English Entertainment
Al-Jazeera launches English website
DUBAI: Arab satellite TV station Al-Jazeera launched an English-language website on Monday, five months after hackers brought down a temporary site at the height of the Iraq war.
News coordinator and spokesperson of the channel, Susi Sirri said the site – english.aljazeera.net – will fill a niche for English speakers, who want to take a look at the Arab perspective.
According to Sirri, the new site works closely with the television station and its Arabic counterpart, launched in 2001. The site currently has a staff of nearly 50 Western and Arab journalists, says an AP report.
Six months ago, on March 24, a temporary version of this English site went online to cover the Iraq war, but was reportedly brought down by hackers within a day. In June, the 24-year-old hacker John William Racine II of Norco, California, had pleaded guilty to felony charges of wire fraud and unlawful interception of an electronic communication.
Racine, a web designer, had admitted that he intercepted e-mails and content from Al-Jazeera and rerouted users to another site showing the American flag and the phrase ‘Let Freedom Ring’.
He had allegedly captured about 300 Al-Jazeera e-mail messages, got the password by posing as a networking contact and communicating with Network Solutions.
US, British and even Arab officials have criticized Al-Jazeera’s coverage of events in the Middle East and its airing of al-Qaeda statements, accusing the station of sensationalism, bias, and incitement.
However, another section of people in the region view the the site as a courageous addition to the Arab world’s mostly state-run media.
English Entertainment
Ellison takes his Paramount-Warner Bros case straight to theater owners
The Skydance chief goes to CinemaCon with promises and a skeptical crowd waiting
CALIFORNIA: David Ellison strode into a room packed with thousands of cinema owners and executives at CinemaCon in Las Vegas on Thursday and did something rather bold: he looked them in the eye and asked them to trust him.
The chief executive of Paramount Skydance vowed that his company would release a minimum of 30 films a year if regulators greenlight its proposed $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery, a deal that has made theater owners deeply, and loudly, nervous.
“I wanted to look every single one of you in the eye and give you my word,” Ellison told the crowd. “Once we combine with Warner Bros, we are going to make a minimum of 30 films annually across both studios.”
It was a confident pitch. Whether it landed is another matter. Cinema operators have already called on regulators to block the deal, and scepticism in the room was hardly concealed.
Ellison pushed back by pointing to recent form. Paramount, born from the merger of Paramount Global and Skydance Media last August, plans to release 15 films this year, nearly double the eight it put out in 2025. Progress, he argued, was already underway.
He also threw theater owners a bone they have long been chasing: all films, he pledged, would run exclusively in cinemas for a minimum of 45 days, drawing applause from a crowd that has spent years fighting for exactly that commitment across the industry.
“People can speculate all they want,” Ellison said, “but I am standing here today telling you personally that you can count on our complete commitment. And we’ll show you we mean it.”
Fine words. The regulators, however, will have the last one.
