How an obscure Oscars rule led to this year's massive best-picture screw-up How an obscure Oscars rule led to this year's massive best-picture screw-up

Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty. Kevin Winter/Getty

Warren Beatty was mistakenly given the wrong envelope to announce the winner for best picture at Sunday's Academy Awards in a moment that will go down as not just the biggest Oscars screw-up, but one of the biggest awards snafus ever.

But after the madness of sorting out that it was "Moonlight," not "La La Land," that won best picture, the big question was how Beatty and fellow presenter Faye Dunaway could have been given the envelope for best actress in a leading role, which went to Emma Stone, when that award had already been given out.

Beatty said onstage that the card he was given had Stone's name. Screenshots from the telecast prove he's right:

I was recording the #oscars to a hard drive. This frame clearly shows that Warren Beatty was given the “Actress In A Leading Role” envelope. pic.twitter.com/PL3eA8Ds1i

— Andy Ihnatko (@Ihnatko) February 27, 2017

But Stone told the press room afterward that she was holding onto the best-actress envelope while she was onstage with the "La La Land" cast and producers when it was announced as best picture.

"I also was holding my 'best actress in a leading role' card that entire time. So whatever story ... I don't mean to start stuff, but whatever story that was, I had that card," Stone told reporters, in a line that quickly spawned conspiracy theories on social media. "So I'm not sure that happened. And I really wanted to talk to you guys first."

We can lay the theories to rest. It turns out that PricewaterhouseCoopers, the accounting firm in charge of vote-counting for the Oscars, shows up with two sets of envelopes announcing the winners. Employees of the firm stand on opposite sides of the stage and hand the sealed envelopes to the presenters before they go out.

So it seems Leonardo DiCaprio, who presented the Oscar for best lead actress to Stone, walked onstage from a different side than Beatty and Dunaway did, leading to the duplicate being used.

Why the need for duplicates? In an interview with MarketWatch before the Oscars, Brian Cullinan, one of the PwC accountants in charge of the envelopes, said it's to make sure Los Angeles traffic doesn't prevent getting the envelopes to the ceremony.

"We have two briefcases, that are identical, and we have two entire sets of winning envelopes. [Fellow accountant] Martha [Ruiz] carries one of those briefcases, I carry the other. We go to the show separately with police escorts. I used to think it was for our security, it's really for the briefcase. [Laughs] We take different routes to get there just because of the kinds of things that can happen in L.A. traffic. We want to make sure that no matter what happens, one of us gets there. We've never really had a problem with that."

"La La Land" producer Jordan Horowitz holds up the card announcing the winner for best picture, "Moonlight." REUTERS Lucy Nicholson

But there are still unanswered questions, like why the PwC accountants didn't act quicker to fix the error when "La La Land" was incorrectly named the winner. It was a good couple of minutes before "La La Land" producer Jordan Horowitz stopped everything and revealed that the best-picture card said "Moonlight."

Deadline reports that one of the accountants told a stage manager about the error, and that person then went onstage with the correct card.

PwC issued a statement late Sunday night saying it was "currently investigating how this could have happened."

Former Trump trade adviser: The world's foremost authority on trade could be Trump's next target Former Trump trade adviser: The world's foremost authority on trade could be Trump's next target

Donald Trump. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The senior adviser who led President Donald Trump's trade transition team suggested to Business Insider that the next trade agreement that could come under fire from the White House is the US's participation in the World Trade Organization.

Dan DiMicco, the former Nucor CEO and board member of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, said "right now" the global organization "does not work for us."

Formed in 1995, the organization consists of more than 160 members. It acts as an international body that, based on a set of agreements negotiated and signed by those members, supports free trade and opposes the sort of protectionist policies that were the hallmark of Trump's campaign promises.

But criticism of the organization dates back to its inception. Much of the condemnation centers on the belief the organization has not penalized countries such as China, which have been able to benefit from its participation in the WTO while not cutting back on its protectionist policies.

DiMicco said value-added taxes in accordance with the WTO create an unfair environment for US exporters. The US is the only major country in the group that does not have a value-added tax, he said. 

The tax system creates a way for exporters to be reimbursed on tax costs. And with all the other major countries having a VAT, the effects even out on trade in instances that don't involve the US. But for US trade with other WTO members, exporters end up being, essentially, taxed twice when corporate taxes are figured in.

"Back when we signed on to the WTO, we allowed ourselves to be put in a position which was at a significant disadvantage, because their VAT as opposed to our income tax, they took rebates to the VAT tax to manufacturers when they export their products," he said.

He continued: "So in our case, it would be like Ford Motor Co. getting a rebate of its cost to make a car, if it exported the car. Well, that changes the whole competitive dynamics. And likewise, if they were to ship a car into, say, Europe, they would have to pay the VAT on top of what they've already paid as an income tax."

His analysis — which has also been promoted by Peter Navarro, the head of the newly formed White House National Trade Council, and Wilbur Ross, Trump's nominee to lead the Commerce Department — has been criticized by others who say it's a misunderstanding of the VAT system. 

Barack Obama with Dan DiMicco in 2009. AP Photo/Charles Dharapak

Still, DiMicco, who informally advises the administration, said the system creates "no wonder" as to how the US has accumulated a multi-trillion dollar trade deficit since the 1990s. 

"That type of thing has to be worked out," he said. "Now it's been discussed in previous administrations. But, WTO has never been willing to sit down and renegotiate that. That's got to change. It cannot continue like that."

"That's one of the primary issues that, if they're not willing to renegotiate, then, President Trump has been clear," DiMicco continued. "If he can't get deals that are focused on 'America First,' which this would be obviously one, then he's not opposed to leaving the arrangement. ... His interest is not in leading these things. His interest is in getting a better deal for America."

DiMicco did add that, the border-adjustment tax proposal that has been floating around sounded as if it would help rectify some of his VAT-related concerns with the WTO, should it be applied to all imports.

"I'm not an expert on what's being proposed," he said. "I haven't seen any of the details. But what I'm being told is that it would go a long way to do that."

The border-adjustment tax on imports would likely be passed onto consumers, however. And in the business world, sentiments are split: Retailers hate it, while manufacturers love the idea. On Tuesday, Walmart spoke out against it, saying the proposal is "a concern."

"Clearly anything that would potentially raise prices for our customers in the US is a concern for us," Walmart CFO Brett Biggs said Tuesday on a call with reporters.  

Last July, Trump threatened to pull the US out of the WTO during an interview with Chuck Todd on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Trump warned that the withdrawal could take place if the organization tries to interfere with any of the protectionist proposals he puts forth after Todd said those policies could run afoul of the WTO.

"It doesn’t matter," Trump responded. "Then we’re going to renegotiate or we’re going to pull out. These trade deals are a disaster, Chuck. World Trade Organization is a disaster."

As The Wall Street Journal wrote following Trump's remark, withdrawal from the WTO "could void the deals the U.S. has on low tariffs with countries around the world, potentially exposing US exports to steep levies from a host of trading partners," in addition to costing the US when challenging other WTO members on rules violations. 

Features

• Life22 February 2017

  Resurrecting nature: Extinct is not forever

  Dreams of Jurassic Park are so last century. Now biologists want to use de-extinction biotechnology for conservation. But is it a good idea?

  

• Health22 February 2017

  Plague! How to prepare for the next pandemic

  Globalisation makes the spread of a worldwide killer disease inevitable. The last Ebola outbreak nearly got out of control, but it showed what we need to do

  

• Health11 January 2017

  Dishing the dirt: How clean does your home really need to be?

  Cleanliness is next to godliness – or perhaps not. New Scientist looks at the evidence around hygiene to find out if there is a sweet spot

  

Humans3 September 2014

End of nations: Is there an alternative to countries?

Nation states cause some of our biggest problems, from civil war to climate inaction. Science suggests there are better ways to run a planet

Earth | Life | Technology15 February 2017

The father of the Gaia hypothesis shares his greatest invention

James Lovelock is best known for his Gaia hypothesis, but it is a device he invented 60 years ago that accidentally helped to save the planet that we should laud him for

Technology9 December 2015

How your private emails can spread all over the world

If you want to get to grips with the real risks of online privacy you need to understand just what happens to your data in the architecture of the internet

Health | Humans20 July 2016

Fertility facts: How late can you leave it to have a baby?

You want kids, just not yet. So here’s how to work out when to start trying – and whether you should take a fertility test

Health15 February 2017

How you can control what happens in your dreams

Lucid dreaming, in which you remain aware and can steer your dreams, is easier than you might think

Life15 February 2017

Slaughter of an American icon: The Yellowstone buffalo cull

Caught in a battle between ranchers, campaigners and park officials, hundreds of bison are culled each year. Photographer Michelle McCarron bears witness

Humans15 February 2017

I can control a computer with my mind – from inside a dream

People who have lucid dreams could control a computer while sleeping. Remington Mallett gave it a go

Health15 February 2017

Heal yourself from inside your dreams

New ways to trigger lucid dreams – in which people stay aware and in control of their actions – could let dreams themselves be used for psychotherapy

Physics15 February 2017

The maths problems that could win you a million dollars

Six of the seven Millennium Prize problems remain unsolved, but cracking any one of them would be a major – and financially rewarding – achievement

Physics15 February 2017

Magnets, boiling kettles and the secret code underlying reality

A strange, unifying mathematical pattern is popping up in all sorts of unexpected places – and it could explain some profound questions about the cosmos

Posts navigation

Older

Resurrecting nature: Extinct is not forever

Is the great auk worth the expense of de-extinction?

The Natural History Museum/Alamy Stock Photo

By Sandrine Ceurstemont

KATSUHIKO HAYASHI is playing God. In his lab at Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan, he recently created eight baby mice using eggs made from reprogrammed mouse skin cells. Now he’s working his magic on the northern white rhino, a species so endangered there are just three individuals left, all with reproductive problems. And he has even bigger plans: he wants to use the technique to resurrect extinct animals.

De-extinction isn’t a new idea. But where early attempts owed more to Jurassic Park than to science, Hayashi and others are taking a more high-minded approach. They look at the fast-moving field of biotechnology and see its conservation potential. “Many animals are gone because of human error, so we need to use technology to recover them,” he says.

He has a point. With 100 or so species disappearing from the planet every day, we are living through one of the biggest mass extinctions ever. And the causes – from poaching to pollution to climate change – are down to us. At the same time, cutting-edge biotechnology, including genome sequencing, cloning and gene-editing tools like CRISPR, is allowing us to manipulate life. We are now on the verge of being able to undo extinctions, and researchers are racing to get there first. But while some foresee a thrilling new age of conservation and are urging conservationists to embrace it, others are horrified by the prospect of high-tech meddling with nature.

“De-extinction technologies won’t so much resurrect species as create new __life forms”

Even de-extinction’s greatest advocates admit that

Desert people evolve to drink water poisoned with deadly arsenic

A tough environment spurs change

Puka Janluka/Alamy Stock Photo

By Ian Graber-Stiehl

PEOPLE in a south American desert have evolved to detoxify potentially deadly arsenic that laces their water supply.

For settlers in the Quebrada Camarones region of Chile’s Atacama desert some 7000 years ago, water posed more than a bit of a problem. They were living in the world’s driest non-polar desert, and several of their most readily available water sources, such as rivers and wells, had high levels of arsenic, which can cause a variety of health problems.

The arsenic contamination here exceeds 1 microgram per litre: the highest levels in the Americas, and over 100 times the World Health Organization’s safe limits. There are virtually no alternative water sources, and yet, somehow, people have survived in the area. Could it be that arsenic’s negative effects on human health, such as inducing miscarriages, acted as a natural selection pressure that made this population evolve adaptations to it? A new study suggests this is indeed so.

Advertisement

The body uses an enzyme called AS3MT to incorporate arsenic in two compounds, monomethylarsonic (MMA) acid and dimethylarsinic (DMA) acid. People who metabolise arsenic more efficiently convert more of it into the less toxic, more easily expelled DMA.

Mario Apata of the University of Chile in Santiago and his colleagues looked at variations in the gene coding for AS3MT in nearly 150 people from three regions of the country. They found higher frequencies of the protective variants in people from Camarones: 68 per cent there had them, as opposed to just 48 and 8 per cent of people in the other two. “Our data suggest that a high arsenic metabolization capacity has been selected as an adaptive mechanism in these populations in order to survive in an arsenic-laden environment,” the researchers conclude (American Journal of Physical Anthropology, doi.org/bz4s).

The variants that protect the Camarones people are called single nucleotide polymorphisms – changes in a single DNA letter of the genetic code. Anthropologist Lorena Madrigal of the University of South Florida in Tampa says these are such tiny mutations that they aren’t telling us exactly how the changes affect the enzyme molecule and its detoxifying effects.

Previous studies found similar mutations in the AS3MT gene that contribute to improved arsenic metabolisation in Vietnam and Argentina. Sequencing the entire chromosomal region around this gene could reveal more, but there’s still a long way to go before we fully understand the molecular mechanism for how arsenic resistance works.

Though it’s a fascinating example of what appears to be contemporary evolution in humans, it also underscores the water quality problems that many populations face, says Madrigal. And many may not be able to evolve to deal with it.

Another notable example of recent human evolution is lactose tolerance. A mutation which allowed adults to keep producing the enzyme lactase to digest milk emerged around 7000 years ago, alongside dairy farming, and now 35 per cent of adults carry it and can digest milk as a result.

“I would say [the rise in arsenic tolerance] is comparable to the rapid spread of lactose tolerance. Certainly the timescales we are looking at for both cases are comparable,” says Aaron Miller at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Arsenic in water? We’re adapting”

Trump announces he won't attend this year's White House Correspondents' Association dinner Trump announces he won't attend this year's White House Correspondents' Association dinner

President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017, in the East Room of the White House in Washington. AP Photo/Evan Vucci

President Donald Trump on Saturday announced via Twitter that he won't be attending the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner.

"Please wish everyone well and have a great evening!" he tweeted Saturday afternoon.

The announcement comes amid escalating tension between the White House press corps and Trump, who recently dubbed a number of mainstream outlets as the "enemy of the people." 

It also follows reports that media outlets such as CNN have been weighing whether to attend the event this year. Bloomberg also announced on Friday it would cancel its after-party, but said it would still attend the dinner.

Jeff Mason, the president of the White House Correspondents' Association, said Saturday that the dinner would go on as planned.

"The WHCA takes note of President Donald Trump's announcement on Twitter that he does not plan to attend the dinner, which has been and will continue to be a celebration of the First Amendment and the important role played by an independent news media in a healthy republic," Mason said.

On Friday, reporters from several outlets, including the New York Times, CNN, and Politico, were barred from attending a press gaggle with White House press secretary Sean Spicer.

The WHCA vehemently objected to the move, saying in a statement it "will be discussing this further with White House staff."

The annual dinner, held in April, is typically attended by an array of media outlets and celebrities, as well as the president, administration officials, and prominent politicians. A high-profile comedian usually emcees the event, and the president delivers a monologue.

The dinner also raises money for student scholarships and presents journalism awards.

The Trump team may have gone even further to knock down news about its Russia ties The Trump team may have gone even further to knock down news about its Russia ties

Donald Trump listens to his mobile phone during a lunch stop in South Carolina. AP Photo/Matt Rourke

White House officials allegedly sought to recruit congressional lawmakers and the US intelligence community to help throw cold water on stories about communications between Russia and people in President Donald Trump's inner circle.

According to a Washington Post report published Friday evening, some of those lawmakers were asked by the White House to talk to reporters and refute stories from The New York Times and CNN that alleged frequent communication between Trump allies and the Kremlin before the election.

The Post's Greg Miller and Adam Entous report that the calls were sent last week, after White House officials failed to get senior FBI officials on board with publicly denouncing the news reports.

Miller and Entous wrote that the White House reached out to other officials instead, to "participate in White House-arranged calls with news organizations, including The Washington Post."

The Post confirmed that at least two senior lawmakers were approached about questioning the Times and CNN reports — Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina and Rep. Devin Nunes of California.

Burr and Nunes are on the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, which are investigating Russian interference in the US election.

Rep. Devin Nunes AP

Burr told The Post he "had conversations" with the White House about stories surrounding Russia and said he thought the discussions were appropriate as long as he believed his comments wouldn't conflict with his "responsibilities to the committee in an ongoing investigation."

Nunes said he had already been discussing The New York Times and CNN stories with reporters before the White House reached out, and then talked to another reporter "at the request of the White House."

The White House's actions have prompted questions about possible overreach as the Trump administration attacks reporting on its ties to the Kremlin, a story that has only gained traction in the months following Trump's election.

The Trump administration's attempts to block coverage only intensified on Friday when several media outlets were kept out of a White House press briefing, prompting sharp rebukes from many corners of the country.

Trump on Friday night continued railing against news organizations, sending another tweet that echoed one he sent days ago, labeling the media "a great danger to our country."