Daily News Round-up

 

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 9

Nicole Kidman will lead the Australian charge at the 94th Academy Awards, having been nominated for the Best Actress Oscar for her performance in Being the Ricardos. The nomination is the fourth time in her career that Kidman has been nominated for the award, having won the Oscar for Best Actress for her work in The Hours in 2002.

New Zealand director Jane Campion received a Best Director nomination for her film Power of the Dog, which received a leading 12 nominations across multiple categories. Those nominations include one for Australian Kodi Smit-McPhee, who was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his work on the film, as was co-star Jesse Plemons. Campion, a nominee for 1993′s The Piano, became the first woman to ever be nominated twice for Best Director. She was also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Best Picture

Belfast

CODA

Don’t Look Up

Drive My Car

Dune

King Richard

Licorice Pizza

Nightmare Alley

The Power of the Dog

West Side Story

SNUB: Spider-Man: No Way Home

 

Best Director

Kenneth Branagh, Belfast

Rysusuke Hamaguchi, Drive My Car

Paul Thomas Anderson, Licorice Pizza

Jane Campion, The Power of the Dog

Steven Spielberg, West Side Story

SNUB: Denis Villeneuve, Dune

 

Best Actress in a Leading Role

Jessica Chastain, The Eyes of Tammy Faye

Olivia Colman, The Lost Daughter

Penelope Cruz, Parallel Mothers

Nicole Kidman, Being the Ricardos

Kristen Stewart, Spencer

SNUB: Lady Gaga, House of Gucci

 

Best Actor in a Leading Role

Javier Bardem, Being the Ricardos

Will Smith, King Richard

Andrew Garfield, tick, tick, BOOM!

Denzel Washington, The Tragedy of Macbeth

Benedict Cumberbatch, The Power of the Dog

SNUB: Bradley Cooper, Nightmare Alley

 

Best Actor in a Supporting Role

Ciarán Hinds, Belfast

Troy Kotsur, CODA

Kodi Smit-McPhee, The Power of the Dog

Jesse Plemons, The Power of the Dog

J.K. Simmons, Being the Ricardos

SNUB: Jared Leto, House of Gucci

 

Best Actress in a Supporting Role

Jessie Buckley, The Lost Daughter

Ariana DeBose, West Side Story

Judi Dench, Belfast

Kirsten Dunst, The Power of the Dog

Aunjanue Ellis, King Richard

SNUB: Cate Blanchett, Nightmare Alley

 

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When Diana Gomes and her husband moved a couch recently, they were startled by a thick, dark liquid dripping down the wall.

“There was this liquid leaking from the wall from the top of the skirting board and going all the way to the timber floor and it just looked really strange,” Ms Gomes told Nadia Mitsopoulos on ABC Radio Perth.

“It looked like blood,” she said.

“We got closer to it and checked it out. We touched it and it was thick and sticky.

“It didn’t feel like blood, and then I just thought the closest thing it looked like was honey.”

Both Ms Gomes and her husband tasted a very small amount, and their suspicions were confirmed.

“It was sweet, and it was just honey, yeah,” she said.

Diana Gomes and her husband tasted the substance and realised it was honey.(Supplied: Diana Gomes)

While the couple had identified the substance, they were perplexed by the cause.

“We’ve got no bees in the house. I’ve never seen any bees around it.”

The area where the honey was oozing from was a blocked-up fireplace.

“We bought the house four years ago. We know there was a chimney there, but the chimney was already closed when we bought it,” Ms Gomes said.

“My husband went to the roof to check the top and the chimney was completely sealed, there were no bees around or anything.”

The couple eventually decided it must have been an old hive that had been in the space for years.

Perth experienced two heatwaves over Christmas and January, when temperatures reached over 40 degrees Celsius for up to six days running, which the couple suspect made the honey melt.

 

The melted honey was revealed when the couple moved a couch. (Supplied: Diana Gomes)

Ms Gomes said they cleaned the wall and floor but were still left with the problem of the hive trapped in the cavity.

“I don’t want to but I think we’re going to have to [knock the wall down],” she said.

“We contacted the home insurance and they don’t cover it.”

A few days later Ms Gomes confirmed that the couple had bitten the bullet and knocked into the wall, discovering a whopping 101kg lump of honey and hive in the old fireplace.

 

The Gomes found a 101kg lump of hive and honey in their fireplace(Supplied: Diana Gomes)

“Lucky there were no bees, it was just an old massive hive,” she said.

“We removed it and cleaned everything ourselves and it was a very hard job, but I am extremely happy and relieved we sorted it out.”

Honey can survive for centuries in the right conditions, and has even been found in archaeological excavations of Ancient Egyptian sites, thanks to its composition and chemical properties.

It is most likely to be preserved in dry conditions as humidity can lead to fermentation.

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Australia’s Twenty20 tour of New Zealand has officially been cancelled after initially being “postponed” last month.

The three-game series was originally supposed to take place shortly after the Ashes — between January 30 and February 5 — but was delayed “indefinitely” in January due to New Zealand’s strict quarantine requirements.

It was temporarily placed in a March window on Cricket Australia’s (CA) crowded international schedule, between the second and third Tests of the tour of Pakistan.

Now, CA and New Zealand Cricket have made the call to abandon the series completely.

“We thank NZ Cricket for making every effort to host the series but unfortunately it wasn’t possible given the border restrictions and quarantine requirements,” CA chief executive Nick Hockley said.

*Queensland has recorded its highest number of daily COVID-19 deaths, with 24 people passing away in the latest reporting period.

There were 6,902 new COVID-19 cases.

Of the deaths, 16 were in aged care facilities.

Speaking from Bundaberg, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk thanked Federal Defence Minister, Peter Dutton for sending the Australian Defence Force into aged care homes to ease severe staff shortages in the sector.

“This is an issue across Australia in relation to aged care and it’s great to see that support coming,” Ms Palaszczuk said.

*Victoria has recorded another 21 COVID-19 deaths.

The number of people in hospital after contracting the virus sits at 542, down from 575 a day earlier.

Of those patients, 71 are in intensive care units, with 27 people on ventilators.

The state reported 9,908 new infections — 3,627 from PCR results and 6,281 from rapid antigen tests. 

It takes the number of officially reported active infections to 57,022, down from 58,449 yesterday.

About 46 per cent of the state’s adult population has now had a third dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

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An angry South Korea said it will appeal to sport’s top court over “unfair” officiating in short track speed skating at the Beijing Winter Olympics after two gold medal hopes were disqualified.

In Monday’s men’s 1000m semi-finals, world record holder Hwang Dae-heon and Lee June-seo were disqualified for illegal late passing and lane-changing respectively, having coming first and second in their heats.

The decisions allowed two Chinese skaters to advance to the final, with the host country collecting gold and silver.

The Korean Sport and Olympic Committee (KSOC) said it would file an appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) “to formalise the injustice of this decision”.

“We plan to do our best to prevent injustice from happening to our athletes in the international ice skating and sporting communities,” KSOC said in a statement.

The penalties enraged South Koreans, with many claiming the refereeing was biased.

One online user called the officiating “horrible”, adding: “It’s only making decisions that are extremely in favour of China.”

South Korea lodged a protest with the International Skating Union over Hwang’s fate, but that was rejected as disqualification for rule violations cannot be challenged.

Hungary also filed a protest after Liu Shaolin Sandor received a yellow card for two penalties in the 1000m final, but it was also rejected.