Pelican Press

Sonic Rumble is a fun battle royale, but oddly slow spinoff Sonic Rumble is a fun battle royale, but oddly slow spinoff True to its titular hedgehog’s ethos, the Sonic series never slows down. After releasing what might be the franchise’s best game in decades, Sonic X Shadow Generations, yet another new game is set to launch this winter. Sonic Rumble will turn the series into a free battle royale game that takes some clear notes from Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout. It’s an elimination game that’s more about clearing platforming minigames and collecting rings than combat. Digital Trends recently went hands-on with Sonic Rumble, playing a few rounds on an iPhone. While it has all the right elements of a free-to-play multiplayer game, its slow movement doesn’t quite feel like a fit for the fast-paced nature of Sonic. It may end up being a fun enough mobile obsession, but it’s one of *****’s odder uses of its legendary IP that I’ve ever seen. Get ready to rumble In Sonic Rumble, Dr. Eggman turns Sonic and his pals into adorable toys. It’s a light narrative that sets up its battle royale ***** and cute aesthetic well enough. The ***** here is that 32 players pop into a three-round test of skill. Some rounds have players racing through a long stage at the same time, while others are simple ring-collecting minigames. Each round, half of the players are eliminated. The final battle is between the top eight players, with only one coming out on top. It’s all par for the course for the genre, right down to its microtransactions, battle pass, and collectible skins. If you love games like Fall Guys or Kirby’s Dream Buffet, Sonic Rumble will check a lot of boxes. At its heart, this is a lighthearted battle against physics. The first round is a chaotic match as 32 players all bounce around obstacles at the same time. It can feel a little derivative as I bounce between inflatable bumpers or run against spinning treadmills. There are a few unique ideas here, though. For one, it makes use of Sonic’s signature homing ******* as part of its platforming. With the tap of a button, I can zoom toward ziplines or bounce into enemies. ***** The best ideas come in the interplay between cooperation and competition. At certain points during a race, players need to work together to progress. Sometimes I hit a door that only unlocks once six robots standing near it are smashed. That goes a lot quicker if I’m working with other players instead of sabotaging them. Similarly, I occasionally have to smash into a wall to knock it down, another task that goes faster with help. While that collaboration adds a neat twist, it can be entertainingly cutthroat too. One closing round threw the final eight players into a small, snowy space filled with valuable rings. It was a race to see who could get the most before the timer ran out. During the chaos, gold chests popped up across the screen. Opening one gives players a homing ******* that they can use to steal another players’ rings. I grabbed one and started hunting down the first-place player to do some damage. Moments like that bring the fun tension that this genre relies on. Other standout features include the ability to create custom matches and streamer-friendly options that will help content creators organize matches with their audience. There’s even an in-game tab that curates content from those creators. Though there are some great pieces, the entire project feels a little puzzling. You’d expect a Sonic battle royale to be about speed, sending players through the kind of quick roller coaster rides that other mobile games like Sonic Dream Team do so well. That’s not the case; in fact, Sonic Rumble is incredibly slow-paced. It plays much more like Fall Guys than Sonic, with characters stumbling through levels rather than blasting through them. There’s no snappy movement, and even the homing ******* feels a bit clumsy. None of the things that make Sonic games fun are really represented here. Instead, it feels like an unrelated game that’s been reskinned to look like the franchise. ***** That’s not inherently a bad thing. The point of spinoffs is that they’re supposed to do something new with a series. Not every Sonic game needs to be built around speed — just look at The ******* of Sonic the Hedgehog. Still, you at least want to feel some DNA carried over to a game like this to make the franchise feel like a surprise fit for a new genre. Tetris 99, for instance, translates naturally to an elimination game thanks to its tense, competitive edge. Sonic Rumble doesn’t seem to make a compelling case for what Sonic brings to the battle royale. It winds up feeling like a cash grab launching a few years too late. Perhaps the main thing that Sonic Rumble brings to the table is fan service — and that might be all that really matters. I’ve got a Chao companion that happily floats around me. I can unlock alternate skins for characters, which includes callbacks to games like Sonic Riders. The toy transformation setup isn’t just a cute plot point; it signals that this is a lighthearted plaything for fans. It’s another excuse to make a Sonic museum full of references. The actual battle royale almost feels secondary to its unlockables in that sense. I don’t expect Sonic Rumble to shake up the battle royale market much. It’s a fairly standard elimination spinoff that doesn’t exactly play to Sonic’s strengths. That doesn’t mean that it won’t resonate with the hedgehog’s dedicated fan base, though, who are just getting another freebie to obsess over once they’re done playing Sonic X Shadow Generations and watching Sonic the Hedgehog 3 for a third or 10th time. Sonic is as much a lifestyle as it is a video game franchise at this point, so I imagine its intended audience won’t be too precious about how polished it is. It’s another way to play Sonic. Perhaps that’s enough for fans. Sonic Rumble will launch on mobile devices this winter. Source link #Sonic #Rumble #fun #battle #royale #oddly #slow #spinoff Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Why caste plays a role in childhood stunting in India Why caste plays a role in childhood stunting in India Getty Images Official data shows that 35% of India’s 137 million children under five are stunted Decades of caste discrimination have contributed to India having higher levels of child stunting rates than across Sub-Saharan *******, new research has revealed. The two regions together are home to 44% of the world’s under-five population but account for about 70% of stunted children globally – a key indicator of malnutrition. But, while both have made significant strides in recent years, India’s rate stands at 35.7%, with the average across Sub-Saharan *******’s 49 countries at 33.6%. A child is considered stunted when they fall short of the expected height for their age – a clear sign of critical nutritional gaps. However, the study by Ashwini Deshpande (Ashoka University) and Rajesh Ramachandran (Monash University, Malaysia) found that focusing only on the height gap – or why Indian children are shorter than children in Sub-Saharan ******* – overlooks an important factor: the crucial role of social identity, especially caste, in child malnutrition in India. The first 1,000 days of a child’s life, often called the “golden *******”, are pivotal: by age two, 80% of the brain develops, laying the foundation for lifelong potential. In these early years, access to healthcare, good nutrition, early learning, and a safe environment profoundly shapes a child’s future. India and Sub-Saharan *******, both with rapidly growing middle classes, young populations and significant workforce potential, share longstanding comparisons. In 2021, the World Bank reported, “Sub-Saharan ******* and South Asia [including India] account for over 85% of the global poor,” underscoring similar challenges in ******** and development. Getty Images Some of the world’s highest stunting rates are in war-torn countries in Sub-Saharan ******* such as DR Congo Using official data, the authors looked at the most recent estimates of the stunting gaps between India and a sample of 19 countries in Sub-Saharan *******. Official data shows that more than 35% of India’s 137 million children under five are stunted, with over a third also underweight. Globally, 22% of children under five are stunted. Then they examined six broad socially disadvantaged groups in India. Among them are adivasis (tribespeople living in remote areas) and Dalits (formerly known as untouchables), who alone comprise more than a third of the under-five population. The economists found that children from higher-ranked, non-stigmatised caste groups in India stood at 27% – markedly lower than the Sub-Saharan ******** rate. They also found that children from higher-ranking caste groups in India are some 20% less likely to experience stunting compared with those from marginalised groups, who occupy the lowest tiers of the caste hierarchy. This conclusion ******** significant even after accounting for factors like birth order, sanitation practices, maternal height, sibling count, education, anaemia and household socio-economic status. This difference is despite seven decades of affirmative action, India’s caste system – a four-fold hierarchy of the Hindu religion – ******** deeply entrenched. “This should not be surprising given that children from better-off groups in India have access to more calories and face a better ******** environment,” the authors say. Getty Images Women ****** up outside a food ration shop in India – maternal health is key to reducing stunting of children The reasons behind high stunting rates among Indian children have sparked a complex debate over the years. Some economists have argued that the differences are genetic – that Indian children are genetically disposed to lower heights. Others believe that improved nutrition over generations has historically closed height gaps thought to be genetic. Some studies have found that ****** fare worse than boys and others just the opposite, using different global standards. To be sure, stunting has decreased across social groups – a separate 2022 study found that improvements in health and nutrition interventions, household living conditions and maternal factors led to reduction in stunting in four Indian states. (More than half of India’s under-five children were stunted, according to a federal family health survey of 1992-93). Children from marginalised groups like adivasis are likely to be more malnourished. In *******, the rate of stunting has also fallen since 2010, although the absolute number increased. Getty Images Children from marginalised groups like adivasis (above) are likely to be more malnourished But what is clear is that children from poor families, with less-educated mothers, or from marginalised groups, are especially vulnerable to stunting in India. “The debate on the height gap between Indian and Sub-Saharan ******** children has resulted in overlooking the role of social identity, especially caste status,” the authors say. “This is a crucial dimension to understanding the burden of child nutrition in India.” The analysis uses data from demographic and health surveys. For India, it includes the latest data from 2019-21, and for Sub-Saharan *******, it includes data from 19 countries with surveys from 2015 onwards. The dataset covers anthropometric – measurements related to the physical dimensions and composition of the human body- outcomes for 195,024 children under five in India and 202,557 children under five in Sub-Saharan *******. Source link #caste #plays #role #childhood #stunting #India Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Xbox Update Brings Back Friend Requests And Revamps Search On Console Xbox Update Brings Back Friend Requests And Revamps Search On Console The latest Xbox update restores friend requests, improves search, and adds more personalization options for profile pictures and home screens. Starting with this update, you can only be friends with someone if they accept your invitation and vice versa. You can still follow people, but that’s a one-way connection that updates you on the content they choose to share with followers. All current connections will update accordingly, meaning you won’t have to make any changes to keep your current friends and followers list. However, if you do want to manage your friends and followers, you can hit the Xbox button on your controller and select the People tab. Once there, you can look at your friends list, accept/delete requests, and search for new friends. Along with these changes, privacy and relationship-notification settings have been revamped. Friend requests and search functions have been updated across Xbox consoles and apps. The new search function grants higher accuracy–according to Microsoft–and can interpret typos, shortcuts, synonyms and even emoji. The changes to search have rolled out on console and on the Windows Xbox app. On console, you now have more freedom to customize your profile. You can create gamerpics (i.e. your Xbox profile pic) from achievement art or your screenshots. Additionally, you can zoom in and crop images when setting your home background. As for the Windows Xbox app, the home interface has been revamped, letting you get back into what you’ve been playing with the “jump back in experience” (even from compact mode). The Xbox Accessories app has also gotten a free update, letting you calibrate thumbsticks and triggers, map mouse inputs, and more on your Elite or Elite 2 Controller. In other Xbox news, a new ad campaign emphasizes the brand’s offerings on mobile and smart TVs. Xbox is reportedly developing a handheld prototype, though if it does release, it won’t be for a few years. Source link #Xbox #Update #Brings #Friend #Requests #Revamps #Search #Console Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

England in West Indies: Tourists seal T20 series win with nervy victory England in West Indies: Tourists seal T20 series win with nervy victory While the pitch was no minefield there was certainly enough to keep the bowlers interested, so having got England three down early, West Indies would have been confident of pressing home their advantage. The impressive Hosein removed Phil Salt and Buttler, England’s standout batters in the first two games, while the returning Joseph had Bethell caught behind. However, Will Jacks showed resolve and Curran looked in good touch from the outset, elegantly ********* his first ball for four. That pair got England back on track but the key moments came soon after Jacks fell to Motie for 32. Livingstone came in and promptly carted Joseph into the stands for six. But two ****** later, he skied a ***** shot, only for Pooran to shell the catch as he ran back from behind the stumps. The next over saw Pooran gift Livingstone another chance when he edged behind off Motie with the ball bouncing out of the wicketkeeper’s gloves. Curran’s innings came to an end when he picked out Hope at deep backward point to hand Terrance Hinds a first T20I wicket, and had Hetmyer held on to a tough low catch to dismiss Livingstone in the next over, England may have been in trouble. Instead, Livingstone took the ******* to Joseph, clubbing a six and two fours in the over, and 21 from 18 ****** required was suddenly five from 12. He fell trying to finish the game in style but Rehan Ahmed came in and slapped the ball over cover to finish the job for England in the last over. England can celebrate the series win but West Indies will know that but for some sloppy fielding, they might be right back in it. Source link #England #West #Indies #Tourists #seal #T20 #series #win #nervy #victory Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Infinity Nikki launches December 5 Infinity Nikki launches December 5 Free-to-play open-world dress-up adventure game Infinity Nikki will launch for PlayStation 5, PC via client download and Epic Games Store, iOS via App Store, and Android via Google Play on December 5, publisher Infold Games and developer Papergames announced. Source link #Infinity #Nikki #launches #December Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Dollar atop one-year peak as Powell sends yields up Dollar atop one-year peak as Powell sends yields up The US dollar extended its broad rally early on Friday, towering at one-year highs as a hawkish turn from the Federal Reserve chief sent short-term Treasury yields higher, leaving Wall Street futures in the red and most Asia markets struggling. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said there was no need to rush rate cuts with the economy still growing, the job market solid and inflation still above the 2.0 per cent target, tempering expectations for a rate cut next month. Fed fund futures for next year slumped with December off 7 ticks and imply just 71 basis points of rate cuts by end-2025. A rate cut next month is no longer a high probability event, with just 61 per cent priced in, down from 82.5 per cent in the prior session. That lifted the dollar across the board, especially against the euro as expectations for more aggressive policy easing in Europe further undermined the single currency already trading at one-year lows. On Friday, Nasdaq futures fell 0.4 per cent while S&P 500 futures eased 0.3 per cent. EUROSTOXX 50 futures fell 0.5 per cent. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was off 0.1 per cent and down 4.6 per cent for the week, the biggest weekly loss in more than two years. Tokyo’s Nikkei, however, gained 1.1 per cent driven by a pull back in the yen, which boosted the outlook for ********* exporters. Still, it was down 1.3 per cent for the week. Even before Powell spoke, producer prices data showed that the core gauge surprised slightly to the upside, which also had markets worried about the pace of easing ahead. Goldman Sachs now sees a greater risk that the Fed could slow the pace of easing sooner, possibly as soon as the December or January meetings, while JPMorgan still tips the Fed to cut in December though they expect the central bank could dial down the easing pace in January. “After the sugar hit of Trump’s election and its subsequent impacts on expectations for company profits, the market’s enthusiasm is being watered-down by greater interest rate uncertainty, especially going into next year,” said Kyle Rodda, a senior analyst at Capital.com. Short-term Treasury yields shot up overnight and remained elevated on Friday. The two-year yields held at 4.36 per cent, having jumped six basis points overnight to close at 4.357 per cent. In the currency markets, the dollar towered against its major peers at a one-year top. It gained for five days on the yen, up another 0.2 per cent to 156.56, the highest since July. The euro nursed heavy losses at $US1.0529 ($A1.6310) and is set for a hefty weekly loss of 1.77 per cent. Minutes of the latest meeting from the ********* Central Bank showed the cut last month was likely an insurance move. Markets are, however, more dovish on the ECB and see a decent 36 per cent chance it could step up its easing in December with a half-point move to guard against growth risks. They are also wagering that the ECB will have to cut at each meeting until mid next year. The lofty dollar pressured commodity prices, with gold prices down 4.4 per cent this week to $US2,566.45 ($A3,975.53), bringing the monthly loss so far to a sizeable 8.0 per cent. Oil are also down for the week. Brent crude futures are set for a weekly loss of 2.1 per cent and were last at $US72.33 ($A112.04) a barrel. Source link #Dollar #atop #oneyear #peak #Powell #sends #yields Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

All upcoming video games (PS5, Xbox, Switch, PC): 2024, 2025 and beyond All upcoming video games (PS5, Xbox, Switch, PC): 2024, 2025 and beyond Keeping track of every new video game release is a nearly impossible task. Ggames are constantly being announced, delayed, rereleased on new platforms, remastered, canceled — you get the point. With the upcoming games lineup constantly shifting on PC, Switch, Xbox Series X, PlayStation 5 and mobile, it can be hard to find games to look forward to playing (and to budget for) in the coming months. Despite the herculean task of tracking an entire year of video game release dates, we’re giving it our best shot. Check out this month-by-month schedule of new video game releases. We’re focusing mainly on highly anticipated titles with concrete release dates, but will also include little-known indies and keep an eye on launch plans for up-in-the-air titles like Grand Theft Auto 6 or games that are still very early on in development like Hogwarts Legacy 2 or The Last of Us Part 3. If you’re looking to get a quick glance at the future of video games, this is the place. We’ll keep this list updated and as accurate as possible at regular intervals. November release dates Sony Interactive Entertainment Here’s everything that’s on our radar for 2024. The games immediately below have set release dates. We’ll get into anything that’s more up in the air below the confirmed launches. Albatroz (PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC) – November 1 Farmagia (PS5, Switch, PC) – November 1 Last Spartan: Glory Over Madness (PC) – November 1 Crossed Wires (PC) – November 4 Nazar (PC) – November 4 Techtonica (PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch, PC) – November 4 Metal Slug Tactics (PC, PS4/5, Xbox One, XSX/S, Switch) – November 5 ****** Note: ******* Within (PS4/PS5, PC) – November 5 Monarchy (PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch, PC) – November 6 Planet Coaster 2 (PC, PS5, XSX/S) – November 6 Run From Mummies (PS5, PC) – November 6 SlavicPunk: Oldtimer (PS5, XSX/S) – November 6 TMNT: Splintered Fate (PC) – November 6 Empire of Ants (PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC) – November 7 Mario & Luigi: Brothership (Switch) – November 7 Maximum Football (PC) – November 7 Metro Awakening VR (PSVR 2, Quest 2/3, Steam VR) – November 7 River City Saga: Three Kingdoms Next (PS4, Switch, PC) – November 7 Taiko no Tatsujin: Rhythm Festival (PS5, XSX/S, PC) – November 7 Slitterhead (PC, PS4/5, XSX/S) – November 8 Everholm (PC) – November 11 Farming Simulator 25 (PS5, XSX/S, PC) – November 12 The Rise of the Golden Idol (PC, PS4/5, Switch, XSX/S, Xbox One, Mobile) – November 12 Tetris Forever (PC, PS4/5, Switch, XSX/S, Xbox One) – November 12 Is This Game Trying to ***** Me? (PC) – November 13 Temtem: Swarm (PC) – November 13 Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake (PC, PS5, XSX/S, Switch) – November 14 LEGO Horizon Adventures (PC, PS5, Switch) – November 14 Behemoth (PSVR 2, Meta Quest) – November 14 Funko Fusion (PS5, Switch, XSX/S, PC) – November 15 MySims: Cozy Bundle (Switch) – November 18 Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 (PC, XSX/S) – November 19 Towers of Aghasba (PC, PS5) – November 19 Disney Dreamlight Valley: The Storybook Vale (PC, PS4/5, Switch, XSX/S, Xbox One, Mobile) – November 19 Genshin Impact (XSX/S, Xbox One) – November 20 STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl (PC, XSX/S) – November 20 MOBA Esport Manager 23 (PC) – November 20 Star Wars Outlaws (Steam) – November 21 On Your Tail (Switch, PC) – November 21 Total War: Empire (iOS, Android) – November 21 Spirit Mancer (PS5, Switch, PC) – November 22 Snow Bros. Wonderland (PS5, PS4, Switch, PC) – November 28 December release dates Bethesda Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete (iOS, Android) – December 2 Warhammer 40,000: Darktide (PS5) – December 3 Antonblast (Switch, PC) – December 3 Delta Force (PC) – December 4 The Edge of Allegoria (PC) – December 4 Symphonia (PS5, PS4, XSX/S, Xbox One, PC, Switch) – December 4 Bridge Constructor Studio (Quest 2, Quest 3) – December 5 Caves of Qud (PC) – December 5 Fantasian Neo Dimension (PS5, PS4, XSX/S, PC, Switch) – December 5 Fitness Boxing 3: Your Personal Trainer (Switch) – December 5 Infinity Nikki (PS5, PC) – December 5 Marvel Rivals (PC, PS5, XSX/S) – December 6 Path of Exile 2 (PS5, PS4, XSX/S, Xbox One, PC) – December 6 Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (PC, XSX/S) – December 9 Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1 & 2 Remastered (PS5, PS4, XSX/S, Xbox One, PC, Switch) – December 10 Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind (PS5, PS4, XSX/S, Xbox One, PC, Switch) – December 10 Monument Valley 3 (Netflix Games) – December 10 ****** Tail 2 (PC) – December 11 Clone Drone in the Hyperdome (Quest, PC VR) – December 12 ****** Tail 2 (PS5, PS4, Switch) – December 13 One Piece: Ambition (mobile) – December 18 Alien: Rogue Incursion (PSVR 2, Quest 3, PC VR) – December 19 Hitman: World of ************** (PSVR 2) – December Wobbly Life (Switch) – December 2025 release dates 2K Games Now that 2025 is nearly here, the early months are already filling up with pretty impressive game releases. We’ll be sure to note games that have expected or rumored release windows alongside games with solid launch plans. January release dates Freedom Wars Remastered (PS5, Switch, PC) – January 10, 2025 Donkey Kong Country Returns HD (Switch) – January 16, 2025 Dynasty Warriors Origins (PS5, XSX, PC) – January 17, 2025 Tales of Graces f Remastered (PS5, Switch, XSX, PC) – January 17, 2025 Star Wars Episode I: Jedi Power Battles (PS5, Switch, XSX, PC) – January 23 Cuisineer (Switch) – January 28, 2025 ******* Elite: Resistance (PS5, PS4, XSX/S, Xbox One, PC) – January 29 February release dates Civilization VII (PS5, Switch, XSX, PC) – February 11, 2025 Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 (PS5, XSX, PC) – February 11, 2025 Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered (PC, PS5, PS4, XSX, Xbox One) – February 13 *********’s Creed Shadows (PS5, XSX, PC) – February 14, 2025 Date Everything (Switch, PC, PS5, XSX) – February 14, 2025 Avowed (PC, XSX) – February 18, 2025 Lost Records: Bloom and Rage Tape 1 (PS5, XSX, PC) – February 18, 2025 Monster Hunter Wilds (PS5, XSX, PC) – February 28, 2025 Morsels (Switch) – February 2025 Lost Records: Blood and Rage (PC, PS5, XSX) – February 18, 2025 Kaiserpunk (PC) – February 26 Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection (Switch, PC) – February 26 Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii (PC, PS5, PS4, XSX, Xbox One) – February 28, 2025 March release dates Two Point Museum (PC, PS5, XSX) – March 4, 2025 Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition (Switch) – March 19, 2025 Tales of the Shire (PS5, PS4, XSX, Xbox One, PC, Switch) – March 25, 2025 inZOI (PC) – March 28, 2025 Source link #upcoming #video #games #PS5 #Xbox #Switch Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

U.S. military suicides rose in 2023, persisting despite prevention efforts U.S. military suicides rose in 2023, persisting despite prevention efforts Suicides among military service members rose in 2023 continuing a gradual rise in suicides among active-duty forces, persisting despite prevention efforts. The Defense Department’s annual report on suicides in the military released Thursday said suicides among active-duty military rose from 331 in 2022 to 363 in 2023. “Admittedly yes, that long-term trend is gradually increasing,” Dr. Timothy Hoyt, Deputy Director of the Office of Force Resiliency at the Defense Department told reporters on a call. The ******** rate has grown from 17 per 100,000 active duty service members in 2011 to 26 in 2023, according to data released in the annual report for 2023, although the rate decreased for one year from 2020-2021. Active duty service members who ***** by ******** in 2023 were largely enlisted males under the age of 30, accounting for 61% of suicides. The most common method of ******** was firearms, at 65%, followed by hanging or asphyxiation, at 28%. Defense officials said the ******** rates were similar to rates across the U.S. population between 2011 and 2022. “We are not immune to the factors that drive ******** throughout the U.S., and our service members face, in addition to those, a number of unique military challenges,” Hoyt said. He added recommendations from the ******** Prevention Response and Independent Review Committee have given a “mechanism by which we can address as many of those potential risks as possible and make investments in those spaces.” The Pentagon set up the review committee to provide recommendations to reduce ******** deaths in the military. Last year the committee made a series of recommendations, including broadly improving the delivery of mental health care, addressing stigma and other barriers to care and revising ******** prevention training. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin who established the review committee mandated by Congress in 2022 said in a statement that the annual report’s findings “urgently demonstrate the need for the Department to redouble its work in the complex fields of ******** prevention and postvention.” Austin said the Defense Department completed 20 of the 83 committee’s recommendations. The Pentagon expects to spend about $250 million on ******** prevention in fiscal year 2025, the largest amount of funds the Defense Department has ever invested, Hoyt told reporters. “A lot of the time where we’ve done initiatives during the past two decades, there’s been insufficient investment in making sure that those have staying power, that we’ve got a long-term implementation of those programs,” Hoyt said. The total number of suicides across the force, including both active duty and reserve, was 523 in 2023 compared to 493 in 2022. ******** is one of the leading causes of ****** for veterans as well. According to the most recent report from the Department of Veterans Affairs, the ******** rate for 2021 was 33.9 per 100,000, up from 32.6 per 100,000 in 2020. If you or someone you know is in emotional distress or suicidal crisis, call the National ******** Prevention Hotline at 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255). For more information about mental health care resources and support, The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) HelpLine can be reached Monday through Friday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m. ET, at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264) or email *****@*****.tld. Supporting Veterans and Military Families More More Eleanor Watson Eleanor Watson is a CBS News multi-platform reporter and producer covering the Pentagon. Source link #U.S #military #suicides #rose #persisting #prevention #efforts Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

People Are Sharing The Wildest Medical Self-Diagnoses That Actually Turned Out To Be Correct People Are Sharing The Wildest Medical Self-Diagnoses That Actually Turned Out To Be Correct If you’re anything like me, you spiral down the deep, dark ***** of WebMD every time you experience even the mildest of medical symptoms. But sometimes, a gut feeling actually turns out to be correct. So, Redditor musikcookie asked, “Doctors of Reddit: What was the wildest self-diagnosis a patient was actually right about?” Here’s what people said. 1.”I had a patient who came into the Emergency Department with vague mild abdominal pain whose friend recently ***** of colon *******. She was convinced she must have it, too. I told her ******* wasn’t contagious like that, but I ordered a CT scan because she was so insistent on reassuring her. She had a huge colon mass. It was a very bizarre case.” Grace Cary / Getty Images 2.”I had a little cough in junior high that just wouldn’t go away. My grandmother was convinced it was whooping cough. I felt fine… It was just an annoying cough. She made me go to the doctor and told the doctor that she thought I had whooping cough…” “…The doctor informed her that it hadn’t been in our area in over 10 years so she doubted that was the case. My grandma forced her to test me for it anyway. Turned out I was positive and considered patient zero. The whole school basically ended up getting it, and we had to shut down for two weeks until it went away.” —Emergency-Economy654 3.”A woman in her 40s came in and told me she was having seizures. I asked how she knew, and she said her right hand would periodically stiffen. There was no loss of consciousness or other symptoms associated with classic seizures, but I ordered tests anyway. Turns out, she had been having multiple focal seizures.” Pornchai Soda / Getty Images 4.”I’m a phone triage RN for a family practice. I had a female in her early 60s who we talked to often. She called one time in a near panic *******, convinced she had terminal *******. She was a very nice lady, but she suffered from high anxiety. She was really not in terrible health otherwise…” “She wasn’t even feeling unwell and had the vaguest set of symptoms. She scheduled her same day with her PCP, who ordered a CT of her abdomen to hopefully help alleviate her concerns… Nope. Metastatic pancreatic *******. She was ***** within six weeks. I’ll never forget taking her initial call and trying to calm her down.” —Wobbly_Joe 5.”When I was in labor with my second child, after 15 hours of hard labor and three hours of pushing (with an epidural, but I’d been having contractions every six minutes for four weeks around the clock, but nothing was progressing). I remember looking at my husband and saying, ‘I know why women **** in childbirth’ right before I passed out…” “…I woke up in the OR as they were doing my C-section. My doctor was on the way to the hospital, and they called her to tell her what I said and what happened. She said she screamed at them to get me into surgery ASAP because it was an absolute emergency. I was right. My body was going into shock and shutting down. Had they waited 15 minutes for her to get to the hospital, neither my **** nor I would have made it. He’s turning 11 next week and has a nine-year-old little brother.” —Gloomy_Carrot_7196 Iuliia Burmistrova / Getty Images 6.”I was right about having a pituitary microadenoma that causes Cushing’s ********. I asked multiple doctors to help me with various symptoms, including a neurologist, and it was missed for years. Finally, a wonderful endocrinologist agreed to test my cortisol, which was sky high…” “…I’m now 18 months out of surgery, and I’ve lost 110 lbs, no longer diabetic, blood pressure is great, no more kidney stones (I had eight), hair has grown back, glaucoma is gone, etc. Many doctors just wanted to diagnose obesity instead of seeing it as a symptom of something else.” —Antique_Albatross Sammyvision / Getty Images 7.”I diagnosed my husband’s brain tumor, leading to emergency surgery. After a month in and out of the ER, his personality changed; he couldn’t stay awake, was diagnosed with a B12 deficiency, dehydration, frequent vomiting, and his vision looked ‘weird.’ Still, he could never explain it (it turns out his peripheral vision was gone), and a swollen optic nerve — probably just high BP from ophthalmology…” “…After a weekend where I could barely wake him up, he went back to the ER, where he waited four hours in the waiting room. I asked him if anyone had done a CT or MRI of his brain (I assumed they had), but they had not. I told him to insist on a CT because I had a wild sneaking suspicion. Two hours after being called back, he was in an ambulance on his way to a different hospital with a neuro ICU to get scheduled for emergency brain surgery. Massive tumor with dangerous obstructive hydrocephalus.” —HyperIndependent 8.”My dad was a paramedic back in the day. Decades later, he suddenly had mom call 911, he swore he needed to get to the hospital. Then he walked out to the ambulance and told the paramedics he was having a heart ******* and they had to go right now. He got in the ambulance himself and seemed fine — and coded on the 10-minute ride to the ER. He lived 15 more years because the paramedics believed him when he said he was going to ****.” Douglas Sacha / Getty Images 9.”I work as a medical lab tech. We had a patient who came in insisting that her neighbor was poisoning her. Everyone dismissed her, assuming she had some kind of paranoid psychosis. She remained in the ER on a psych eval. I ran all the standard labs on her, and they were normal, but this patient would not budge…” “…She was admitted to psych on a hold. At this point, one hospitalist decided ‘why not’ and ordered labs to test for several heavy metals and ethylene glycol. Her ethylene glycol level was 32. THIRTY-TWO. I don’t know if she was legit being poisoned by her neighbor or if it was self-induced, but *****, that patient taught me a vital lesson that day.” —Wrong_Character2279 10.”My aunt and uncle had a Border Collie that would bury his nose in my uncle’s back when he was sitting on the couch or recliner. He would walk up, sniff, and keep sniffing until my uncle would shoo him away. A bit later, he would come back, sniff again and just stare at my uncle…” “…A few weeks later, my aunt was watching one of the local news channels, and they featured a dog that could smell Parkinson’s, and she jokingly told my uncle about it. He mentioned their dog constantly sniffing one spot and one spot only on his back, so he went to a high school friend who was a dermatology doctor. He said it didn’t look right and did a biopsy on it. Sure enough, he had skin *******, but they caught it early, and all he ended up with was a scar on his back.” —AnatidaephobiaAnon Alberto Menendez Cervero / Getty Images 11.”I’m a nurse, but just had a patient who came in for a colonoscopy due to constipation and pain with bowel movements. He told me before the test, he felt like there was something ‘catching’ on the left side of his abdomen when he pooped…” “He thought, ‘Maybe I have a big polyp there.’ Sure enough, he had a 2.5 centimeter polyp that we removed from that exact area. I’ll never get to find out if that catching sensation ever went away for him, but I thought it was interesting that he was right.” —madicoolcat 12.”Patient here. I told my family GP (who I’d seen since I was a **** and who worked with and saw both my parents as patients for years) that I thought I had reactive hypoglycemia. He scoffed. ‘You don’t have that. Why would you think you have that?’ I told him my symptoms…” “…He was doubtful but told the nurse to get me a Coke and made me chug it. Sent me to roam around the hospital for a bit, then get bloodwork and return. I returned, and his first words were, ‘This is so aggravating.’ ‘Does…that mean I have it?’ Yup…” —chekhovsdickpic Virojt Changyencham / Getty Images 13.”I was having on-and-off pain in my lower abdomen in a super specific place. Certain things exacerbated it (digestion, ****, exercise), and when I went to my PCP, I told her, ‘I can circle for you with a sharpie where it hurts…” “…My doctor brushed it off since it was intermittent, noting it was probably a muscle pull or IBS, but after a bit of pushing on my part, I ordered imaging. The radiologist immediately pulled me for a follow-up with a surgeon because I had a golf ball-sized cyst on my ovary (right under the circle I had drawn) indicative of advanced endometriosis. I made sure to tell my PCP at my next follow-up…” —mamaneedsacar 14.”I knew my partner had leukemia about a week before I could convince him to go to the doctor. He was bleeding and bruising really easily and had petechiae. I wanted to go to urgent care where I knew the CBC was done quickly onsite, but he instead wanted to wait to go to his primary…” “….I took him to his primary and had a bag packed for the hospital in the trunk. The doctor told him it was likely a B12 deficiency but that he’d do bloodwork to put my mind at ease. I asked if the CBC was done onsite or not, and he said it was sent out. I asked if he planned to rush the CBC. He got furious and said, ‘There is nothing the CBC could show that would change my treatment plan.’ Then he told my partner he needed to stop me from googling. We got a call that night from the lab that his WBCs were dangerously high and platelets were dangerously low, and I had to take him to the ER immediately. I did, and he was diagnosed with acute leukemia.” —Psmpo Emilija Manevska / Getty Images 15.”One of my dearest friends from middle school was suffering from absolutely devastating medical issues. She went from being bright and thriving in university to dropping out before graduating because her health declined. She lost the job that paid her a fantastic amount… basically, her entire life fell apart. She was telling me about the new weird thing happening with her…” “..She had some strange anemia that was found to be the result of abnormally low ferritin in her blood, which is what enables your red blood cells to carry iron. That was when something clicked in my brain: horrible digestive issues, peculiar anemia, chronic infections in her spleen that required a splenectomy, sunburn to a blistering point in less than a half-hour, a diagnosed allergy to sulfa drugs, horrible reactions to carbamazepine, retinol gave her a suppurating skin rash. I’m a premed dropout, and one of the first classes I took on my path to premed was an undergrad course on rare conditions and *********. One of the ones we discussed in our inherited disorders class segment was porphyria. There’s an easy way to tell if someone has porphyria: have them **** into a clear plastic or glass cup and expose it to direct sunlight. In hours to days, the ****** of people with porphyria will turn from clear or yellow to a wine red or purple. So I asked her if she trusted me enough to do something weird and told her to get a clear plastic disposable cup from her kitchen, **** in it, and put it on her windowsill where nobody could see it. And if anything about it changes, please tell me. Approximately four hours later, she called me on the phone screaming that her ‘***** turned purple-red like a ******** vampire,’ and I told her she needed to go to the doctor and get tested for porphyria. She got the results two weeks later, and I was correct.” —Ranger_Chowdown 16.”My husband and I had been following up again and again with the pediatrician for some mild but never-ending symptoms our son was experiencing: random vomiting, exhaustion, mild fever that came and went, then finally leg pain and limping…” “…I thought he was overreacting to think *******, but his doctor finally ordered us to the children’s hospital. Their ER admitted us to the oncology ward after a day of different tests. It took a week to determine that it was acute lymphoblastic leukemia as opposed to another *******. Took our little five-year-old almost three years to ring the bell. We’ve been off treatment for four months, and it’s been surreal.” —SunburntLyra Bevan Goldswain / Getty Images 17.”I got mono at 16. It didn’t go away. I was getting recurrences twice a year where my lymph nodes would swell, and I would get ***** just like the first time, my blood tests showing glaring red positives for mono markers. I got my tonsils out in my 20’s, and the mono seemed to subside. Two years later, I got all the same symptoms.” “Swollen lymph nodes, fatigue, all the rest. I went to the urgent care. The PA took one look at the bumps under my arms and prescribed me antibiotic cream for ingrown hair. I told him about the mono — he rolled his eyes and told me they were infected ingrown hairs. I insisted on a blood test, even if I had to pay out of pocket. Blood tests came back, and not only was I positive for mono, the markers were 19 TIMES the normal numbers for a positive case.” —creepy-cats 18.”I correctly old my doctor that I had dengue fever. I had just returned from Puerto Rico and had all of the symptoms except for bleeding. The doctor dismissed my suggestion and told me that I had the flu. After a few days, he relented and had me get a blood test. And it was dengue fever!” Oleg Breslavtsev / Getty Images 19.”Halfway through my ******* treatment, I told them it was back. No one but my mom listened to me. After two months of non-stop telling them they had done a scan, it turns out that yes, I had ******* again, and it was getting close to being terminal. The student doctor learned to listen that day.” Glasshouse Images / Getty Images 20.”My friend diagnosed herself with ****. She had swelling around her neck, and the doctors weren’t finding anything. She Googles her symptoms, calls me, and says she thinks she is ****-positive. I spend the call trying to calm her down and telling her to get tested, but that probably isn’t it. Her doctor also told her there was no way, but she insisted on getting tested. Yep, she was right.” —HastyIfYouPlease Whether you’re a doctor or you were the patient, what is a shocking medical self-diagnosis that ended up being correct? Tell us in the comments or in this anonymous form. Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity. Source link #People #Sharing #Wildest #Medical #SelfDiagnoses #Turned #Correct Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Nintendo just announced its ****** Friday deals, and they include Tears of the Kingdom for $50 Nintendo just announced its ****** Friday deals, and they include Tears of the Kingdom for $50 Nintendo just dropped details on its various ****** Friday promotions, all of which go live on November 24 and end on November 30. These include fairly steep discounts on first-party Switch titles, which rarely happens. The deals will be available at retailers like Best Buy, GameSpot, Target and Walmart, though it doesn’t look like the Nintendo eShop will host these sales. Perhaps the jewel in ****** Friday’s crown is a $20 discount on The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. The game is normally $70, so this drops the price down to $50. The game is an absolute blast and builds on all of the good stuff originally introduced in Breath of the Wild. This time, however, new abilities allow for even more unique solutions to puzzles. The ***** also applies to the long-gestating Pikmin 4 and the sublimely creative Super Mario Maker 2. Both will be available for $40. Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the belle of the COVID-era ball, will also cost $40. The same goes for Nintendo Switch Sports and Kirby and the Forgotten Land. Super Mario Odyssey, which is still the franchise’s latest 3D platformer, will ****** down to just $30. The same price will apply to the remake collection Pikmin 1 + 2. Joy-**** controllers, carrying cases and other accessories will also be on *****. There will even be a deal on an actual Switch console bundle. The Nintendo Switch Lite: Hyrule Edition is going to cost $210, but it comes with some serious perks. This bundle ships with the gold-******** console and a full year of Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack. This provides access to all kinds of retro games, from the NES all the way to the N64. There’s a caveat here. The Nintendo Switch isn’t long for this world, as a sequel is imminent. Adults may want to wait for the new console, but a Switch Lite is still a great gift for a ****. However, nobody has any idea what Trump’s promised tariffs will do to console prices, so maybe even the Switch Lite will cost $600 next year. Who the heck knows anymore. Check out all of the latest ****** Friday and Cyber Monday deals here. Source link #Nintendo #announced #****** #Friday #deals #include #Tears #Kingdom Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Stock market today: Live updates Stock market today: Live updates Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange at the opening bell on November 13, 2024, in New York City. Angela Weiss | AFP | Getty Images S&P 500 futures inched lower Thursday night as investors wondered what’s next for the market after the postelection rally wavered. Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 91 points, or 0.2%. S&P 500 futures slipped about 0.3%, while Nasdaq 100 futures shed 0.4%. In extended trading, Applied Materials slid more than 5% after posting weak guidance for revenue in the current quarter. Domino’s Pizza jumped more than 7% after Berkshire Hathaway announced a new stake in the pizza chain. That action follows a losing day on Wall Street as the postelection upswing continued to show signs of fizzling. The Dow fell more than 200 points in the session, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite each slipped about 0.6%. Stocks took a leg down in afternoon trading after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said during an event in Dallas that the central bank wasn’t “in a hurry” to cut interest rates. That comes after the Fed cut the borrowing cost last week. The three major indexes are also tracking to end the week lower, giving up some gains seen during last week’s climb on the back of Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election. The Nasdaq Composite has dropped 0.9% this week, while the S&P 500 and Dow have shed 0.8% and 0.5%, respectively. “Investors are catching their breath and evaluating whether the advance has merit,” said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA Research. “We really don’t see anything on the horizon right now to upend stocks, but investors are always sort of looking around to see what could cause the trend to end.” Investors will watch Friday for economic data on retail sales, import prices and industrial production. That caps a busy week for economic data that was punctuated by releases of closely watched inflation gauges focused on consumers and producers. On the earnings front, e-commerce giant Alibaba is due to report quarterly results on Friday. Source link #Stock #market #today #Live #updates Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

[Famitsu Sales: 11/4/24 11/10/24] PS5 Pro sold 78,000 units in the first week [Famitsu Sales: 11/4/24 11/10/24] PS5 Pro sold 78,000 units in the first week Famitsu: “Sales ranking announced by Famitsu. This time, we bring you a summary of the estimated weekly sales figures for game software and hardware from November 4th to November 10th, 2024.” Source link #Famitsu #Sales #PS5 #Pro #sold #units #week Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Weight-loss medications may also ease chronic pain Weight-loss medications may also ease chronic pain Popular semaglutide-based drugs used for weight loss may reduce chronic and acute pain, which could make them a promising alternative to opioids Source link #Weightloss #medications #ease #chronic #pain Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

AMD Ryzen AI offers up to 75% faster gaming than Intel AMD Ryzen AI offers up to 75% faster gaming than Intel AMD has just unveiled some internal benchmarks of its Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor. Although it’s been a few months since the release of the Ryzen AI 300 series, AMD now compares its CPU to Intel’s Lunar Lake, and the benchmarks are highly favorable for AMD’s best processor for thin-and-light laptops. Let’s check them out. For starters, AMD compared the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 to the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V. The AMD CPU comes with 12 cores (four Zen 5 and eight Zen 5c cores) and 24 threads, as well as 36MB of combined cache. The maximum clock speed tops out at 5.1GHz, and the CPU offers a configurable thermal design power (TDP) ranging from 15 watts to 54W. Meanwhile, the Intel chip sports eight cores (four performance cores and four efficiency cores), eight threads, a max frequency of 4.8GHz, 12MB of cache, and a TDP ranging from 17W to 37W. Both come with a neural processing unit (NPU), and AMD scores a win here too, as its NPU provides 50 trillion operations per second (TOPS), while Intel’s sits at 47 TOPS. It’s a small difference, though. AMD Digging into the results, AMD compares the two CPUs in a number of games, claiming major wins across the board. AMD says that the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 is on average 75% faster than Intel, and we can see that in these tests. Some titles, such as F1 24 and Forza Horizon 5 show massive gains of over 50 frames per second (fps) at 1080p on medium settings. It’s worth noting that both laptops were running with all of the game-boosting technologies available to each vendor for this test. In the case of AMD, this includes FSR 3 where applicable, as well as AMD’s one-button game-boosting solution, AMD HYPR-RX. Next, AMD also compared native performance with FSR 3 and Intel’s rival upscaler XeSS. AMD Things even out quite a bit when comparing native performance without any bells and whistles. Although the exact data isn’t available, it looks like the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 and the Core Ultra 7 258V are fairly close in titles like Cyberpunk 2077, Ghost of Tsushima, and F1 24. Intel’s native performance shoots ahead in Hitman 3 and Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered, while AMD obliterates it in Call of Duty: ****** Ops 6. Of course, everything looks different when you look at the portion of the benchmark that shows off the power of FSR 3 versus XeSS. There’s no contest: AMD’s gaming tech wins by a landslide in every title. AMD The last test compares the base version of FSR and AMD’s HYPR-RX. Intel sees a decent boost from enabling FSR, which, unlike Nvidia’s DLSS 3, is available to GPUs from all vendors. AMD still leads by a large margin, although, like before, native performance is not that far apart. The timing for these benchmarks is interesting, considering that both AMD Ryzen AI 300 series and Intel Lunar Lake have been out for a while. The Lunar Lake processor is also not quite the equivalent to the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, which can explain some of the performance gap. Regardless, AMD’s performance-boosting tech bodes well for thin-and-light devices. We’ve already seen the CPU in action in laptops such as the Asus Zenbook S 16, where it did an impressive job. The Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 is also set to appear in a GMKtec mini-PC — something akin to the Intel NUC — and in handhelds. Those devices, more than anything else, might largely benefit from what AMD is highlighting here, as without a discrete GPU, this type of tech can really come in handy. Source link #AMD #Ryzen #offers #faster #gaming #Intel Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Trump taps RFK Jr. as HHS secretary Trump taps RFK Jr. as HHS secretary Trump taps RFK Jr. as HHS secretary – CBS News Watch CBS News President-elect Donald Trump announced Thursday that he has selected Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his pick to run the Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy, who ended his longshot independent presidential bid and endorsed Trump, has a history of being a vaccine skeptic and making false claims about public health. Dr. Jon LaPook takes a look at what it could mean for health care in the U.S. Be the first to know Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. Not Now Turn On Source link #Trump #taps #RFK #HHS #secretary Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

‘Amazing showcase’ for *** gaming industry cancelled ‘Amazing showcase’ for *** gaming industry cancelled WASD One of the main showcases for *** gaming has been cancelled, reflecting the wider struggles of an industry which has seen a series of job cuts and studio closures. The WASD expo – which is usually held in London in April – is a shop window for British talent, with a particular emphasis on smaller, independent game-makers. But its organiser has now gone into liquidation. Co-founder David Lilley told the BBC “increasing costs and less demand for stand space means running events is just not viable for us anymore.” There had been speculation about the event’s future after the WASD website disappeared from public view months after its 2024 expo took place. But the industry has still reacted with shock and dismay at the confirmation it was no longer going ahead. James Lightfoot, from the ***-based Lightfoot Bros Games, was picked to showcase his game Sleepytime Village at the event this year, and said he was “so sad to hear it will be no more.” Dave Gilbert, the founder of ********* independent games developer Wadjet Eye Games, who attended the conference every year, called it “an amazing showcase for everything the *** game scene has to offer.” Creator community WASD first opened its doors in 2022 as an answer to the closure of EGX Rezzed, an offshoot of the London gaming festival EGX, which focused mainly on smaller, alternative video games and their developers. The expo typically occurred alongside the London Games Festival in April. As well as talks from industry members, WASD showcased a variety of demos from upcoming smaller games, alongside ******* releases such as Street Fighter 6 and Vampire Survivors. David Lilley told the BBC he recognised the importance of the event for the “indie and creator community” and wanted “to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has supported us along the way.” The Vampire Survivors team were at WASD in 2023 after winning the “Best Game” BAFTA It comes at a difficult time for in-person gaming events across the *** and the gaming industry as a whole. In September, Insomnia Gaming Festival, the ***’s biggest gaming expo, was due to take place in Birmingham, but following a number of lay-offs at its organiser, Player1 Events, tickets never went on *****. Whilst London’s other video game showcase EGX did take place this October, it did so in partnership with MCM Comic ****, rather than as a stand-alone event. The past two years have also seen mass lay-offs from some of the industry’s biggest companies, such as Xbox makers Microsoft and Sony, which makes PlayStation, following a ******* of record growth and profits during the Covid-19 pandemic. Rachel Watts, games journalist and co-host of the Indieventure Podcast, believes the announcement is a reflection of a wider movement from companies towards announcing their games online. “Now that ******* gaming companies are running their own digital events, there’s no reason for them to spend time, money, and resources on being present at in-person events.” “But for indie developers, events like WASD are vital to showcase their games to the public while also building a community within the indie space.” Source link #Amazing #showcase #gaming #industry #cancelled Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Words With Friends launches more games to compete with Wordle Words With Friends launches more games to compete with Wordle Zynga Words With Friends is expanding. What was once just a popular way to play unofficial multiplayer Scrabble on mobile has now become a larger hub for other daily word games. Mobile development juggernaut Zynga announced that it’s added four games to the app. Mini Crosswords gives you a new crossword to complete every day and a leaderboard for competing against other players. Word Wheel is an anagram game where players connect letters in a wheel to form words. Word Search provides a new puzzle theme each day. Finally, Guess Word is like Wordle, with players having to guess a word in six tries. “Words With Friends has always been about connecting players through friendly competition,” said Yaron Leyvand, executive vice president of mobile games, in a press release. “Our players asked if they could do even more, so we’ve added a whole new layer of personally fulfilling solo minigames where you can disconnect from the world and play word games, with or without friends.” Before there was Wordle, there was Words With Friends. It launched in 2009, and like other Zynga games at the time, it found success through letting users connect with friends through Facebook. It’s since become one of the most well-known online multiplayer mobile games. There isn’t a chat function, but players can message offline and compete with friends and random strangers. By 2021, the app was a huge partof Zynga’s reported $616 million in Take-Two revenue that quarter. With this move, Words With Friends is on track to compete with apps like Puzzmo and NYT Games, which bundle together games into one hub that updates daily. There has been a lot of growth in this area, with The New York Times in particular expanding its game offerings with Strands and Connections over the past couple years. Source link #Words #Friends #launches #games #compete #Wordle Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

This fps-doubling app is now even better than DLSS 3 This fps-doubling app is now even better than DLSS 3 Lossless Scaling is a $7 Steam app that’s flipped the idea of frame generation on its head this year. Similar to tools like Nvidia’s DLSS 3 and AMD’s FSR 3, Lossless Scaling offers frame generation. However, it works with any game, and with any graphics card, and it can triple or quadruple your frame rate with this frame generation. And now, the app is going further with a feature that even DLSS 3 and FSR 3 don’t have. The developer posted the 2.12 beta to Steam on Wednesday, and it adds a couple of new features. The big one is a resolution scale for LSFG, the tool’s own machine learning-based frame generation algorithm. This allows you to decrease the resolution of the input frames, leading to a very minor quality loss in exchange for a fairly large performance boost. The resolution of the game doesn’t change at all. You’re basically giving the frame generation algorithm slightly less information to work with. It’s a very clever way of improving performance that we haven’t seen from Nvidia or AMD yet. There are plenty of artifacts and oddities with generated frames, regardless of where they come from. The idea is that you won’t notice those issues because the generated frames are mixed in between truly rendered ones, and only displayed on screen for a few milliseconds. This new feature capitalizes on that fact, offering an additional performance boost with an almost imperceivable quality loss. Jacob ****** / Digital Trends I tried it out in Cyberpunk 2077, and the feature works very well. At native 4K, I was able to max out my monitor’s 138Hz refresh rate by using 3X frame generation and setting the resolution scale to 70%. The difference between 100% and 70% didn’t even register at that high of a frame rate. However, as with all frame generation tools, it’s best to have a base frame rate of 60 frames per second (fps) before enabling frame generation. Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming In addition to the resolution slider for frame generation, the developer made a few other updates to the app. First, they removed LSFG 1. This was the first frame generation algorithm, which has now been fully replaced with the latest version. The app now supports SGSR v1 as well. This is Snapdragon Game Super Resolution, which is a lightweight upscaler built by Qualcomm that was created for the Adreno GPU. It should provide better upscaling results than some of the other options in Lossless Scaling, particularly on weaker GPUs. This update is a beta release, which means you won’t see an update for the app in Steam. If you want to download the update, head to the Properties window for Lossless Scaling in Steam, and select Betas. Then select beta – beta from the Beta Participation dropdown, and you can download the update. Source link #fpsdoubling #app #DLSS Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

What the Mike Huckabee pick could signal for the West Bank What the Mike Huckabee pick could signal for the West Bank What the Mike Huckabee pick could signal for the West Bank – CBS News Watch CBS News The West Bank has seen escalating ********* since Oct. 7, with ******** soldiers pursuing militants in residential areas and ******* settlers mounting attacks on Palestinians in land grabs. Elizabeth Palmer looks at what President-elect Donald Trump’s election victory and his selection of Mike Huckabee for U.S. ambassador to ******* could mean for the West Bank’s future. Be the first to know Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. Not Now Turn On Source link #Mike #Huckabee #pick #signal #West #Bank Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Europe’s flying taxi dreams falter as cash runs short Europe’s flying taxi dreams falter as cash runs short Volocopter The VoloCity made demonstration flights in Paris over the summer One of the innovations at this year’s Paris Olympics was supposed to be an electric flying taxi service. Germany’s Volocopter promised its electric-powered, two-seater aircraft, the VoloCity, would be ferrying passengers around the city. It never happened. Instead the company ran demonstration flights. While missing that deadline was embarrassing, behind the scenes a more serious issue was playing out – Volocopter was urgently trying to raise fresh investment to keep the firm going. Talks to borrow €100m (£83m; $106m) from the government ******* in April. Now hopes are pinned on China’s Geely, which is in talks to take an 85% stake in Volocopter in return for $95m of funding, according to a Bloomberg report. The deal could mean that any future manufacturing would be moved to China. Volocopter is one of dozens of companies around the world developing an electric vertical take-off and landing (EVTOL) aircraft. Their machines promise the flexibility of a helicopter, but without the cost, noise and emissions. However, faced with the massive cost of getting such novel aircraft approved by regulators and then building up manufacturing capabilities, some investors are bailing out. Lilium Lilium’s ******** design involves jets which can be angled for vertical take-off One of the most high-profile casualties is Lilium. The ******* company had developed a ******** take on the EVTOL theme. Lilium’s aircraft uses 30 electric jets that can be tilted in unison to swing between vertical lift and forward flight. The concept proved attractive, with the company claiming to have orders and memoranda of understanding for 780 jets from around the world. It was able to demonstrate the technology using a remote controlled scale model. Construction had begun on the first full-sized jets, and testing had been due to begin in early 2025. As recently as the Farnborough Airshow in July, Lilium’s COO Sebastian Borel was sounding confident. “We are definitely burning through cash,” he told the BBC. “But this is a good sign, because it means we are producing the aircraft. We’re going to have three aircraft in production by the end of the year, and we have also raised €1.5bn”. But then the money ran out. Lilium had been attempting to arrange a loan worth €100m from the ******* development bank, KfW. However, that required guarantees from national and state governments, which never materialised. In early November, the company put its main operating businesses into insolvency proceedings, and its shares were removed from the Nasdaq stock exchange. For the moment, work on the new aircraft is continuing, as the company works with restructuring experts to sell the business or bring in new investment. However, getting the new e-jet into production is looking more challenging than ever. Vertical Aerospace The VX4 recently completed successful take-off and landing tests The high-profile British player in the eVTOL market is Vertical Aerospace. The Bristol-based company was founded in 2016 by businessman Stephen Fitzpatrick, who also set up OVO Energy. Its striking VX4 design uses eight large propellers mounted on slim, aircraft style wings to generate lift. Mr Fitzpatrick has made ambitious claims about the aircraft, suggesting it would be “100 times” safer and quieter than a helicopter, for 20% of the cost. The company has made progress. After completing a programme of remote-controlled testing, it began carrying out piloted tests earlier this year. Initially, these were carried out with the aircraft tethered to the ground. In early November, it carried out its first untethered take-off and landing. But there have also been serious setbacks. In August last year, a remotely-piloted prototype was badly damaged when it crashed during testing at Cotswold Airport, after a propeller blade fell off. In May one of its key partners, the engineering giant Rolls Royce pulled out of a deal to supply electric motors for the aircraft. Ambitions remain sky high. Vertical Aerospace says it will deliver 150 aircraft to its customers by the end of the decade. By then, it also expects to be capable of producing 200 units a year, and to be breaking even in cash terms. Yet financial strains have been intensifying. Mr Fitzpatrick invested an extra $25m into the company in March. But a further $25m, due in August if alternative investment could not be found, has not been paid. As of September, Vertical had $57.4m on hand – but it expects to ***** through nearly double that over the coming year. Hopes for the future appear to be pinned on doing a deal with the ********* financier Jason Mudrick, who is already a major creditor through his firm Mudrick Capital Management. He has offered to invest $75m into the business – and has warned the board of Vertical that rejecting his plan would inevitably lead to insolvency proceedings. But the move has been resisted by Mr Fitzpatrick, who would lose control of the company he founded. Sources close to the talks insist an agreement is now very close. The company believes if a deal can be done, it will unlock further fundraising opportunities. Airbus CityAirbus has an 80km range and can fly at 120kmh Amid the turbulence, one ********* project is quietly on track, says Bjorn Fehrm who has a background in aeronautical engineering and piloted combat jets for the Swedish Air Force. He now works for aerospace consultancy Leeham. He says that the EVTOL project underway at Airbus is likely to survive. Called the CityAirbus NextGen, the four-seater aircraft has eight propellers and a range of 80km. “This is a technology project for their engineers, and they’ve got the money, and they’ve got the know how,” says Mr Fehrm. Elsewhere in the world, other well funded start-ups stand a good change of getting their aircraft into production. That would include Joby and Archer in the US. Once the aircraft are being produced, the next challenge will be to see if there’s a profitable market for them. The first routes are likely to be between airports and city centres. But will they make money? “The biggest problem area when it comes to the cost of operation is the pilot and the batteries. You need to change the batteries a couple of times per year,” points out Mr Fehrm. Given all the uncertainty and expense, you might wonder why investors put money into new electric aircraft in the first place. “No one wanted to miss out on the next Tesla,” laughs Mr Fehrm. More Technology of Business Source link #Europes #flying #taxi #dreams #falter #cash #runs #short Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Google will stop serving political ads in the EU, including on YouTube Google will stop serving political ads in the EU, including on YouTube Google will stop serving political advertisements in the ********* Union. The decision, in The Keyword blog, is in response to an upcoming new rule for the bloc that “introduces significant new operational challenges and legal uncertainties for political advertisers and platforms.” The company says the Regulation on Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising has an overly broad definition for political advertising and raised concerns that technical guidance around the policy may not be given until close to October 2025, when the rules will take effect. In addition to no longer serving that ad content ahead of next October, Google said that paid political advertisements will also not be allowed on YouTube in the EU. The company said that similar regulations have already led it to stop serving political ads in , France and Brazil. Google’s advertising and ad tech have been subjected to scrutiny by the ********* government in recent years. The company faced (but ultimately ) fines for “abusive” advertising practices in 2019, and last year was hit with . And Google has also engaged in other eyebrow-raising behavior in the bloc. Just yesterday, the company began what it called a “small, time-limited test” to from EU-based news publishers in search, Google News and the Discover feed. Source link #Google #stop #serving #political #ads #including #YouTube Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Asus ROG Falchion Ace HFX review: too expensive for plastic Asus ROG Falchion Ace HFX review: too expensive for plastic Asus ROG Falchion Ace HFX MSRP $200.00 “Asus’ first Hall Effect keyboard is a winner, but not at $200.” ***** Solid typing and gaming feel out of the box Rapid trigger and speed tap features Unique media controls 8,000Hz polling rate ***** Pricey for all-plastic construction Armoury Crate is a slog For the past year, I’ve been wondering where Asus’ Hall Effect keyboard is. Hall Effect has been all the rage for PC gamers, infiltrating the best gaming keyboards you can buy, but Asus has stayed away from the trend with releases like the ROG Azoth Extreme. With the Falchion Ace HFX, we finally have the first Hall Effect keyboard from Asus. The company has emerged as one of the leading keyboard brands for enthusiast-level quality with mainstream sensibilities, especially with releases like the ROG Strix Scope II 96. The ROG Falchion Ace HFX is yet another showcase of Asus’ expertise, and it comes with competitive features like rapid trigger analogue switches and an 8,000Hz wired polling rate — it’s just a shame that this otherwise wonderful all-plastic keyboard comes in at $200. Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming Asus ROG Falchion Ace HFX specs Asus ROG Falchion Ace HFX Layout 65% Keyboard type Mechanical Switches Lubed ROG HFX Magnetic switches (40/55gf) Switch mount Gasket Hot-swappable No Stablizers Lubed ROG stablizers Key caps Doubleshot PBT Backlight Per-key RGB Construction Plastic Foam Poron and silicone Onboard storage Up to six profiles Software Armoury Crate Connection USB-C Polling rate 8,000Hz USB ports N/A Dimensions 315 x 115 x 35mm Weight 643 grams (1.4 pounds) List price $200 Where to buy Design Jacob ****** / Digital Trends The Falchion Ace HFX may make big changes to the switches, but the overall design fits right within Asus’ Falchion range. Like the Falchion RX LP, this is a 65% keyboard that’s just a hair taller than a typical 65% design due to the Republic of Gamers logo and light bar at the top. Compared to a smaller 60% design, you get some extra goodies with 65%, including your arrow keys and keys like Insert and Delete. The major change Asus made on the key front is swapping out the right Ctrl key for a Windows Copilot key. In stark contrast to the Falchion RX LP, the Ace HFX is ******, though not across the board. The key caps are ******, as is the top light bar and the edges of the body. However, Asus breaks up the design with a dark-silver plate for the key switches, and two silver controls on the back of the keyboard. It’s a classy-looking design. It’s just not a classy-feeling one, unfortunately. This is a $200 keyboard, and I expected a least a little bit of metal in the construction, but it’s all plastic here. You could argue that’s a positive for an esports keyboard — at only 1.4 pounds, you can easily reposition the Falchion Ace HFX in a way that it’s comfortable — but the materials don’t lie. Asus is using inexpensive materials to build the Falchion Ace HFX while still charging a premium price. Still, the Falchion Ace HFX looks great. Outside of per-key RGB, you get the aforementioned light bar, which pulls double duty as a status bar. On the back left side of the keyboard, there’s a textured piece of silicon that you can slide your finger on to access several functions, including volume and media controls. And as you adjust them, the light bar at the top will react. It’s an ingenious way to give you access to media controls while maintaining a tiny 65% form factor. Sound and feel Jacob ****** / Digital Trends Asus is using it own pre-lubed Hall Effect switches and stabilizers in the Falchion Ace HFX, and they actually feel pretty good. A big part of that is the gasket mount and insane amount of sound dampening packed inside the keyboard. The sound and feel is very similar to what I saw with the Wooting 80HE. That’s to say, it’s good enough for typing, better for gaming, and a small step behind something like the Keychron Q1 HE. It’s clear that Asus spent some time sculpting the sound of the Falchion Ace HFX. Something about the feel doesn’t quite match up with the sound. There are two layers of Poron foam as well as two layers of silicon sound dampening, leading to a very muted sound. That’s good in a lot of cases. The typical high-end ping you find on gaming keyboards isn’t present, and there’s a chunky low-end response when you’re slamming away at the keys. Still, something is missing. The sound feels like Asus scooped out the midrange. You’re getting the low-end thonk with just enough click with each keypress to let you know this is a mechanical keyboard. But the lower midrange sound you get from something with heavier mechanical switches and careful lubrication isn’t present here, and some of that might be due to the plastic construction. Jacob ****** / Digital Trends That’s my biggest issue with the feel of the keyboard. Although typing and gaming on the Falchion Ace HFX is solid for a Hall Effect keyboard, the fully plastic construction at $200 stings. It makes the keyboard feel, in the hands, much more inexpensive than it actually is. And, unlike the Razer ****** Widow V4 75%, there aren’t extra goodies like a comfy wrist rest or an OLED display to justify that higher price tag. In addition, you’re locked into Asus’ switches here. They’re good, resembling a linear mechanical switch with 40gf for the initial actuation, but you can’t swap out the switches. We’ve seen newer keyboards like the Glorious GMMK 3 that, although expensive, allow you to swap between mechanical and Hall Effect switches in the same keyboard. Features Jacob ****** / Digital Trends The main draw of the Falcion Ace HFX is right there in the name. Hall Effect switches not only give you control over the actuation distance of each key — from 0.1mm to 4mm — but also unlocks the rapid trigger feature. This basically gives the switch a dynamic actuation and reset point. Instead of pressing and releasing a key to the set points, the keys will actuate and reset based on what direction they’re moving. You can keep this locked to only certain keys, too — by default, rapid trigger is only enabled on the WASD keys. This isn’t a new feature for Hall Effect keyboards; in fact, it’s the main draw of them. Asus’ contribution is a dedicated switch on the back of the keyboard to turn the rapid trigger feature on and off. I love that inclusion. Not only can you configure your keyboard without opening any software but you can also quickly toggle between the feature being on or off without remembering some hotkey. My only gripe is that the toggle is fairly loose — you could easily bump it and turn off rapid trigger if you game with your keyboard at an angle. In addition to rapid trigger, you also get a speed tap mode. This has been popularized by Razer and Wooting, and it’s been referred to by some esports ***** as cheating. In competitive FPS games, the idea is that you can strafe faster between the A and D keys due to the fact that the keyboard prioritizes the most recent input. You don’t need to fully lift your finger off one key to register the next input. Normally, if you press the D key while the A key is still held, your character won’t move. With speed tapping, you can strafe much faster. This feature has already been banned in Counter-Strike 2, both on official Valve servers and in ESL events. Other games haven’t banned speed tapping, though they could in the future. Regardless, Asus is matching the competition here for features, and coming out slightly ahead due to the dedicated rapid toggle switch. On the competitive bend, the Falchion Ace HFX also includes two USB-C inputs — one on either side of the keyboard. That’s great for positioning the keyboard, though I’m not sure how much the inclusion of an extra USB-C port bloats the price, and I doubt how practical it is for a lot of gamers. Software Jacob ****** / Digital Trends For managing the Falcion Ace HFX, you’ll need to download Asus Armoury Crate. Among the many keyboard utilities available, Armoury Crate is near the bottom of the list for me. It’s just too dense. It’s important to remember that Asus makes desktops, laptops, motherboards, graphics cards, monitors, peripherals, and dozens of other products, and every single ROG-branded device is managed through Armoury Crate. If the Falchion Ace HFX is the only Asus device you own, there’s a ton of bloat in Armoury Crate that just doesn’t apply. Particularly on the RGB front, I can appreciate Asus’ effort to unify different devices with features like Aura Sync, but there’s still a lot of bloat outside of these multi-device features. Asus packs in a tab for game deals, for example. You get some small discounts by registering your device, but the deals are powered by GamesPlanet — a separate website that already has solid game deals. I’d much rather find deals in my browser than bog down my keyboard utility. Add on top of that news, user-created wallpapers, and yet another game library where you can import the games installed on your PC, and Armoury Crate has a lot of extras that extend far beyond managing a keyboard. More isn’t always better, and most PC gamers already have half a dozen utilities installed on their PC that do the exact same thing. And just like those utilities, I suspect Armoury Crate will live in the system tray, never to be touched, after you configure your keyboard. As for managing your keyboard, you have some options in Armoury Crate. You can record and assign macros, adjust the speed tap and rapid trigger features, and swap basic lighting effects. Unfortunately, you can’t go any deeper than Asus’ basic lighting effects through Armoury Crate. You need to download the separate Aura Creator app if you want to create custom lighting effects on a per-key basis. The silver lining here is that you can mostly ignore Armoury Crate. You can turn critical functions like speed tap and rapid trigger on or off with the keyboard itself, and you can trigger macro recording on-the-fly. The textured strip at the back of the keyboard also supports custom commands, and you have space for six onboard profiles. Between these options, you shouldn’t have to open Armoury Crate much. Should you buy the Asus ROG Falchion Ace HFX? Jacob ****** / Digital Trends The Falchion Ace HFX is a good Hall Effect keyboard in a vacuum, but it’s just too expensive to recommend. That mainly comes down to its wired connection and all-plastic construction. There are plenty of fully metal Hall Effect keyboards that come in around the same price, including the Keychron Q1 HE and the Meletrix Boog75. The Wooting 60HE+ is even less at $175, and you can customize that keyboard in just about every way imaginable. Although I like the Falchion Ace HFX, it’d need to drop in price to earn a recommendation. Matching Wooting at $175 would be good, but a drop to $150 would make the Falchion Ace HFX very attractive. For now, you’re spending up for Asus’ first Hall Effect keyboard, and without the build quality that more niche brands offer around the same price. Source link #Asus #ROG #Falchion #Ace #HFX #review #expensive #plastic Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Why Trump chose RFK Jr. for HHS secretary Why Trump chose RFK Jr. for HHS secretary Why Trump chose RFK Jr. for HHS secretary – CBS News Watch CBS News President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services secretary came following several other controversial choices for Cabinet members. Caitlin Huey-Burns takes a look at the president-elect’s decision-making process. Be the first to know Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. Not Now Turn On Source link #Trump #chose #RFK #HHS #secretary Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

UN climate talks ‘no longer fit for purpose’ say experts UN climate talks ‘no longer fit for purpose’ say experts getty Recent deadly floods in Valencia, Spain, were made worse by climate change, scientists say The ******* Nations’ COP climate talks are “no longer fit for purpose” and need an urgent overhaul, key experts including a former UN secretary general and former UN climate chief have said. In a letter to the UN, senior figures say countries should not host the talks if they don’t support the phase out of fossil energy. This week the Azerbaijani president told world leaders gathered in his country for COP29 that natural gas was a “gift from ****” and he shouldn’t be blamed for bringing it to market. That came days after the BBC reported that a senior Azerbaijani official appeared to have used his role at COP to arrange a meeting to discuss potential fossil fuel deals. The UN’s climate talks have made significant progress in recent years, despite the fact that unanimous agreement is needed among almost 200 countries to take action. The Paris climate agreement, signed in 2015, outlines a long-term plan to rein in rising temperatures, as countries strive to keep that rise under 1.5C this century. They have also agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems, and to treble renewable power by 2030. But while the authors of this letter recognise these achievements, they feel that the slow-moving COP process is “no longer fit for purpose” in dealing with a fast-moving climate crisis. “Its current structure simply cannot deliver the change at exponential speed and scale, which is essential to ensure a safe climate landing for humanity,” said its signatories. They include former UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon, former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres and former president of Ireland Mary Robinson. This year will likely be the warmest on record, with emissions of planet warming gases still rising, while the impacts of warming often outpace the ability of countries to cope. “Planet Earth is in critical condition,” said leading climate scientist Johan Rockström, another signatory. “There is still a window of opportunity for a safe landing for humanity, but this requires a global climate policy process that can deliver change at exponential speed and scale,” Prof Rockström said. Getty Images The President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev addressing COP29 delegates The letter has been prompted by growing concerns about some of the countries chosen to host COP talks and their ability to deliver a significant advance in the ****** against rising temperatures. Just before the latest conference started, a secret recording showed the chief executive of Azerbaijan’s COP29 team, Elnur Soltanov, discussing “investment opportunities” in the state oil and gas company with a man posing as a potential investor. At the start of COP29, the country’s authoritarian leader, Ilham Aliyev, defended Azerbaijan’s current exports of gas and plans to expand production by a third in the next decade. “It’s a gift of ****,” he told an audience in Baku. “Every natural resource whether it’s oil, gas, wind, sun, gold, silver, copper, all that are natural resources,” he said. “And countries should not be blamed for having them and should not be blamed for bringing these resources to the market because the market needs them, the people need them.” The use of oil and gas are major causes of global warming, as they release planet-warming gases like carbon dioxide when they are burned. President Aliyev also hit out at France for carrying out colonialist “*******” and “human rights violations” in overseas territories. Such strongly expressed views are extremely rare from the leader of a COP host, where the aim is to build consensus on how to tackle rising temperatures. The authors of the letter are also concerned by the selection process for hosting COPs. Azerbaijan followed on from another major oil producer, the ******* ***** Emirates, which held the conference in Dubai last year. “At the last COP, fossil fuel lobbyists outnumbered representatives of scientific institutions, Indigenous communities and vulnerable nations,” said former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres. “We cannot hope to achieve a just transition without significant reforms to the COP process that ensure fair representation of those most affected.” The authors say that host countries “must demonstrate their high level of ambition to uphold the goals of the Paris agreement.” They also want smaller, more frequent COPs with clear accountability for the promises that countries make. Source link #climate #talks #longer #fit #purpose #experts Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

The Absurd Toxic Crusaders 90s Cartoon Is Getting A Collector’s Edition Blu-Ray The Absurd Toxic Crusaders 90s Cartoon Is Getting A Collector’s Edition Blu-Ray Back in the ’90s, nothing was better than watching Saturday morning cartoons, and if you’re looking to recapture that nostalgic feeling, one of the more absurd shows of that era is headed to home media. Toxic Crusaders: The Series Collector’s Edition has been digitally restored and remastered on Blu-ray, and while each episode was a typical 21-minute advert to buy action figures based on the exploits of Toxie, it’s still a surprisingly entertaining and weird show in its own right. Priced at $24.75 (was $35), it’ll be released on December 10. $24.75 (was $35) In addition to a sharp remaster of the cartoon series, this Blu-ray also includes some extra content alongside the original 13-episode run. There’s a new introduction by Lloyd Kaufman–the director of the Toxic Avenger movie–the original Toxic Crusaders toy commercials and TV spots, archival footage thought to be lost to time, and bonus cartoons. There’s even a documentary about the making of the Toxic Crusaders video game from Retroware, so this is a comprehensive Blu-ray. If you never watched it, Toxic Crusaders was an adaptation of the horror-comedy film The Toxic Avenger, only with the ********* toned down for younger audiences. The show starred Toxie, a former janitor who was horribly bullied until one day, he’s exposed to toxic waste that mutates him into a super-powered creature. He then joins with several other misfit mutants to battle evildoers. For a few more cartoon series, there are quite a few collections currently available based on ‘80s and ‘90s shows. The complete run of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was recently released on DVD, and this is on ***** for $26.60 (was $34). Super Friends: The Complete Collection brings together the Justice League to save the day from the Legion of *****, and this massive treasure trove of episodes has been discounted to $70 (was $100). Source link #Absurd #Toxic #Crusaders #90s #Cartoon #Collectors #Edition #BluRay Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]