Author: admin@primenews

Film director Christopher Nolan and his wife, film producer Emma Thomas, are to receive a knighthood and damehood respectively. The government said the pair were being honoured for their services to film. Earlier this month, Nolan won his first-ever best director Oscar for Oppenheimer, his film about the father of the atomic bomb. That film, which Thomas produced, swept the board at the 2024 ceremony, picking up seven prizes in total. Accepting the best picture prize, Thomas said: “I think any of us who make movies dream of this moment. But it seemed so unlikely that it would ever actually…

Sam Bankman-Fried, co-founder of the failed crypto exchange FTX, has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for defrauding customers and investors of his now-bankrupt firm. The ruling cements the downfall of the former billionaire, who emerged as a high profile champion of crypto before his firm’s dramatic collapse in 2022. He was found to have stolen billions from customers ahead of the failure. Bankman-Fried’s legal team will appeal against his conviction. A message from his parents shared with the BBC by a representative for Bankman-Fried said: “We are heartbroken and will continue to fight for our son.” Earlier, the…

One year ago Danielle Gershkovich got a call from her mother. She could hardly believe the news. Her younger brother, Evan, a reporter with the Wall Street Journal, had just been arrested: he was the first US journalist in Russia since the Cold War to be charged with espionage. The maximum possible punishment: 20 years in prison. “It’s been a really difficult year,” Danielle tells me by video call from Washington. “The uncertainty is very hard to deal with.” Writing letters helps. The jailed American journalist has been sending plenty from prison. “The best way to support one another is…

When India’s Tata Group bought the country’s national airline, it was welcomed as something of a miracle. Air India had been mired in debt and under-funded state management for decades. No-one wanted even a piece of the iconic but loss-making carrier. But a deal was struck in 2021, just as the world was emerging from the pandemic – and airlines were betting big on revenge travel once borders reopened. They were right. The rebound is well and truly under way and air travel is off to a roaring start in 2024. There have been warnings of slower growth in the…

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi has launched its first electric vehicle (EV) and started taking orders. At the event the technology giant’s chief executive Lei Jun said the standard SU7 model would be priced at 215,900 yuan ($29,872; £23,663) and the Max version would cost 299,900 yuan. The firm says it got over 50,000 orders within the first 27 minutes of sales. Xiaomi’s entry into the electric car market comes as sales growth has slowed globally, triggering a price war. The move sees the technology giant taking on EV rivals including Tesla and BYD. The starting price in China for Tesla’s…

Refining gold has a long history in the family of Satish Pratap Salunke. Following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, he and his business collect scrap gold from jewellers, melt it down and sell it back to the jewellers in the form of gold bars. He has two refineries, one in Kochi in the southern state of Kerala and the other in Tiruchirappalli in Tamil Nadu. Relatives have refineries elsewhere in the south of India. “Every day my refiners on an average melt two to three kilograms of gold,” he says. Almost every town in India will have…

The UN’s top court has unanimously ordered Israel to enable the unhindered flow of aid into Gaza in order to avert a famine. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) said Israel must act “without delay” to allow the “provision… of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance”. This follows warnings that famine could hit Gaza within weeks. Israel has called allegations it is blocking aid “wholly unfounded”. It has also denied allegations of genocide lodged at the ICJ by South Africa and has blamed the UN for problems with the distribution of aid. The latest ruling by the court in The Hague…

The first quarter of 2024 was a record-smasher for markets, even as Wall Street contended with higher-for-longer interest rates. Investors ended 2023 on an exuberant note. Markets overcame a regional banking crisis and geopolitical turmoil and entered a powerful bull market. The economy avoided a widely expected recession. Traders eagerly anticipated the Fed would begin the first of six rate cuts this year in March. But a spate of hot economic data and warnings from Fed officials forced investors to recalibrate those hopes to align with the Fed’s projected three cuts, likely beginning in June or July. While the stock…

Cocoa prices are surging so high, the Easter Bunny might want to hoard its chocolate. Consumers hunting for Easter eggs and chocolate bunnies this year can expect sticker shock similar to Valentine’s Day. Retail chocolate prices rose 11.6% across all of 2023, according to Circana data shared with CNN, outpacing the 3.4% annual rise in the overall Consumer Price Index, a common measure of inflation. That’s in large part because the price of cocoa – a key ingredient for chocolate – has spiked. Poor climate and crop diseases in West Africa – home to 70% of global cocoa production – have…

Investors are refusing to inject billions in new money into Britain’s biggest water company, leaving the beleaguered business at risk of an emergency government takeover. The nine shareholders in Thames Water, which supplies water and wastewater services to 15 million people in London and the southeast of England, said in a statement Thursday that they were “not in a position” to provide an extra £3.25 billion ($4.1 billion) because UK water regulator Ofwat was insisting on conditions they could not accept. “After more than a year of negotiations with the regulator, Ofwat has not been prepared to provide the necessary regulatory…