Japanese gaming company behind Final Fantasy series secures deal with Sweden-based Embracer
The Japanese gaming company behind Final Fantasy is selling off three studios, including the rights to hit franchises including Tomb Raider, in a $300m (£240m) deal.
Tokyo-based Square Enix has sold US-headquartered Crystal Dynamics and Canada-based Eidos Montreal and Square Enix Montreal to the Nasdaq-listed Swedish gaming group Embracer.
Continue reading...Zelenskiy said about 100 civilians who sheltered in steelworks would arrive in Zaporizhzhia today. Plus, the tense wait for a supernova
Good morning.
Ukrainian authorities are planning to evacuate more civilians from Mariupol today, after dozens were finally brought to safety following weeks trapped under heavy fire in the strategic port city’s Azovstal steel complex.
How many people are still trapped in Mariupol? As many as 100,000 people are believed to be in the blockaded city, which has endured some of the most terrible suffering of the Russian invasion. These include 1,000 civilians and 2,000 Ukrainian fighters thought to be sheltering underneath the Soviet-era steelworks.
Will Biden’s Ukraine aid request be approved? Joe Biden’s $33bn request to Congress for more aid for Ukraine is likely to receive swift approval from lawmakers, a senior Republican said on Sunday, as the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, made a surprise visit to the war-riven country.
What else is happening? Here’s what we know on day 68 of the invasion.
What did Kinzinger say? The June hearings will involve laying out “what led to January 6, the lies after the election, fundraising, the 187 minutes the president basically sat in the Oval Office [as the Capitol was attacked] … the response by [the Department of Defense],” he said.
Continue reading...Uninvited guest surprised Naples homeowners when they opened door to garage after hearing a crash
A gregarious Florida alligator seemingly could not wait for a family’s birthday party to begin, so it slipped into a garage where supplies were being stored and chugged down a slab of Diet Coke.
The uninvited guest surprised Naples homeowners Karyn and Jamie Dobson when they opened the connecting door from their house after hearing a crash, WINK News reported.
Continue reading...Louisiana college student found hidden audio recording device and told police she feared musician planted it there
Three years ago, Laine Hardy tasted superstardom by winning American Idol. Last week, the 21-year-old landed in the headlines for a different reason.
A college student in Hardy’s home state, Louisiana, looked under her dormitory bed, found a hidden audio recording device and told police she feared the musician planted it there.
Continue reading...Republican Arkansas governor says he would not be deterred by former president in party in wrong over January 6 insurrection
The Arkansas governor, Asa Hutchinson, is considering a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 and would not be deterred if Donald Trump made an expected bid to return to the White House.
“No, it won’t [deter me],” Hutchinson told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday.
Continue reading...Pearl was to have focused on the adventures of a 12-year-old girl inspired by historically influential female figures
Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, has fallen victim to cutbacks at Netflix, according to a US report that said the struggling streaming giant has dropped plans for her animated series Pearl.
Announced to fanfare last summer, with Meghan as its creator and executive producer, the “family series” was to have focused on the adventures of a 12-year-old girl inspired by historically influential female figures.
Continue reading...Casey Cole White, 38, being held on capital murder charge, and Vicki White left detention center on Friday
The US Marshals Service said on Sunday it was offering up to $10,000 for information about an escaped inmate and a “missing and endangered” correctional officer who disappeared on Friday after the two left a jail in north Alabama.
Casey Cole White, 38, had been jailed on a capital murder charge in the Lauderdale county detention center in Florence, Alabama, about 75 miles west of Huntsville.
Continue reading...Members of Congress involved in attempt to overturn election have refused to testify voluntarily before June public hearings
The House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol will decide “in the next week or two” whether to issue subpoenas trying to force Republican lawmakers to testify about Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, one of two Republicans on the panel said on Sunday.
“If that takes a subpoena, it takes a subpoena,” Adam Kinzinger said.
Continue reading...Homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas forging ahead with plans to ease Covid-related immigration restrictions
Joe Biden’s top border official said on Sunday he was unconcerned by threats from the top House Republican that the GOP could impeach him if it regains the majority after the midterm elections, as the Biden administration forges ahead with plans to ease a coronavirus-related immigration restriction.
Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union, Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, addressed the remarks from the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy.
Continue reading...Michael McCaul’s comments come while Nancy Pelosi leads a congressional delegation to Kyiv to meet Ukrainian president
Joe Biden’s $33bn request to Congress for more aid for Ukraine is likely to receive swift approval from lawmakers, a senior Republican said on Sunday, as the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, made a surprise visit to the war-riven country.
The president on Thursday had asked for the money for military and humanitarian support for Ukraine as it fights to repulse the Russian invasion now in its third month.
Continue reading...Kentucky senator who has clashed publicly with Dr Anthony Fauci champions lab leak theory in remarks at rally
The Kentucky senator Rand Paul promised on Saturday to wage a vigorous review into the origins of the coronavirus if Republicans retake the Senate and he lands a committee chairmanship.
Speaking to supporters at a campaign rally, the senator denounced what he sees as government overreach in response to Covid-19. He applauded a recent judge’s order that voided the federal mask mandate on planes and trains and in travel hubs.
Continue reading...Manchin cites Biden Build Back Better spending plan he sank in ad for David McKinley, challenger to Trump-backed incumbent
Joe Manchin has recorded an ad for a Republican in a West Virginia US House election, in which the Democratic senator trumpets his opposition to Joe Biden’s Build Back Better domestic spending plan.
“David McKinley has always opposed reckless spending because it doesn’t make sense for West Virginia,” Manchin said.
Continue reading...Dan O’Dowd has bankrolled his own campaign to take a swing at what he calls Elon Musk’s ‘amazingly terrible’ technology
Dan O’Dowd is hardly the first California tech titan to bankroll his own campaign for high political office. What makes him unusual is that he has no interest in winning the US Senate seat he is vying for, or even in challenging the other candidates competing in the 7 June primary.
O’Dowd, a software entrepreneur with a 40-year history of working on military, aerospace and other commercial contracts, is running, rather, out of frustration at his fellow tech entrepreneur, Elon Musk, whom he accuses of endangering road safety with a driver assistance software package he’s put in his Tesla electric cars.
Continue reading...The Washington DC shooting was the most recent to spawn out of the extremist culture of unregulated ‘chan’ message boards
When police in Washington DC burst into a fifth-floor apartment building on 22 April in search of a man who allegedly had shot four people at random, they found Raymond Spencer dead by his own hand, a cache of guns and ammunition, and a poster with an ironic white supremacist meme.
The poster invoking the meme, popular on the extremist online forum 4chan, was a stark reminder that this attack blamed on Spencer, 23, was only the most recent mass casualty attack to spawn out of the ugly extremist culture of unregulated internet message boards such as 4chan.
Continue reading...Shareholders reject proposals for independent chair and greater disclosure of company’s climate-related risks
Berkshire Hathaway Inc shareholders on Saturday rejected proposals to have an independent chair replace Warren Buffett, and require his company to disclose more about its climate-related risks and efforts to improve diversity.
Shareholders supported letting Buffett keep both the chairman and chief executive roles by a nearly 6-to-1 margin, Berkshire said at its annual meeting in Omaha, Nebraska. Buffett, 91, has run Berkshire since 1965.
Continue reading...Strong winds pushed blaze across containment lines, threatening the small town of Las Vegas
More than 1,000 firefighters backed by bulldozers and aircraft battled the largest active wildfire in the US on Saturday after strong winds pushed it across some containment lines and closer to a town in northern New Mexico.
Preliminary overnight mapping imagery indicated that the fire that has burned at least 166 homes grew in size from 103 square miles on Friday to 152 square miles by early Saturday, officials said.
Continue reading...Daughters announced her death on Saturday, one day before the Judds were to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame
Naomi Judd, the Kentucky-born singer who formed the Grammy winning duo the Judds with her daughter Wynonna, and was also the mother of the actor Ashley Judd, has died. She was 76.
Judd’s daughters announced her death in a statement on Saturday, one day before the Judds were to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Continue reading...Argument made in federal court filing in Washington, where Trump’s chief of staff sued to invalidate subpoenas
Donald Trump’s last White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, has accused the congressional committee investigating the US Capitol attack of leaking all the text messages he provided in what he says is an effort to vilify him publicly.
The argument was made in a filing on Friday in federal court in Washington, where Meadows sued in December to invalidate subpoenas issued for his testimony and to Verizon for his cellphone records.
Continue reading...Teacher put on leave after allegedly telling class of mostly Black students to pick seeds out of cotton during lessons on slavery
School officials in Rochester, New York are investigating allegations that a white teacher told his class of mostly Black students to pick seeds out of cotton and put on handcuffs during lessons on slavery in a seventh-grade social studies class.
“It made me feel bad to be a Black person,” one School of the Arts student, Jahmiere O’Neal, told reporters.
Continue reading...Vicki White disappeared while escorting an inmate being held on capital murder charges, and inmate Casey White also missing
A prison official from Alabama was missing after escorting an inmate to a courthouse for a hearing.
The Lauderdale county sheriff’s office said in a Facebook post on Saturday that Vicki White, an assistant director of corrections, disappeared while escorting an inmate being held on capital murder charges. The inmate was also missing.
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