List of All Articles with Tag 'and'

Los Angeles Dodgers president Andrew Friedman let it be known that he wants to bring back Clayton Kershaw, but said the decision is up to the pitcher.

The alleged crime came to light when the complainant, now aged 21, confided in her English teacher.

It’s already been a season of surprises, which is nothing new when it comes to the NFL. Here are three more games that may not go as expected.

The new King Kong video game, Skull Island: Rise of Kong, has released to an awful reception, with some naming it as the 'worst game of the year'. A new beat-em-up starring colossal kaiju favorite King Kong, flying in under-the-radar? You might be thinking 'sign me up' for a bit of that. If you're thinking that, you might want to hold back. Skull Island: Rise of Kong was only announced in July, and is available on PlayStation 5, Playstation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC, and come to think of it, there wasn't a great deal of promo heralding its release at all. That all makes sense now. The game is flat-out terrible, and the only noise being made about it is being generated by gamers who are ripping the new release apart with footage of the game and its cutscenes being shared far and wide. A quick snapshot of user reviews shows Skull Island: Rise of Kong being named as janky, terrible, static, awful, buggy and a 'complete scam' - the professional reviews (and we'll get to those) aren't much better at all. And users really think it could beat Lord of The Rings: Gollum to the title of 'worst of the year.' In particular, one cutscene involving a JPEG flashback/jumpscare is generating a lot of attention. All of it mocking the presentation of the game: It's not just gamers who are taking shots either, the gaming press is savaging the new release. Kotaku said the 'New King Kong Game Is Very, Very Bad' and called it a 'bland beat-’em-up with bad cutscenes, nasty visuals, and not much else' while Eurogamer called it a 'swing and a miss.' Fans of the great ape had been waiting a long, long time for a video game featuring Kong. The official video game of Peter Jackson's King Kong film titled - wait for it - Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie came out in 2005 over a mix of consoles. You could've played it on Playstation 2, it has been that long. It's sad to say, but you'd be better off finding a way to play the older game. It's far, far better - and we can vouch for that. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Adobe have unveiled a mind-blowing 'quick change' dress at their recent Adobe Max conference, and no one can quite believe how the future of fashion could look. Christine Dierk, a researcher, unveiled the seemingly ordinary dress, before showing how it can transform colour and pattern within a split second, with limitless options. "We’re excited for a future where there’s more ways to express yourself", she told the audience, as she demonstrated the product known as 'Project Primrose'. The company is reportedly hoping to replicate the technology onto other items. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter

The government and the opposition agree to hold elections in the presence of international observers.

Rev Jenny Gaffin describes her "wonderful experience" of the Homes For Ukraine scheme.

Despite no evidence backing up their claims, Flat Earthers are adamant that they are correct when it comes to the shape of our Earth. Even when their own evidence disproves them, it seems. Back in 2020, a couple from Venice tried to prove the world was flat by setting sail to the edge of the world, which they believed was somewhere near Sicily, after a planned Flat Earthed cruise to Antartica was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The couple violated the lockdown restrictions in place at the time of their travels, selling their car in order to buy a boat. Using a compass, a device that works because the Earth is round, the pair set off in their boat to reach Lampedusa. However, it was not long until they found themselves lost, tired, and on the island of Ustica instead. Salvatore Zichichi of the Maritime Health Office of the Ministry of Health told Italian newspaper La Stampa: "For them, Lampedusa [an island of the Italian Pelagie Islands in the Mediterranean Sea] was the end of the Earth." "The funny thing is that they orient themselves with the compass, an instrument that works on the bass of terrestrial magnetism. A principle that they, as Flat Earthers, should reject." They were placed in quarantine by health officials due to the ongoing pandemic at the time, but the couple escaped and sailed away in pursuit of the edge of Earth. Three hours later, they were caught. The pair tried to escape one more time but failed, and abandoned their plan, taking a ferry back to mainland Italy once their time in quarantine was fulfilled. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Bissau is plunged into darkness because a Turkish company cut supplies over a $15m bill.

Graham Nash aims to bring his music to "new generations" with his deal.

Pokémon’s TV series has been delighting animé lovers for more than 26 years, and yet, there’s one episode that even the most diehard of fans may well have missed. The installment, titled Dennō Senshi Porygon (which roughly translates as "Computer Warrior Porygon”) aired in Japan on December 16, 1997. And, after that single, fateful outing, it was never to grace television screens again. The reason for the ban? Reports of a strange health outbreak among children which was linked to a specific scene. The episode follows Ash Ketchum, Pikachu and their pals as they investigate a faulty Poké Ball transfer machine by getting inside it. Once there, the team come under attack, but are saved when Pikachu unleashes one of his high-octane electric outbursts – represented by a barrage of red and blue strobe lights. And that’s where the trouble began. According to scientific paranormal investigator Benjamin Radford and sociologist Robert Bartholomew, who dedicated a study to the event: "At 6:51 PM, the flashing lights of Pikachu's 'attack' appeared on television screens. “By 7:30 PM, according to Japan's Fire-Defense Agency, 618 children had been taken to hospitals complaining of various symptoms." These symptoms included convulsions, nausea and vomiting, with news of the “illness” spreading rapidly throughout the country. Inevitably, it made headlines, with several news broadcasters replaying the offending clip, “whereupon even more children fell ill and sought medical attention,” Radford and Bartholomew wrote. The following day, TV Tokyo issued an apology, suspended the show, and announced an investigation into the cause of the seizures. Meanwhile, video retailers pulled the series from their shelves, and even the then-prime minister Ryuaro Hashimoto expressed concern at the use of rays and lasers in the popular cartoon. Within two days, the number of children reported to have been affected by the flashing sequence increased to around 12,700. And yet, after four months of investigation – with input from health experts and Japanese government officials – no obvious cause could be found for the outbreak and Pokémon returned to the airwaves. Because, although the bright flashes were assumed to be the cause of the health panic, such visual techniques had been used in numerous other animé episodes before, with no reports of any problems. So what was going on here? Well, a tiny fraction of the children who reported being affected were diagnosed with photosensitive epilepsy, with experts concluding that the rapid colour changes during the scene caused them to suffer seizures. However, the bulk of “patients” reported symptoms that had no identifiable “organic” cause and were, instead, consistent with a very different type of condition… Mass hysteria. Radford and Bartholomew attribute this “epidemic hysteria”, in large part, to the mass media, which they say fuelled panic and misinformation. "Many of the children's symptoms had no identifiable organic basis; other than the verified cases of seizures, the symptoms reported were minor and short-lived; the victims were nearly exclusively school children in early adolescence; and anxiety from dramatic media reports of the first wave of illness reports was evident,” they wrote. “Media reports and publicity fuel the hysteria as news of the affliction spreads, planting the idea or concern in the community while reinforcing and validating the veracity of the illness for the initial victims,” they continued. “According to news accounts of the time, the number of children said to be affected remained around 700 the evening of the Pokémon episode and the next day. “The next morning, the episode dominated the Japanese news. Japanese children who had not heard about their peers from the news or from their parents learned of it that morning when the seizures ‘were the talk of the schoolyards’,” they continued. “Once the children had a chance to hear panicky accounts of what had happened through the mass media, their friends and their schools, the number of children reported the next day to have been initially affected – 2 days earlier – increased by 12,000.” Radford and Bartholomew ended their paper by noting that this Pokémon drama offers a warning to us all. They pointed out that our continuing reliance on mass communications, especially TV and the internet, places us at risk of more and more hysteria outbreaks. “Technological innovations are occurring at unprecedented rates and have the potential to influence significant numbers of people beyond the typical number in traditional mass hysteria episodes,” they stressed. “Epidemic hysterias that in earlier periods were self-limited by geography now have free and wide access to the globe in seconds.” Concluding on an ominous note, they added: “The Pokémon illness symptoms are without precedence, given the large numbers affected, and may be a harbinger of future technological hysterias that have the capacity to affect unprecedented numbers of people at a phenomenal speed.” Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Provides an overview of Kiribati, including key dates and facts about this Pacific island country.