Oscars: Romania Picks Cannes Winner ‘Fjord’ as Best International Feature Contender

Romania has picked its Oscar contender, selecting Cristian Mungiu‘s Fjord starring Renate Reinsve and Sebastian Stan to be its official selection for the 99th Academy Awards in the Best International Feature race. In the drama about progressive politics, religious faith, and the limits of tolerance, Reinsve and Stan play two fundamentalist parents who relocate from Romania to a small Norwegian…

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What makes a good listicle?

New research into 3,000 listicles reveals the signals associated with higher rankings — from freshness to explicit item counts. How do you write a listicle that performs well in classic and AI Search? In last week’s Memo, I dug deep into 5.3 million search results to see if Google demoted listicles.  Quick recap: Listicles are…

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Google spared from ad-business breakup, but judge orders changes to how it operates

The Justice Department has spent years attempting to break up Google’s gargantuan advertising business across two separate antitrust lawsuits: one filed in 2020 focused on Google’s dominance in search, and a second filed in 2023 that specifically targeted Google’s ad-technology business. Both cases argued that the search giant’s grip on the digital ad economy represents…

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Microsoft Fabric reaches the US government cloud, with general availability from October

Microsoft has launched its Fabric data platform in Government Community Cloud High on public preview, with general availability from 1 October, pitched at agentic AI workloads. Europe has no equivalent accredited tier, because its cloud certification scheme has been stuck since 2020 and lost its sovereignty requirement in 2024. Microsoft has launched its Fabric data…

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Tim Curry’s Cause Of Death Revealed

Just one week after Tim Curry‘s death, we now know what caused it. The legendary Rocky Horror Picture Show thespian passed away peacefully at age 80 in his Toluca Lake, California home on Tuesday, August 25. Related: Susan Sarandon & More React To Tim Curry’s Death Per People magazine, who acquired official docs from the…

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