“It’s time to play the music. It’s time to light the lights”. It seems somehow apt – given some of the disasters in recent years – to quote the theme to the Muppet show when writing about the Academy Awards. Not an inch of red carpet has been rolled out nor a statuette unpacked and already Sunday night’s ceremony is being savaged by media and film people alike for its continuing lack of diversity. Despite concerted campaigns such as #OscarsSoWhite and #OscarsSoMale, the list of nominees in many key categories is almost exclusively white and male.

And yet the world in which Tinseltown plies its trade is changing fast. This year the streaming service Netflix has 24 nominations, reflecting the shift in power from the big studios. Yet all films have to be shown on a screen in Los Angeles to qualify for nomination, which effectively excludes the work of newer, edgier talent in favour of the big names. The relentless criticism has taken its toll: ratings for the broadcast of the ceremony have been on the decline in recent years as people prefer to catch up on highlights, costume blunders and speeches, be they worthy, drunken or inappropriate, via social media or YouTube on their laptops.

But the laptop might soon be a thing of the past. Surveys have suggested that many people are relying increasingly on their smartphones and tablets – and the rapid development of better keyboards for mobile devices means they are increasingly easy to use – even for people like me, who suffer from terminal fat finger syndrome.

Elsewhere this week we’ve been reading about why over-parenting is bad for children, why the cacophony of different languages spoken in Britain should be celebrated and, as the coronavirus outbreak continues to spread, why quarantining millions in China is unprecedented and wrong.

From our colleagues in Australia we’ve learned eight things humans do that really confuse dogs, while from the US we have an explainer on the Democratic Party’s plans to raise taxes on the rich, and from Africa a preview of this weekend’s election in Cameroon.

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