Posts

But the highlight of the week’s festivities has little to do with the pope himself. On Sunday, he will beatify Mother Teresa of Kolkata–the final step before canonization, or official sainthood–and there are few cardinals who would miss basking in the reflected glory of the tiny nun whose popularity, even seven years after her death, far exceeds that of the pope himself. Just last summer a group of cardinals at the Vatican urged the pope to canonize Mother Teresa at the same time that he beatifies her, and simply skip the rest of the formal process....

The big events in history are rarely relegated to just their moment in time. Abolishing slavery in 1863 didn’t just define that moment and the people immediately affected. Its significance lives on today, in me and in all who aspire to live as free Americans. The same can be said for other history-making events. Signing the Declaration of Independence in 1776, dropping the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, landing on the moon in 1969, bogging ourselves down in the Vietnam War for 20 years, LBJ’s disastrous Great Society policies—these were all events that literally changed the course of our nation....

TESTIMONY BY GENERAL WILL TEST CANDIDATES FOR PRESIDENT (Elisabeth Bumiller, New York Times) Three presidential candidates and two very different views of Iraq will be on full display on Tuesday as Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Baghdad, testifies before the Senate in a marathon session of war and White House ambitions… Over all, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama, both Democrats, are likely to criticize the costs of the war and a lack of political progress....

AT HEARINGS, A CHANCE TO EXPLAIN IRAQ VIEWS AND AUDITION AS COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF (Elisabeth Bumiller, New York Times) The war in Iraq collided with White House ambitions in hearing rooms on Capitol Hill on Tuesday as three would-be commanders in chief — Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain — swooped in from the campaign trail to question the top American commander in Baghdad, Gen. David H. Petraeus. Their tempered performances seemed to reflect the political risks of appearing too easy or tough on General Petraeus in the klieg-light atmosphere of a Washington hearing room halfway through a presidential election....

The Tibetan capital of Lhasa has metamorphosed into a brash Chinese city with a few pockets of traditional architecture. The 358-year-old home of the Dalai Lama, the Potala, now overlooks a glitzy five-star hotel, pulsating nightclubs and numerous brothels, most of them run by ethnic Chinese. His former bedroom window faces the future site of Lhasa’s train station, the end of the line for a new railway connecting Tibet and the rest of China....

The game takes a lot of cues from Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us games in the art design and even, to some extent, the color palette. While it’s nothing to write home about, the inspirations seem to be solid, and many fans would agree that it’s fitting for The Day Before to take even more cues from its contemporaries such as The Last of Us, particularly in terms of brutality....

Football: 1980- Birthday of Florent Malouda, France and Chelsea footballer 1986- Birthday of Keisuke Honda, Japanese footballer Cricket: 2003- The first Twenty20 match was played. 1965- Birthday of Maninder Singh (Indian leftarm spinner in 35 Tests 1982-93). Basketball: 1989 - 43rd NBA Championship: Detroit Pistons sweeps LA Lakers in 4 games 1997 – 51st NBA Championship: Chicago Bulls beat Utah Jazz 4, games to 2. Tennis: 1915 - Birthday of J Donald Budge, US tennis player (1st to hold world’s 4 major titles)...

The trailer showcased some iconic Dead Space moments as an ode to its loyal fan base, as well as showing off the updated feel sure to pull new fans into its terrifying world. With how much has been improved - from lighting, to models, and even small gameplay and story elements - this new trailer puts to bed any ideas that it may be a simple graphical upgrade, showing that it really could be a remake worthy of its next-gen status....

First and foremost, experts almost unanimously agree that the “Inflation Reduction Act” does absolutely nothing to reduce inflation. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that the legislation will have a “negligible” impact on inflation in 2022, and by 2023, “inflation would probably be between 0.1 percentage point lower and 0.1 percentage point higher under the bill.” In the same vein, an analysis from the Wharton School of Business warns that the behemoth spending bill would have an impact on inflation that’s “statistically indistinguishable from zero....

RELATED: The Division 2: Every Specialization Explained Among the more prolific pastimes that players can partake in is conquering control points. These enemy camps are scattered throughout the map, just waiting for eager gamers to conquer them. Eliminating enemies and moving allied forces into these locations is no small feat. Each of these is more challenging than the last. As such, players should know what they’re getting into and how to overcome these obstacles....

One criticism that Ubisoft has faced with The Division 2 is that the game is seriously lacking anything that resembles Underground from the first game. Originally added to The Division in patch 1.3, Underground placed a focus on the PvE side of the game by introducing randomized and procedurally-generated dungeons. Players could further customize their experience by enabling certain modifiers which wouldn’t only make things more challenging, but offer better rewards as well....

Specifically, fans have been noting that Gear Scores for loot in World Tier 5 are variable — meaning that loot that drops in this new World Tier can be below a player’s current Gear Score. By contrast, players that had been working toward The Division 2’s best builds, and had reached 450 Gear Score in World Tier 4, would never receive high-end (yellow) items below 450 Gear Score or purple items below 440 Gear Score....

Division’s Easter Event First up, is an increase to rewards from named bosses – i.e. open world enemies with names, Incursion bosses, and Dark Zone bosses. From April 14th (at 10am CEST) to April 16th (at 10am CEST), any of these enemies will drop extra rewards for players. While plenty of Division players will encounter these named bosses in their daily grind of missions and Dark Zone runs, there is a faster way to maximize those rewards by following a path through the open world....

Leitch is a recognizable name in the film industry, most recently because he directed Deadpool 2 after having taking the directing role for Atomic Blonde a year prior. Leitch is no stranger to filming complex action sequences, which should come as no surprise given he has 82 credits related to stunt performing and coordinating. A film based on The Division will undoubtedly be chock full of stunts and action scenes, making Leitch a good fit for the directing role....

That overpowered setup, which was due to a glitch in the way the Hildr and Eir weapon pair worked, has now been corrected. Developer Massive launched the second PTS server the The Division’s Update 1.6 yesterday, along with a healthy set of change to the game’s offerings. Among the changes were the fix to the Hildr and Eir and the addition of The Last Stand PvP game mode, part of the The Division’s third expansion set to launch with Update 1....

After Ubisoft nixed the idea of adding a level skip microtransaction to the game, Ubisoft Community Manager Natchai Stappers has recently taken to Twitter to confirm that The Division will indeed not feature microtransactions or any “pay-to-win” feature. [HTML1] What muddles this statement from Stappers is that just last month, Ubisoft announced DLC plans for The Division, revealing that vanity packs could be bought as DLC. There isn’t really a proper definition for microtransactions in video games - when is DLC not a microtransaction?...

Until recently, Democrats were oblivious to the bug. The presumptive ‘04 front runners–Sens. Joe Lieberman, John Kerry and John Edwards and Rep. Dick Gephardt–voted for a congressional resolution essentially giving President George W. Bush a blank check to go to war when he saw fit. It looked, at the time, like a safe political move. It also looked wise, given the president’s popularity, public support for antiterror measures and the party’s history....

Since episode one, The Dropout has made great use of a central framing device. Most of the big events of the series were accompanied by a recreation of the deposition wherein Holmes accounts her actions as CEO. That segment is absent from episode 6: “Iron Sisters”, but in its place is a clever alternative. Most who can picture Elizabeth Holmes have a particular image in their head, the one that opens The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley....

RELATED: The Elder Scrolls: 5 Things Morrowind Does Better Than Skyrim (& 5 Ways Skyrim Is Better) No gaming series is more of a poster child for the lifetime-extending power of mods than the Elder Scrolls series. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind was the first properly 3D game in the series, and while it was revolutionary for its time, it’s a dated game in 2021. Luckily, the modding community for the game is as strong as ever....

McDonald’s has plenty of company. Wall Street, that perennial font of optimism, is taking off its rose-tinted glasses and finding a view that’s not to its liking. After quarter upon quarter in which business seemed to be minting money, signs of an earnings slump are everywhere. Rubbermaid, Caterpillar, 3M, Texas Instruments – they’re all doing well, but hyped-up investors had figured they’d be doing even better. Their disappointments may herald a turning point in the stock market....