Category: News

Guillermo del Toro, Ang Lee, John Krasinski and Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs presented the 88th Annual Academy Award nominees on Thursday morning, kicking off the final sprint to the finish line for the year’s biggest contenders.

The Revenant is leading the race for the 2016 Oscars with 12 nominations, with Mad Max: Fury Road scoring 10.

Both films are nominated for best picture, along with The Big Short, Bridge of Spies, Brooklyn, The Martian, Room and Spotlight.

The Award ceremony will take place on Feb. 28.

The full list of nominees:

Best Picture

The Big Short

Bridge of Spies

Brooklyn

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Martian

The Revenant

Room

Spotlight

Best Director

The Big Short

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Revenant

Room

Spotlight

Best Actor

Bryan Cranston, Trumbo

Matt Damon, The Martian

Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant

Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs

Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl

Best Actress

Cate Blanchett, Carol

Brie Larson, Room

Jennifer Lawrence, Joy

Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years

Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn

Best Supporting Actor

Christian Bale

Tom Hardy

Mark Ruffalo

Mark Rylance

Sylvester Stallone

Best Supporting Actress

Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight

Rooney Mara, Carol

Rachel McADams, Spotlight

Alician Vikander, The Danish Girl

Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs

Best Original Screenplay

Bridge of Spies

Ex Machina

Inside Out

Spotlight

Straight Outta Compton

Best Adapted Screenplay

The Big Short

Brooklyn

Carol

The Martian

Room

Best Animated Feature

Anomalisa

Boy and the World

Inside Out

Shaun the Sheep Movie

When Marnie Was There

Best Foreign Language Film

Embrace of the Serpent

Mustang

Son of Saul

Theeb

A War

Best Documentary Feature

Amy

Cartel Land

The Look of Silence

What Happened, Miss Simone?

Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom

Best Cinematography

Carol

The Hateful Eight

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Revenant

Sicario

Best Film Editing

The Big Short

Mad Max Furty Road

The Revenant

Spotlight

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Best Production Design

Bridge of Spies

The Danish Girl

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Martian

The Revenant

Best Costume Design

Carol

Cinderella

The Danish Girl

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Revenant

Best Original Score

Bridge of Spies

Carol

The Hateful Eight

Sicario

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Best Original Song

50 Shades Of Gray

Racing Extinction

Youth

The Hunting Ground

Spectre

Best Visual Effects

Ex Machina

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Martian

The Revenant

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Best Makeup & Hairstyling

Mad Max

The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out a Window and Disappeared

The Revenant

Best Sound Mixing

Bridge of Spies

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Martian

The Revenant

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Best Sound Editing

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Martian

The Revenant

Sicario

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Best Documentary Short Subject

Body Team 12

Chau Behind the Lines

Claude Lanzman

A Girl in the River

Last Day of Freedom

Best Live Action Short Film

Ave Maria

Day One

Everything Will Be Okay

Shok

Stutterer

Best Animated Short

Bear Story

Prologue

Sanjay’s Super Team

We Can’t Live Without Cosmos

World of Tomorrow

US Co-Chair of the OSCE Minsk Group James Warlick had a meeting with UK Minister for Europe David Lidington.

Discussions focused on the settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict.

There have been no negotiations with the Armenian authorities on the supply of Iranian gas to Georgia, Armenian Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Yervand Zakharyan told reporters after the government sitting today.

At the same time he noted that the topic was not on the agenda of the meeting of the Energy Ministers of Armenia, Russia, Georgia and Iran held last December.

Zakharyan reminded that Georgia and Gazprom are holding talks on gas supply, but there’s no information about the results of the negotiations so far.

Relative peace was maintained at the line of contact between the armed forces of Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan last night.

The rival mostly used artillery weapons in different directions of the line of contact, the NKR Ministry of Defense reported.

The front divisions of the NKR Defense Army keep full control of the situation all along the line of contact.

The so-called Islamic State (IS) was behind a series of explosions and gun attacks in the capital Jakarta, an IS-linked news agency and police say, the BBC reports.

At least two civilians and five attackers died in the assaults, described as an attempt to mimic the deadly Paris attacks.

Security forces battled militants for hours, with the attacks centring on a major business and shopping district.

It follows warnings late last year that Islamists were planning a major attack.

The massacre of Armenians started on this day 26 years ago and continued for a week.  Those guilty for the events of 1990 have not been punished; the exact number of the victims is still unknown. What’s obvious, however, is that the real number considerably exceeds the official data.

The events in Baku 26 years ago were real genocide against the Armenian population. Tens of Armenians were killed in Baku between January 13 and 20. They were robbed of their property and exiled.

“More than a quarter of century after the massacre, the events have not been properly assessed,” President of the Assembly of Azerbaijani Armenians Grigory Ayvazyan told reporters today.

“The neighboring country glorifies the organizers and perpetrators of the crime. Even today killing an Armenia is not seen as a crime in Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan brings up generations on the example of cutthroats and murderers,” he said.

“The massacre of Armenians is a serious counterargument for all those, who try to imagine Artsakh under Azerbaijani jurisdiction. In this case the reoccurrence of ethnic cleansings will be unavoidable. Remembering Baku and Sumgaint, we’ll not allow the same in Artsakh,” sociologist Aharon Adibekyan said.

According to him, the book titled “Armenophobia in Azerbaijan” will soon be released. The book, which has been translated into English, tells about the Armenian massacres in Baku and Sumgaint and their consequences. Adibekyan said “we must make it clear to the world who we have to deal with in the face of Azerbaijan.”

World football’s governing body FIFA has dismissed secretary general Jerome Valcke, the BBC reports.

The Frenchman, 55, is currently suspended from all football activities for his alleged involvement in a scheme to profit from World Cup ticket sales.

FIFA has recommended that he should be banned from football for nine years.

Valcke, who was appointed in 2007, also faces bribery allegations, but denies any wrongdoing.

“The FIFA emergency committee decided, on 9 January 2016, to dismiss Jerome Valcke from the position of Fifa secretary general with immediate effect,” said a FIFA statement.

FIFA’s ethics committee said on 7 January it had decided to open “formal adjudicatory proceedings” against Valcke after studying a report submitted by its investigatory chamber.

Valcke, effectively the number two behind president Sepp Blatter, has been accused of being party  to a potential $10m bribe paid to Jack Warner, the former head of the North and Central America football governing body Concacaf, in return for his vote and backing to South Africa’s successful bid to host the 2010 World Cup.

Blatter, the outgoing president of world football’s governing body, and vice-president Michel Platini were both suspended for eight years in December following a FIFA ethics investigation.

The Armenian National Archive will publish archive documents related to the Armenian Genocide and World War II this year, Director of the National Archive Amatuni Virabyan told a press conference today.

He said the copies of original Ottoman documents and their translations will also be made public. Most of the documents refer to the properties of the Armenian Church.

Virabyan said the Archive has undertaken the digitalization of the documents. The digital copies will also be kept at the National Archive.

Amatuni Virabyn said thanks to cooperation with national archives of other countries they acquire the copies of all Armenia-related documents.

Georgia is taking measures for the sake of safeguarding the country’s natural gas supply, reports.

Today Georgia’s Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili and Energy Minister Kakha Kaladze met the Director General of SOCAR Energy Georgia, Mahir Mammedov, in Tbilisi to discuss the possible ways for avoiding natural gas supply deficit.

After the meeting Kaladze told journalists that this year Azerbaijan could not fill the gas supply deficit in Georgia. Kaladze warned the supplies of Azerbaijan’s natural gas will soon be insufficient to cover Georgia’s needs.

In order to solve the gas supply deficit problem the sides discussed several projects that would ensure increasing the Azerbaijani gas supply in Georgia.

One of the projects discussed during the meeting was construction of an underground natural gas storage facility. Kaladze said SOCAR expressed interest to participate in this project. Georgia was going to start construction works in 2016.

Another project was about increasing the existing capacity of SOCAR gas transit.

It will be very important for our country to implement this project [underground natural gas storage facility] in order to solve country’s natural gas supply problem. SOCAR’s both natural gas pipelines operate at full capacity. In the future we plan to implement such project that will ensure us to increase the capacity of gas transit,” Kaladze said.

Another project the sides discussed in order to avoid the natural gas supply deficit in Georgia was Shah Deniz gas field in the Caspian Sea, offshore from Azerbaijan, that opens Europe for Azerbaijani gas.

Kaladze said the second stage of the project would be completed by 2019. $400-700 million USD will be invested in Georgia in the framework of construction for the second stage of development of the Shah Deniz project.

Kaladze said Shah Deniz project would enable Georgia to enjoy additional supply of natural gas.

“At the meeting we have discussed the technical problems that we face during the winter. There are some periods when gas consumption reaches its peak level. And especially in winter when we used to balance the gas supply deficit with Russian gas. I want to say once again that Georgia and Azerbaijan are strategic partner. We will continue cooperation in the future,” Kaladze said.

The Energy Minister explained technically it was impossible to receive additional supply of gas from Azerbaijan this year. However after implementing the above mentioned projects Georgia would overcome the natural gas supply deficit challenge.

Earlier this week Kaladze explained extra gas supplies from Russia and Iran could be necessary only in a transition period until Azerbaijan’s Shah-Deniz field begins having an impact in 2019.