With critics' groups across the country starting to hand out their awards, the Oscar race is officially on. Cinemablend's Sean O'Connell joins us to handicap the major categories. With no clear frontrunner, it's anyone's guess which movie is going to break out before the big night.
In the Best Picture category, it's looking like things are boiling down to a showdown between "The Post" and "Lady Bird." O'Connell weighs the pros and cons of each, noting that he thinks the Steven Spielberg political drama is the best movie of the year. We also consider whether "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" could be the franchise's first Best Picture nominee since the 1977 original, "A New Hope."
Then, we tackle the contenders duking it out in the acting categories. Meryl Streep is looking to win her fourth Oscar for her leading role in "The Post." If anyone can stop her, O'Connell says it will likely be "Lady Bird's" Saoirse Ronan or "I, Tonya's" Margot Robbie. As for the actors, "Darkest Hour's" Gary Oldman is pulling ahead as the one to beat for his portrayal of Winston Churchill.
Gab, an online haven for white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and the alt-right, is facing an increasingly uncertain future. Over the weekend, Gab was linked to Robert Bowers, who is accused of open-firing in a Pittsburgh, Pa., synagogue, killing 11 people and wounding six others. Bowers had a verified account on Gab and used the social network to post hateful, anti-Semitic messages up until the morning of the shooting.
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"Red Dead Redemption 2" hit store shelves on Friday with big ambitions. The hotly anticipated game, seven-years in the making, was met with wide acclaim, boosting stock in the game-maker, Take-Two Interactive ($TTWO), and earning comparisons to the mega-hit "Grand Theft Auto V." "Everyone loves 'Grand Theft Auto,' and they just believe that anything Rockstar [Games] can make is going to be a sure-fire hit," Peter Brown, Managing Editor for GameSpot said in an interview on Cheddar.
Megyn Kelly's exit negotiations with NBC were underway on Friday, as the network announced that the third hour of valuable morning show real estate she anchored is canceled. "Essentially and effectively she is out," Tony Maglio, TV editor at TheWrap, said Friday in an interview with Cheddar. "It's just a matter of all the legalese and what she'll walk away with."
As Google goes, so goes Silicon Valley. That formulation took on new meaning after a New York Times report revealed the tech giant shielded Android founder Andy Rubin from sexual misconduct complaints. According to one of the Times reporters who broke the story, Google set the standard that allowed other tech companies in Silicon Valley to misbehave.
The multi-year Women in the Workplace report, produced by Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In organization with McKinsey & Company, reveals a stubborn problem of gender diversity in corporate America. As Rachel Thomas, the president of Lean In, explained to ChedHER on Friday, that companies are clearly interested in closing the gender gap ー but they haven't done enough to make it happen yet.
Federal authorities have arrested Cesar Sayoc, Jr. in connection with a dozen packages containing likely explosives. Sayoc has a Florida address and has a criminal record, according to the Broward County Sheriff.
Two additional suspicious packages sent to prominent Democrats were intercepted earlier Friday, only hours before the manhunt appeared to close in on a suspect for the attempted mail bombings now being described as a domestic terrorism.
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After a bombshell report that Google had covered up a sexual harassment claim against Android creator Andy Rubin, and shielded other powerful sexual harassers within the company, a memo from CEO Sundar Pichai to employees disclosed that 48 people had been fired over two years for sexual misconduct.
A regulatory crackdown on behemoths like Alphabet and Facebook is more likely than ever, according to Brian McCullough, author of "How the Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone."
