Much of China's Shanghai locked down as mass Covid-19 testing begins

 China began locking down most of its largest city of Shanghai on Monday as part of its strict Covid-19 strategy, amid questions over the policy’s economic toll on the country.

China began locking down most of its largest city of Shanghai on Monday as part of its strict COVID-19 strategy, amid questions over the policy’s economic toll on the country. Shanghai’s Pudong financial district and nearby areas will be locked down from early Monday to Friday as citywide mass testing gets underway, the local government said.

In the second phase of the lockdown, the vast downtown area west of the Huangpu River that divides the city will then start its own five-day lockdown Friday. Residents will be required to stay home and deliveries will be left at checkpoints to ensure there is no contact with the outside world. Offices and all businesses not considered essential will be closed and public transport suspended. Already, many communities within the city of 26 million have been locked down, with their residents required to submit to multiple tests for COVID-19….Read More

Walt Disney’s weapon against Netflix and Amazon in India: Hotstar

Hotstar reported 300 million monthly active users last year

When Walt Disney Co’s Disney+ streaming service makes its debut in India on March 29, it will enjoy the luxury of home-court advantage: Hotstar. Disney’s control of Hotstar, which it acquired through the $71 billion purchase of Twenty-First Century Fox in 2019, gives Disney+’s entrance into the Indian market in partnership with Hotstar hundreds of millions of potential subscribers it can attract.

Hotstar reported 300 million monthly active users last year. Most of these are users of the free, advertising-supported service and Disney has said it is aiming to convert many of these users into paying subscribers. Disney could use the help as the streaming video war is waged on the global stage this year against rivals Netflix Inc and Amazon.com Inc. India is widely viewed as one of the biggest source of new subscribers.

Hotstar’s paid service includes shows from a spectrum of international programmers including AT&T Inc’s HBO, whose offerings include “Game of Thrones” and “Chernobyl” as well as popular live sports content like Premier League soccer. Disney+ Hotstar, will have two tiers of pricing where the premium variant will include its original programming like “Star Wars” TV series “The Mandalorian” and “WandaVision” and “Loki” from Marvel…

Spider-Man’s future up in the air as Sony-Disney spat continues

Spider-Man, played by Tom Holland, also was featured in MCU films such as this year’s ‘Avengers: Endgame,’ the highest-grossing film of all time

A dispute between Walt Disney Co. and Sony Corp. threatens to end their co-production of “Spider-Man” films, according to people familiar with the situation, putting the future of one of Marvel’s most beloved characters up in the air.

The two sides haven’t been able to agree on new terms for their partnership, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. Talks are ongoing, one of the people said. Sony holds the film rights to the popular Marvel character, even though Disney acquired Marvel Studios for $4 billion in 2009.

A falling-out between two of Hollywood’s biggest studios would mean Marvel President Kevin Feige won’t be lending his touch to future Spider-Man films, and the character won’t appear in Disney’s Marvel films — a series dubbed the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or MCU, that’s generated more than $22.5 billion globally.

Disney has been requesting a 50 per cent share of profits in the films going forward. Sony wanted to keep the current arrangement, in which Disney gets a 5 per cent share of box-office revenue, according to the Deadline website, which reported earlier on the dispute….

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‘Mad Queen’ : The treatment of Mother of Dragons was sexist in GoT

‘Dany’ is making tragic choices that all political leaders face when it comes to using violence to achieve their goals. But the writers chose to show her as acts as irrational, tyrannical or insane.

This story contains spoilers for Season 8 of HBO’s Game of Thrones.

Round of Thrones has finished, and everything is great — particularly with the forbearing Starks of Winterfell.

Arya has spurned retribution and is headed toward investigate new grounds, Jon Snow is back in the genuine north with his dedicated direwolf, Ghost, Sansa is the Queen in the North for a recently free domain and Bran the Broken is the close omniscient leader of the Six Kingdoms. Westeros is genuinely the land where dreams work out as expected.

Obviously, there is the little matter of why Jon is back with the Night’s Watch — he killed his sweetheart, ruler and auntie, Daenerys “Dany” Targaryen, oneself announced Mother of Dragons who had at last just reconquered her family’s hereditary position of authority…

Barely an ‘insane woman’

This might bother, contingent upon your perspective on power governmental issues, yet it isn’t unmerited (her advancement had been for quite some time flagged), nor is it a misogynist decrease of one of the best female characters ever to a passionate, unreasonable, “insane woman.”

Dany is settling on the awful decisions that every political pioneer face with regards to utilizing brutality to accomplish their objectives. What’s exasperating, in any case, is that show sprinters David Benioff and D. B. Weiss portrayed her goes about as unreasonable, domineering or crazy…

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