inclusion, with Janelle Monae performing "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood" and her own song, "Come Alive," with an assist from Billy Porter. "I'm so proud to be standing here as a black queer artist telling stories," Monae said. "Happy Black History Month." Two former Oscar hosts, Chris Rock and Steve Martin, provided the opening monologue. "An incredible demotion," Martin called it. Martin also reminded that something was missing from this year's directing nominees. "Vaginas!" Rock replied. There were milestones, nevertheless. In winning best adapted screenplay for his Nazi satire "Jojo Rabbit," the New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi became the first indigenous director ever to win an Oscar. He dedicated the award to "all the indigenous kids in the world who want to do art, dance and write stories." "We are the original storytellers," Waititi said. "Joker" composer Hildur Gudnadottir became only the third woman to ever win best original score. "To the girls, to the women, to the mothers, to the daughters who hear the music opening within, please speak up," said Gudnadottir. "We need to hear your voices." Awards were spread around to all of the best-picture nominees, with the lone exception being Martin Scorsese's 10-time nominee "The Irishman." "1917," acclaimed for its technical virtuosity, took awards for Roger Deakins' cinematography, visual effects and sound mixing. The car racing throwback "Ford v Ferrari" was also honored for its craft, winning both editing and sound editing. Gerwig's Louisa May Alcott adaptation "Little Women" won for Jacqueline Durran's costume design. "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood" for Barbara Ling's production design. Netflix came in with a leading 24 nominations. Along with the win for "Marriage Story," the streamer's "American Factory" won best documentary. The film is the first release from Barack and Michelle Obama's Higher Ground Productions. No studio has spent more heavily this awards season than Netflix, which is seeking its first best picture win after coming up just shy last year with "Roma." Pixar extended its domination of the best animated film category, winning for "Toy Story 4." It's the 10th Pixar film to win the award and second "Toy Story" film to do so, following the previous 2010 installment. It was an early award for the Walt Disney Co. which despite last year amassing a record $13 billion in worldwide box office and owning the network the Oscars are broadcast on, played a minor role in the ceremony. The bulk of its awards came from 20th Century Fox ("Ford v Ferrari") and Fox Searchlight ("Jojo Rabbit"), both of which the company took control of after its $71.3 billion acquisition of 21st Century Fox last year. Disney's ABC, which is broadcasting the show live, hoped a widely watched field of nominees — including the $1 billion-grossing "Joker," up for a leading 11 awards — will help viewership. Last year's show garnered 29.6 million viewers, a 12% uptick. In a year of streaming upheaval throughout the industry, this year's Oscar favorites were largely movies released widely in theaters. They also predominantly featured male characters and came from male directors. After a year in which women made significant gains behind the camera, no female directors were nominated for best director. The acting categories are also the least diverse since the fallout of #OscarsSoWhite pushed the academy to remake its membership. Cynthia Erivo ("Harriet") is the only actor of color nominated. Those results, which have been a topic in speeches through awards season, stand in contrast to research that suggests the most popular movies star more people of color than ever before. AP/UNB AH

The world, it seems, is soon to see the first picture of a black hole. On Wednesday, astronomers across the globe will hold “six major press conferences” simultaneously to announce the first results of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), which was designed precisely for that purpose. It has been a long wait. Of all the forces or objects in the Universe that we cannot see — including dark energy and dark matter — none has frustrated human curiosity so much as the invisible maws that shred and swallow stars like so many specks of dust. Astronomers began speculating about these omnivorous “dark stars” in the 1700s, and since then indirect evidence has slowly accumulated. “More than 50 years ago, scientists saw that there was something very bright at the centre of our galaxy,” Paul McNamara, an astrophysicist at the European Space Agency and an expert on black holes, told AFP. “It has a gravitational pull strong enough to make stars orbit around it very quickly — as fast as 20 years.” To put that in perspective, our Solar System takes about 230 million years to circle the centre of the Milky Way. Eventually, astronomers speculated that these bright spots were in fact “black holes” — a term coined by American physicist John Archibald Wheeler in the mid-1960s — surrounded by a swirling band of white-hot gas and plasma. At the inner edge of these luminous accretion disks, things abruptly go dark. “The event horizon” — a.k.a. the point-of-no-return — “is not a physical barrier, you couldn’t stand on it,” McNamara explained. “If you’re on the inside of it, you can’t escape because you would need infinite energy. And if you are on the other side, you can — in principle.” – A golf ball on the moon – At its centre, the mass of a black hole is compressed into a single, zero-dimensional point. The distance between this so-called “singularity” and the event horizon is the radius, or half the width, of a black hole. The EHT that collected the data for the first-ever image is unlike any ever devised. “Instead of constructing a giant telescope — which would collapse under its own weight — we combined several observatories as if they were fragments of a giant mirror,” Michael Bremer, an astronomer at the Institute for Millimetric Radio Astronomy in Grenoble, told AFP. In April 2017, eight such radio telescopes scattered across the globe — in Hawaii, Arizona, Spain, Mexico, Chile, and the South Pole — were trained on two black holes in very different corners of the Universe to collect data. Studies that could be unveiled next week are likely to zoom in on one or the other. Oddsmakers favour Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the centre of our own elliptical galaxy that first caught the eye of astronomers. Sag A* has four million times the mass of our sun, which means that the black hole is generates is about 44 million kilometres across. That may sound like a big target, but for the telescope array on Earth some 26,000 light-years (or 245 trillion kilometres) away, it’s like trying to photograph a golf ball on the Moon. – Testing Einstein – The other candidate is a monster black hole — 1,500 times more massive even than Sag A* — in an elliptical galaxy known as M87. It’s also a lot farther from Earth, but distance and size balance out, making it roughly as easy (or difficult) to pinpoint. One reason this dark horse might be the one revealed next week is light smog within the Milky Way. “We are sitting in the plain of our galaxy — you have to look through all the stars and dust to get to the centre,” said McNamara. The data collected by the far-flung telescope array still had to be collected and collated. “The imaging algorithms we developed fill the gaps of data we are missing in order to reconstruct a picture of a black hole,” the team said on their website. Astrophysicists not involved in the project, including McNamara, are eagerly — perhaps anxiously — waiting to see if the findings challenge Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which has never been tested on this scale. Breakthrough observations in 2015 that earned the scientists involved a Nobel Prize used gravitational wave detectors to track two black holes smashing together. As they merged, ripples in the curvatures of time-space creating a unique, and detectable, signature. “Einstein’s theory of general relativity says that this is exactly what should happen,” said McNamara. But those were tiny black holes — only 60 times more massive than the Sun — compared to either of the ones under the gaze of the EHT. “Maybe the ones that are millions of times more massive are different — we just don’t know yet.” Source: AFP AH