No Venice wedding? Winds of war, protests may have just spoiled Jeff Bezos-Lauren Sánchez's wedding of the century
All about the Wedding of the Century
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Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his fiancée Lauren Sánchez have reportedly been forced to shift one of the key venues for their lavish $48 million wedding in Venice due to escalating global tensions and planned local protests.According to reports in Il Gazzettino, the original plan to host part of the wedding at the historic Scuola Grande della Misericordia was abandoned and moved to the Arsenale district—a more secure and easier-to-control location, given the rising unrest and the threat of demonstrations. The decision, the report claimed citing sources, was influenced by "the winds of war" and concerns over U.S.–Iran tensions, especially since a major U.S. airbase lies just 50 miles away in Aviano.The three-day celebration, beginning June 26, is already drawing widespread criticism from locals. Activists have accused Bezos of 'taking over' the city, with some pledging to disrupt the event by blocking canals and staging protests. On Monday, Greenpeace activists unfurled a large banner in St. Mark's Square with Bezos' face and the message: 'You can pay more tax if you can rent Venice for your wedding.'Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and one of the world's richest men, is set to marry Lauren Sánchez, a former TV reporter, in a lavish ceemony dubbed as the wedding of the century . The wedding is expected to take place at Venice with many A-listers in attendance.The New York Times previously reported potential venues include a pagoda on Venice's Lido beach, the island of San Giorgio, and the Scuola Grande della Misericordia—though that last site may now be dropped from the plan.The guest list remains confidential, but around 200 guests are expected, including a mix of family, celebrities, and tech elite. High-profile names believed to be attending include Oprah Winfrey, Mick Jagger, Jay-Z and Beyoncé, Eva Longoria, and Bill Gates. Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner are also likely to attend, though Donald Trump will not.The wedding, planned by elite London-based firm Lanza & Baucina—also behind George and Amal Clooney's 2014 Venice wedding—is estimated to cost several million dollars. Earlier CNN claimed that the ceremony will take place on board Bezos's $500 million superyacht Koru.Meanwhile, CNN has claimed that the Amazon boss has rented the city's nine yacht ports for the week leading up to the main event.Some 200 guests are expected to attend the wedding.
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Indian Express
an hour ago
- Indian Express
‘If you can rent Venice, you can pay more taxes': Jeff Bezos shifts wedding venue after protests
Jeff Bezos and fiancée Lauren Sánchez have reportedly shifted the venue of their much-hyped Venice wedding to a more secluded part of the city after facing intense backlash from residents and protest groups. Originally set to host their main wedding reception at the historic Scuola Grande della Misericordia in central Venice, the couple has now opted for Tese 91 – a shipyard space in the Arsenale complex on the city's outskirts. While officials have cited 'security reasons' for the last-minute venue change, campaigners are calling it a victory. 'We won! The protest managed to ruin Bezos' plans and the mayor's palace games,' declared the activist group 'No Space for Bezos', which has been leading demonstrations against what they call the city's transformation into a billionaire's playground. The Amazon founder's three-day celebration, expected to be attended by over 200 high-profile guests including Kim Kardashian, Leonardo DiCaprio, Elon Musk, and Ivanka Trump, has sparked outrage among locals. Protestors argue that Venice, already buckling under the strain of overtourism, should not be reduced to a backdrop for luxury events. Since Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro confirmed the wedding in March, activists have launched a series of dramatic protests across the city. Banners with Bezos' name crossed out in red were unfurled from the iconic Rialto Bridge and the bell tower of San Giorgio Maggiore, the island where the couple is reportedly tying the knot. 'Venice is being treated like a stage, a showcase — and this wedding is the symbol of how the city is being exploited by outsiders,' a protester told the BBC. Demonstrators had even threatened to block the canals with inflatable crocodiles, a move some believe pressured the couple into changing plans. 'The crocodile initiative would have given a bad impression of the city. That's why the venue was changed,' one activist told The Guardian. Greenpeace also joined the protests, unfurling a massive banner with a grinning Bezos and the words: 'If you can rent Venice for your wedding, you can pay more taxes.' Mayor Brugnaro expressed 'shame' over the demonstrations, prompting a sharp response from campaigners: 'The ones who should be ashamed are them. They are the people who have destroyed this city.'
NDTV
an hour ago
- NDTV
YouTube Star Mikayla Raines Dies By Suicide At 29, Husband Blames Online Bullying
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The Hindu
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- The Hindu
Censor Board discontinues full access to cuts on website
The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) this month made a key change to a portal it uses to publish 'cut lists' of films, making it harder to routinely review the censorship it imposes on films. The e-Cinepramaan portal, used by studios to submit paperwork for films, and make fee payments for getting their films certified and age-rated, has since 2017 hosted cut lists that the public can review. These cut lists are not searchable on the Censor Board's main website. The QR code on CBFC certificates points to the film's corresponding e-Cinepramaan page, verifying that the certificate is valid, and providing a list of cuts enforced by the censor board. Since the web addresses of these pages ended with an 18-digit number that could be altered slightly to routinely view newer details of certificates in the order they were issued, it has been possible to have near-total visibility into the cuts demanded by the censors. For instance, The Hindu reported on the cuts imposed on the Pariyerum Perumal remake Dhadak 2 last month with the help of a code snippet that retrieved the latest films certified by the CBFC. Anti-caste references and political dialogues were muted in the film. The CBFC has increasingly acted to excise political and religious content and symbolism from films. However, in the end of May, the portal went into 'maintenance', and as of this month, the CBFC has replaced that 18-digit identifier with a token, a string of alphanumeric characters that cannot be meaningfully modified to yield any other certificate. The change appears to be retrospective, essentially breaking existing QR codes on certificates issued in the last eight years. CBFC certificates are required for any film to be exhibited theatrically, and following a series of court judgments, television channels require one for films too (though TV series do not go through government censors). The Censor Board's chairperson, filmmaker and advertising executive Prasoon Joshi, did not respond to a query by The Hindu on the change made to the site, and neither did the administrative head of the autonomous body. Director Anurag Kashyap told The Hindu that in addition to the recent developments at the Censor Board, the site making it harder to access cut lists was 'also scary'. 'It's more [focused on] taking information from the person tracking it than giving information, which should anyways be public,' Mr. Kashyap said. Aman Bhargava, a Bengaluru-based developer and researcher, has led a team of volunteers since December 2024 to retrieve these censorship records and make a slick, interactive website rich with details of over 100,000 individual cuts made to around 20,000 films in the last seven years. Mr. Bhargava shared a working copy of the website, which he was planning on publicly launching in the middle of this month. But then in May, the site went into maintenance, working on the key change that would leave Mr. Bhargava, and others, unable to retrieve this cut data. 'We did work on cleaning descriptions' of cuts, 'extracting metadata, and allowing others to run a pipeline on their own' into the data collected for the project, Mr. Bhargava said. Now, it doesn't look like this project will be able to continue actively. Mr. Bhargava said he was 'disappointed' by the development. 'There was a lot of effort put into this. I think people would have been interested in it. But I guess if this is how things are, we can publish whatever we have.' The Cinematograph Act, 1952 requires the CBFC to publish certificates it issues to films in the Gazette of India. The CBFC does not do so, it confirmed in an RTI response to The Hindu in May, instead making certificate details available in an unindexed fashion on the e-Cinepramaan portal. The CBFC did not comment on its compliance with this mandate. CBFC cut lists remain available upon scanning certificates that are provided to multiplexes and cinemas. However, not all certified films end up releasing, and there are nine offices of the CBFC certifying thousands of films, and as such, the scope of films whose cuts can be disclosed publicly has mostly narrowed to theatrically released films already in the cinemas.
