The deal would have allowed two of Ahmaud Arbery's killers to serve in "preferred" federal prisons

Sony is buying Bungie, the developer of Destiny and the original creator of Halo, for $3.6 billion. The acquisition arrives shortly after Microsoft’s announcement that it intends to acquire Activision Blizzard in a deal worth $68.7 billion. Bungie will “continue to independently publish and creatively develop our games,” Bungie CEO Pete Parsons writes in a blog post. “In SIE, we have found a partner who unconditionally supports us in all we are and who wants to accelerate our vision to create generation-spanning entertainment, all while preserving the creative independence that beats in Bungie’s heart,” Parsons writes. “Like us, SIE believes that game worlds are only the beginning of what our IPs can become. Together, we share a dream of creating and fostering iconic franchises that unite friends around the world, families across generations, and fans across multiple platforms and entertainment mediums.​”

The vast majority of the homes are riddled with construction-related problems that have led to mold, termites, rotting wood, flooding and other woes.

Anyone old enough to remember the Cold War is familiar with a scene routinely depicted on U.S. television at the time: the Soviet breadline. Warning Americans about life under communism, these clips showed Russian citizens lingering forlornly outside businesses for hours to obtain basic goods—indelible proof of the inferiority of central planning, and an advertisement for capitalism’s abundance. Breadlines, the Big Book of Capitalism assured us, could not happen in a market economy. Supply would always rise to meet demand, as long as there’s money to be made. Only deviating from free-market fundamentalism—giving everyone health care, for example—could lead to shortages. Otherwise, capitalism has your every desire covered. Yet we have breadlines in America today, or at least just off our coasts. They consist of dozens of ships with billions of dollars of cargo, idling outside the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the docks through which 40 percent of all U.S. seaborne imports flow. “Ships” barely conveys the scale of these giants, which are more like floating Empire State Buildings, stacked high with multicolored containers filled to the brim with toys and clothes and electronics, produced mostly in Asia.

A snap election was called after Prime Minister António Costa's budget failed to pass.

A spokesperson for Austin’s Samsung facility says they’ve fixed a pipe under a floor that sprung a leak and lead to thousands of gallons of diluted acidic wastewater in a local waterway. Spill investigators and scientists took a look at the area Jan. 18-19 and saw iron staining in the tributary channel consistent with a low pH environment, the memo states. WPD says it was in this tributary stretch from the Samsung plant to the main branch of Harris Branch Creek that WPD staff found no surviving aquatic life, including fish.

A lack of transparency into donations has led to friction and mistrust among activists.

The podcaster posted a contrite video, hours after Spotify announced plans to finally crack down on COVID misinformation.

Right-wing culture warriors love “Hitch,” but the late contrarian writer passionately defended free speech and abhorred institutional racism.

Bored Ape Yacht Club is a favorite of Jimmy Kimmel, Steph Curry and countless VCs, but one artist argues that the NFT is hiding neo-Nazi imagery and racist dog whistles

Yes, the pandemic is still going, but your miserable tweets are just making it worse

Jimmy and A.J. Galante’s minor league hockey team, the Danbury Trashers, were known for their on-ice fights. Now, the Galantes have teamed up with a promotional group to form what they call a new combat sport that takes fighting to the ice. This time, hockey won’t be played

“What we’ve found now is that, even though their CT scans are normal, the xenon MRI scans have detected similar abnormalities in patients with long COVID. These patients have never been in hospital and did not have an acute severe illness when they had their COVID-19 infection. Some of them have been experiencing their symptoms for a year after contracting COVID-19,” he added.

Back when the sun was 30% dimmer, Earth should have frozen solid. Yet water flowed and life blossomed. The solution to the paradox shows that we might have that faint sun to owe for life’s existence — with critical consequences for the possibility of life outside Earth.

The chief executive of Spotify responded on Sunday to growing complaints from musicians and listeners over the role of Joe Rogan, the streaming service’s star podcaster, in spreading what has been widely criticized as misinformation about the coronavirus. Last week, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell — two musical icons whose cultural influence is far greater than their streaming numbers — removed their music from Spotify to protest the platform’s support of Rogan. “We know we have a critical role to play in supporting creator expression while balancing it with the safety of our users,” the CEO, Daniel Ek, who is also one of Spotify’s founders, wrote in a public letter. “In that role, it is important to me that we don’t take on the position of being content censor while also making sure that there are rules in place and consequences for those who violate them.”

Spotify stock closed Thursday (Jan. 27) at a 19-month low of $171.32/share. That came after Young said Monday that he was demanding the company drop his music, saying that Spotify “can have Rogan or Young. Not both.” Spotify removed Young’s songs on Jan. 26. In a post Wednesday, Young wrote that “Spotify has recently become a very damaging force via its public misinformation and lies about COVID” and referred to an open letter from doctors and health professionals issued earlier this month calling on Spotify to crack down on coronavirus-related falsehoods on “The Joe Rogan Experience.”

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Newly empowered Republican lawmakers in Virginia who opposed legalizing simple possession of marijuana say they don’t want to scrap the law, but they do want to make significant changes. Those changes could include moving up the start date for retail sales and getting rid of a provision that would give licensing preference to people who have been convicted of marijuana crimes. Republicans have filed at least eight bills that call for amendments to the 2021 law that legalized adult possession of up to an ounce of marijuana and laid the ground work for retail sales to begin in 2024.

A whistleblower who exposed illegal working conditions in a factory making Amazon’s Alexa devices says he was tortured before being jailed by Chinese authorities. Tang Mingfang, 43, was jailed after he revealed how the Foxconn factory in the southern Chinese city of Hengyang used schoolchildren working illegally long hours to manufacture Amazon’s popular Echo, Echo Dot and Kindle devices.

Nina Jane Patel watched and listened in horror through a virtual-reality headset as her avatar - a moving, talking, computer-generated version of herself - was groped aggressively.

More than two dozen sources described simmering frustrations on both sides (preemptive scapegoating) just as Democrats are gearing up for the midterms.