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The latest in Ubisoft’s long-running series drops players in ancient Greece during the Peloponnesian War. While it offers gamers more plot-altering choices than ever before and (finally) gives them the ability to pick between genders, it largely takes an if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it approach to deliver a Greek-history geek’s dream game.
Super Mario Party is a satisfying return to form for a classic franchise. This time, Nintendo’s designers have wisely simplified Mario Party’s board-game elements while bolstering the crowd-pleasing mini-games. This version also takes advantage of the motion sensors in the controllers, letting players shake, flip and stir their way through seriously silly contests.
A standout in an emerging genre that blurs the line between video games and interactive stories, Florence is a novel experience in which gamers solve puzzles to help the main character advance her new relationship. In Florence, unlike other puzzle games, the challenges actually get easier as the game goes on, a moving metaphor for the bond that grows between people over time.
A prequel to 2010’s much loved original, Rockstar Games’ Red Dead Redemption 2 is a sprawling tale about the decline of the lawless West. Players fill the shoes of gang member Arthur Morgan, on the run after robbing an oil magnate’s train. The otherwise enjoyable game was marred by reports of overworked developers.
Subnautica is a sci-fi survival game in which brains, not brawn, are key to staying alive. Players take the form of a futuristic astronaut who crash-lands on a mysterious ocean world. While the deep blue sea is beautiful, it’s also dangerous. As a bonus: developer Unknown Worlds refreshingly kept guns out of the game to make it feel like an escape from real-world violence.
From the makers of the award-winning FTL: Faster Than Light comes this turn-based strategy game set in a nightmarish future world overrun by monsters. As in chess, successful players must think ahead and make sacrifices for the greater good.
Insomniac Games has made the best-yet video game featuring Spider-Man—in fact, players will so enjoy the simple act of swinging around a hyperrealistic New York City that they might forget about fighting classic Spidey foes like Wilson Fisk and Electro.
Previous God of War games focused on Spartan turned deity Kratos’ brutal acts of revenge against the gods who killed his family. This more mature story shows the aging demigod as a stoic father and grieving widower. God of War impresses with its game play, but players may need a tissue or two when the father-son dynamics get more real than mythic.
Write to Alex Fitzpatrick at alex.fitzpatrick@time.com, Eliana Dockterman at eliana.dockterman@time.com and Patrick Lucas Austin at patrick.austin@time.com.
She has a law degree and a graduate diploma in business administration, but her passion lies in geomancy.
Miss Judy Foo (left), 45, who has her own consultancy, Jing Geomancy, told The New Paper that she had been certain that she would become a lawyer when she was still in secondary school.
But personal experiences took her on a different route.
"I'm a person who knows what I want, but there are a lot of twists and turns in life," she said.
Her interest in geomancy was sparked when she was 19, but she started her company only five years ago.
While Miss Foo declined to elaborate on what sparked her interest, she said that her "experience" following her father's death spurred her on to attend geomancy lessons.
"Nobody could explain it in an intellectual way so I started to delve into all these supernatural things," she said.
Learning from fengshui masters in China, Taiwan and in Singapore helped her to find the answers she had been looking for, said Miss Foo, who is also a real estate agent.
With relatively little experience compared with other fengshui masters, and a business that is spread mainly through word of mouth, Miss Foo said her consultancy firm is "a little unstable".
She rakes in more money - a four-figure sum a month, she reveals - as a real estate agent.
But it is geomancy that she sees herself doing as she grows older because it is meaningful work, she said.
"I like to see the faces of my clients change from very worried to very relieved and happy," she said.
BlackBerry handheld e-mail devices used in the military services can get a government-specific Secure Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions upgrade of their software under a National Security Agency contract with the device maker, Research In Motion Ltd.
Mike Lazaridis, president and co-chief executive officer of the Waterloo, Ontario, company, said a Defense Department user of the BlackBerry 957, 5810 or 6710 would pay an undisclosed licensing fee for the S/MIME public-key cryptography upgrade from NSA. He declined to give the value of his company's development contract.
The software upgrade will encrypt and decrypt messages and attachments in a user's desktop e-mail and synchronized BlackBerry, under a second password for that user's existing DOD digital certificate.
Thousands of steelworkers and their families have received some disheartening news on the cusp of the holiday season. Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel, one of the nation's largest steel producers, said Monday it will temporarily idle operations at its plant in Granite City, Illinois, indefinitely laying off about 2,000 workers.
The company sent notices to workers last month warning them it may soon be forced to temporarily idle operations. According to U.S. Steel, the Granite City mill is the “primary flat-roll supplier of the oil and gas industry” -- a sector that has sputtered amid sagging oil prices.
In addition to changes in energy markets, domestic steel producers have struggled to compete with an influx of cheaper foreign-produced steel, much of it from China. That country’s recent slowdown threatens to exacerbate problems for American steelmakers, as Chinese policymakers look to boost exports and more steel hits the global market.
Earlier this year, U.S. Steel permanently shuttered a longtime plant outside of Birmingham, Alabama, laying off 1,100 workers. That closure came on the heels of a string of layoffs in Texas, Arkansas, and Indiana, among other states.
Meanwhile, nearly 20,000 U.S. Steel workers are continuing to work without a contract. After its labor agreement with the United Steelworkers union expired in September, the corporation has continued to demand concessions.
Earlier this year, tough contract talks at another domestic steel company -- Pittsburgh-based Allegheny Technologies -- resulted in a lockout that recently passed the 90-day mark. That dispute has forced more than 2,000 workers off the job.
U.S. Steel did not give any indication about when it may restart operations in Granite City. Jones, for his part, says he hopes the plant will be back up again in the spring. In December 2008, the company temporarily idled operations for six months.
Before the temporary closure announcement on Monday, U.S. Steel's share price hit a new 52-week low of $7.94.
It’d be one thing, a simpler thing, if Rebecca Zlotowski‘s Planetarium was a middle-of-the-road effort that’s over and done with in less than two hours. Alas, it stars at a place of such promise, such intrigue, even such wonder, and, after some point, steadily progresses from unique investigation of faith and duty to middlebrow European co-production — a rather enervating thing, then, that left me thinking “no more movies like this, ever” while a sizable portion of its runtime was still left. There isn’t a precise image of the type of movie to which I’m referring, but I can at least say it goes something like this: an English-speaking (often American) star in a well-dressed, amply lit European nation, surrounded by foreign actors who rarely (if ever) speak their native tongue. I’d come right out and say it’s best embodied by, say, Suite Française, but the Weinstein Company has yet to release that in the United States, and I can’t imagine many of you would see it if the day ever came.
Things begin aboard a train rolling through a star-lit countryside, a brisk and mysterious introduction where just about anything feels like an open possibility. (I’d say it’s best to enter this knowing nothing, but that impression only held for the film’s first half.) A pair of sisters, Laura (Natalie Portman) and Kate Barlow (Lily-Rose Depp), tour pre-war Europe with shows that display their supposed ability to communicate with the dead, “skills” that we witness in minimal-but-extravagant shows whose sequences find a common ground between Josef von Sternberg and Arnaud Desplechin. These are the center of Planetarium’s initial stretch, and so their ability to command attention – it helps that Zlotowski and cinematographer George Lechaptois stage the sequences in a rather expedient way that, by showing rather than dwelling, neither questions nor affirms the the Barlows’ legitimacy — helps proceedings glide along rather smoothly.
Those comparisons are not made lightly, and that I ultimately like Planetarium most when it reminds me of other filmmakers is not to discredit Zlotowski’s discernible vision. What delights most is something less discernible than influence: a conviction to “stop” for a bit of exhibitionism — the only point where Portman and Depp’s chemistry, as well as the sense of playing true, lived-in parts, shines — without sacrificing visible progression in character and narrative. The variety and frequency of images (effects such as dissolves, match cuts, and irises make an appearance) in early sequences do more than inform; they move and feel their way through the narrative and a player’s place within it. This much is said in spite of how much the younger star is sidelined in favor of her older compatriot, and that, when enough time and incident has passed, it’s easy to forget she’s even a part of this endeavor until the movie decides it’s time to integrate her – a return that’s appreciated, if not welcome for how deadening those narrative turns feel.
More concrete plots begin forming once the duo comes into contact with a French film director, Emmanuel Salinger (André Korben), whose first big scene — in which the man’s left stunned by a séance that climaxes as he nearly suffers a seizure — is Planetarium’s first true affirming of their powers. Thus they’re recruited to “play” psychics in Salinger’s film. Zlotowski is wise enough never to expressly underline parallels between mediums and the medium, their reliance on capturing the ineffable and communicating them to the outside world exactly the sort of thing many storytellers would latch onto. What conclusions might be drawn are instead drawn from the ghostly, even otherworldly effect of seeing Portman and Depp transition from vivid 21st-century cinematography to convincingly illustrated approximations of 1930s film stock, an effect itself underlined in the characters’ discomfort with film’s various production processes.
This is the last remaining bit of convincing, worthwhile drama in Planetarium‘s repertoire, after which points it’s revealed that Zlotowski isn’t wise enough to let her sense of mystery hold. What all this leads to is a romantic drama of many players and little reason to care, moving as it does from one sequence of interaction (be that intrigue or rejection) to another with nothing more than Portman to coast on. (Hello, Louis Garrel. I don’t want to write an entire review without mentioning you, but, aside from a connection to the first paragraph, I have nothing else to say about your being here.) One could do much worse than that, but the actress’ input isn’t enough to downplay Planetarium’s second major failing: a decrease in formal interests on seemingly anyone’s part as the movie drifts into standard shot-reverse patterns and a rather basic progression of plot in scene-to-scene and moment-to-moment terms.
Little is left after a while until, finally, Planetarium doesn’t conclude so much as come to an end, and the lasting impression is one of bitterness — a bitterness at once sweetened and worsened by memories of the genuinely great work it had promised and, at turns, even embodied. Yes, those pleasures are palpable and do have a way of lingering in the memory. Otherwise? Lord, that’s just not good enough.
Planetarium premiered at the 2016 Venice Film Festival and opens on August 11.
Governor Ralph Northam announced the winners of the 2019 Governor’s Challenge in Economics and Personal Finance. More than 3,000 high school students from across the Commonwealth participated in an online competition, and 160 students were invited to the day-long championship event held April 11th at Capital One in Richmond.
The Governor’s Challenge is conducted in partnership with the Virginia Council on Economic Education (VCEE), a nonprofit organization focused on enhancing the quality of K–12 economic and financial education in Virginia.
Capital One provided financial support for and hosts the Governor’s Challenge championship event. The Virginia Lottery sponsored the Teachers’ Luncheon at the event.
To learn more about the Governor’s Challenge and other efforts to promote support economic and financial education for Virginia’s students, visit www.vcee.org.
Any time you get a bunch of Democrats together in the same room, it is recommended that you grab hold of your wallet tightly and lock up the family silver. You also might want to hide your wife and daughters – just to be safe.
The five Democratic presidential candidates pushed proposals in their first debate that would cost trillions in new spending, from free college tuition to single-payer health care.
Sen. Bernard Sanders of Vermont is the biggest spender of the group, championing universal government-run health care, expanded Social Security and free tuition at public colleges in a platform that The Wall Street Journal estimated last month would cost $18 trillion over 10 years.
The “College for All Act” advocated by Mr. Sanders would cost $109.9 billion in its first year, according to the National Taxpayers Union.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is proposing a plan to make college more affordable that will cost taxpayers roughly $350 billion over 10 years, NTU said. Her campaign said it would be fully paid for by limiting tax breaks for certain high-income taxpayers.
The Republican National Committee said Mrs. Clinton proposed $515 billion in new domestic spending over 10 years in the debate Tuesday night, on initiatives ranging from energy to education.
His criticism drew a rebuke from the Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Christina Freundlich, who said Mr. Rubio and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush are interested in “dishing out breaks for the wealthiest and powerful corporations” while Democratic candidates are pushing initiatives to help the middle class.
All five Democratic presidential candidates support some form of paid family leave, which is typically funded by employee contributions. The estimated cost for Mr. Sanders‘ proposed paid family and medical leave fund is $319 billion over 10 years.
There are related costs to businesses for paid leave; some companies say that providing paid family leave cuts into their profits, or results in price increases or curtails hiring.
The NTU has calculated that Mr. Sanders‘ agenda totals $1 trillion in annual spending increases, and that in the past six years he has supported spending at levels 17 times higher than that of the average Senate Democrat.
It is depressing to contemplate any of these Democratic candidates as president. They continue to insist on running toward the gasoline dump with a lit match. But something's got to give, and soon. The mountain of debt in the industrialized world coupled with the refugee crisis in Europe threatens everything our parents, and their parents, and all the parents before them have built.
Surveys show that the American people believe that the size of government is one of the top issues facing the country. Yet Democrats insist on radically increasing its size and scope. You would think they would pay at the ballot box for their profligacy, but the allure of government goodies is too much to overcome.
Perform systems integration analysis to identify and recommend IT solutions that address critical mission needs within the context of a large-scale integrated enterprise. Leverage knowledge of enterprise IT and systems engineering to oversee selected IT initiatives, including identifying and resolving interoperability or compatibility issues. Facilitate discussions with technical and non-technical audiences while acting as an intermediary and translator to identify functional and technical requirements effectively. Instruct, direct, and check the work of requirements analysis personnel. Act as a team leader for projects with moderate budgets or of a short to intermediate duration. This position is located in Bethesda, MD.
The balance of power in the Middle East is in disarray: A three-year civil war has torn apart Syria and opened up a vacuum for the rise of the Islamic State group; Sunni powers led by Saudi Arabia continue to face off against Shi'ite powers led by Iran; other countries are reeling from uprisings in the Arab Spring; and foreign powers are all taking sides.
Faced with this tense paradigm, every country in the region is building up its own military.
Indeed, four of the five fastest-growing defense markets in 2013 were in the Middle East, led by Oman — up 115% in a year — and Saudi Arabia — up 300% in a decade — according to IHS Jane's.
We have analyzed each country to rank the most powerful militaries in the Middle East. This ranking does not count foreign powers like the US or their support, though we have noted important alliances. After looking over state militaries, we also profiled (but did not rank) some of the increasingly powerful non-state military groups.
The ranking is based on a holistic assessment of the militaries' operational capabilities and hardware, based on our research and on interviews with Patrick Megahan, an expert from the Foundation of Defense of Democracies' Military Edge project, and Chris Harmer, senior naval analyst at the Institute for the Study of War.
Some countries with large yet incapable militaries rank low on the list; some smaller and technologically advanced militaries from stable states rank fairly high.
Others present analytical challenges that are difficult to get around in a ranking format. For instance, Egypt has an enormous military with little in the way of a recent battlefield record. Syria's military is diminished by three years of war, but it has been able to fulfill the Assad regime's narrow battlefield objectives and field an operational air force.
No ranking will be absolutely exact. But here's our idea of where things stand in one of the world's least-predictable regions.
Yemen's military has struggled in the face of an onslaught from the Houthi rebel movement, which captured the Ministry of Defense's headquarters in the capital city of Sa'ana during a September 2014 offensive. Yemen has all sorts of other problems on its hands as well, like the presence of a major Al Qaeda franchise and one of the highest rates of gun ownership on earth.
Like a few other countries in this ranking, Yemen is ruled by a government that doesn't really control its own territory, a fact that negates much of the advantage the country might derive from its fairly large conventional military. It's a collapsed state with an outdated arsenal.
The remains of Yemen's hobbled government have also joined up with the Houthi rebels to fight Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. This is actually another sign of the state's weakness. It took a motivated and organized non-state sectarian militant group to confront Yemen's Al Qaeda franchise, something the uniform military hasn't been able or willing to do.
Key allies: Yemen has had a longstanding, if sometimes uneasy, security partnership with the US and allows the US to use armed drones to go after Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula on its territory.
The Lebanese Armed Forces is an all-volunteer force, having ended compulsory military service as of February 2007. Historically, the Lebanese military was kept small due to internal disagreements among the various religious groups within the country. During Lebanon's 15-year civil war, a national military effectively ceased functioning as the country was divided between Israeli, Syrian, UN, and militia zones of control.
Since the Lebanese civil war, the Lebanese military has focused mainly on anti-terrorist and peacekeeping activities within the country. The military has been unable and unwilling to disarm the militant group Hezbollah, which is an even more capable fighting force than the Lebanese army.
In March the International Support Group for Lebanon pledged $17.8 million to help the country modernize its military, while Saudi Arabia gave a $3 billion grant.
Currently, Lebanon's Special Forces is unevenly equipped, and the country lacks any fixed-wing aircraft.
It is an incoherent force in a divided country, without much heavy equipment and with only notional control. "They're really far behind," Megahan, a research associate for military affairs at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and an analyst for its Military Edge project, told Business Insider.
Key allies: Saudi Arabia and the US, which also provides military aid.
The current iteration of the Iraqi military, created after the US invasion of the country in 2003, faces serious problems. Currently locked in battle with the Islamic State militant group (also called ISIS or ISIL) and its partner organizations, the military has suffered a string of embarrassing retreats and losses since June, leading the government effectively to cede large chunks of the country to jihadists. When the Iraqi military has actually fought ISIS, it has had moments of alarming incompetence.
The Iraqi military's arsenal is comprised of mostly US-produced and supplied weaponry, including Humvees, artillery, M1A1 tanks, and Russia- and US-supplied helicopters and jets. The US has also announced it will sell an additional 5,000 Hellfire missiles to the Iraqi government.
But that almost doesn't matter. The Iraqi military has little operational capacity in much of the country. Equipment and training aside, the army disintegrated when it was faced with a real battlefield challenge.
And on top of that, the Iraqi military has taken on a Shi'ite sectarian dimension following the rise of ISIS, a Sunni group, and increased attempts at centralization by Shi'ite politicians in Baghdad. The Iraqi military just isn't representative of the whole of a country that it is already unable to defend.
Key allies: Oddly enough, the Iraqi military receives arms, training, and other forms of support from both Iran and the United States.
The Bahrain Defense Force is supplied mostly with American military equipment, including Blackhawk helicopters and F-16 fighter jets. Bahrain offers a strategic naval base in Juffair providing the US with a headquarters for the Naval Forces Central Command and the Fifth Fleet, as well as support for approximately 6,000 military personnel.
In 2002, the US designated Bahrain as a major non-NATO ally. Bahrain has also carried out airstrikes against ISIS.
Even so, the monarchy needed a military force consisting of soldiers from Saudi Arabia and the UAE to crush an almost entirely peaceful 2011 uprising that threatened the ruling family's grip on power. Hardware aside, it says a lot that the country's autocrats had to rely on outside help to maintain order over a country that's only a little over one-third the size of Delaware.
"Bahrain was tested and they could not handle it," Harmer says.
Key allies: The US, along with other Persian Gulf monarchies, particularly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Qatar made the single-biggest purchase of US arms in 2014 by acquiring $11 billion worth of Patriot missile batteries and Apache helicopters. But that shows that its pint-size military realizes how far it has to go to hang with other armies in the region, many of which are also rapidly modernizing. "Qatar is trying to do catch-up now," Megahan told Business Insider.
The Qatar Armed Forces is the smallest recognized military included in this ranking. In 1991, Qatar participated in coalition efforts against Saddam Hussein by providing support during the Battle of Khafji along with strategic basing areas for American forces.
The US military has relied heavily on the al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar for its various operations in the the Middle East and beyond. The base hosts the American air combat command center in the region.
Key allies: The US, though the country's support of Islamist movements around the Middle East has made it a de facto ally of Turkey's as well.
Kuwait has Patriot missiles and some fairly sophisticated aerial capabilities, including F/A-18 Hornet fighter jets. The US provides forms of support and training for Kuwaiti ground troops as well. Kuwait has a solidly equipped military, but it is far away from being a regional player.
Slightly smaller than New Jersey, Kuwait shares borders with Iraq and Saudi Arabia and was occupied by Iraq in the months before the Gulf War in 1990. The Iraqi occupation ended after a US-led multinational military intervention.
The US Air Force and Marine Corps share the Ali al-Salem Air Base with their Kuwaiti counterparts, a strategic installation located approximately 23 miles from the Iraqi border. This base, along with the al-Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates and the al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, has provided US forces support for ongoing air strikes against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
Key allies: The US, along with other Gulf monarchies like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
The nation of Oman has long-standing military and political relationships with the US and the United Kingdom.
According to the World Bank, Oman is categorized as having a high-income economy and is considered one of the most peaceful countries in the world. Even with a respectably-size military with scores of aircraft and tanks, the kingdom hasn't really been in a war since the Dhofar Rebellion, which ended in the mid-1970s.
That doesn't mean it's weak, though. The military has newer-model F-16s and has expressed interest in purchasing the Eurofighter jet. "They've been spending money kind of quietly," Megahan says.
Key allies: The US and the other Gulf monarchies, although the country has made notable overtures to Iran in recent months.
The Jordanian Armed Forces is a fully professional military that maintains a defensive posture within the country. The Armed Forces have not been directly involved in a war since the Black September civil war against Palestinian militants between 1970 and 1971. However, Jordan contributes the largest number of civilian police and the fifth-highest number of military personnel to UN peacekeeping operations.
Jordan has been classified as a major non-NATO ally of the US' since 1996, making the country eligible to receive extra US defense items, loans, and training. The US has provided the Jordanian military with almost $82 million worth of excess US military equipment since 2009, and the US has also sold F-16s and Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles to the Kingdom.
Jordan is thought to have a strong special forces component but an outdated tank corps and air force. "They have older British tanks and modernized versions of of older American tanks," Megahan says. "I don't think they have them in large numbers, and they haven't invested a lot in their air force."
Harmer notes that Jordan's military has done an impressive job with an unexpected operational challenge: dealing with the potential security challenges posed by the over 1.4 million Syrian refugees in the country. "The Jordanian military does a very good job of making sure those refugees are physically contained and can't destabilize the rest of Jordanian society," Harmer says.

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