Lt. Gen. Michael E. Langley will become the first Black four-star general in the Marines’ 246-year history, after the Senate confirmed his promotion this week, the Marine Corps said Tuesday.
Langley will formally attain his new rank at a ceremony in DC this weekend, the Marines said. He will then become the new head of US Africa Command at its headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany. There, he will oversee about 6,000 troops. President Biden nominated him in June.
In his confirmation hearing last month, Langley thanked his father — who had served in the Air Force for 25 years — as well as his stepmother and two sisters. “As many nominees have said in testimony before me, military families form the bedrock upon which our Joint Force readiness stands,” he said. “Without their support, I would not be here today.”
Marines set for their first Black four-star general
The Marine Corps has had a handful of Black three-star generals, including Langley, who was promoted to that rank last year. Other African Americans have also earned four-star ranks in other branches, including Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, a retired Army general.
A native of Shreveport, La., Langley has served for 37 years, with tours of duty in Japan, Afghanistan and Somalia. He was commissioned as a Marine artillery officer in 1985 and has commanded at every level — from platoons, which can have a few dozen members, to regiments, which can have several thousand troops. His intellectual and physical prowess of him, combined with his mediation skills of him, has impressed his superiors over the years.
Retired Gen. Robert Neller, the former Marine commandant from 2015 to 2019, summed up Langley’s reputation in the Marines in an interview with The Washington Post before his confirmation: “He gets stuff done, and people tend to like working for him.”
At his new duty station, Langley will come up against conventional and unconventional military challenges.
In Africa, the US military is in a supporting role, helping African countries build up their forces and monitor Russian and Chinese activities. Direct combat is uncommon. But resurgent terrorist groups such as al-Shabab are national security threats to the United States, while American troops have also suffered deadly attacks in recent years in Niger and Kenya.
Russia’s moves in Africa problematic for US interests, general agrees
Langley will also be tasked with helping African partners combat climate change, population growth and political instability.
Langley acknowledged the hybrid nature of his mission in his confirmation hearing, telling senators that “military power alone” would not be enough. “They require an integration of diplomatic efforts from the Department of State, development endeavors from USAID, and comprehensive strategies from other allies and partners operating in Africa,” he said.
the sonic the hedgehog video games are more or less about one thing: blasting through a level with as much speed as possible. So as lovely as this Sonic-themed keyboard from Higround is, it seems almost antithetical to the spirit of the games, at least if you don’t have all your key positions perfectly memorized.
The keyboard is part of a new ‘capsule collection’ (yes, we’re just as upset about writing those words as you are about reading them) from Higround, who partnered with Sega to help pay tribute to the company’s most recognizable characters and one of its most beloved consoles.
The collection includes t-shirts, pants, bags, keycap sets, and even mouse pads, but the highlight definitely has to be the three heavily-themed keyboards. The most flamboyant of the bunch features elaborately decorated keys (with TTC Speed Silver switches underneath) recreating the iconic Green Hill Zone from the first sonic the hedgehogwhile a slightly more subtle alternative mirrors the key art for sonic adventure 2.
The last keyboard of the bunch pays homage to the Dreamcast, with the console’s logo on the space bar and the arrow keys matching the colors and labels from its controller’s action buttons. Each keyboard appears to be completely free from labels to prioritize the artwork on the keycaps, but in reality, the alphanumeric labels have been moved onto the side of each key for aesthetic reasons, prioritizing form over function. At least there’s some form of safety net.
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Higround’s Sega collection officially becomes available starting at noon, PST, on August 5, through the company’s website. Wthread pricing hasn’t been revealed for any of the items yet, other keyboard releases from the company have ranged in price from $135 to $145.
Kinzinger told CNN’s Brianna Keilar on “New Day” that the subpoena likely signals that the Justice Department’s investigation has a “very deep interest” in what Trump did.
“I hope Pat Cipollone actually just tells the truth. I have no doubt that he hasn’t. But there is no reason to protect particularly criminal behavior, what could potentially be criminal behavior behind executive privilege,” the Illinois Republican said. “So we’ll see where this goes. But there is no doubt that this investigation has developed further along than where we even knew it was or thought it was a few months ago.”
CNN reported Tuesday that the former White House counsel had been subpoenaed by a federal grand jury investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election, according to a source familiar with the matter. The revelation marks a significant escalation in the department’s probe into the plots to subvert the 2020 election.
Cipollone and his attorneys are in discussions about an appearance before the grand jury, including how to deal with executive privilege issues, the source said.
“I think in terms of their negotiations, obviously the Justice Department knows better what they can go around when it comes to saying executive privilege. And so I hope they, you know, go at that judiciously,” Kinzinger said.
Cipollone testified last month in a closed-door interview with the January 6 committee, and in its seventh public hearing, the panel played clips where he agreed with other Trump officials that there was insufficient evidence of election fraud and said that he believed Trump should have grant the election.
Kinzinger declined to get into details Wednesday of whether the January 6 committee and the Justice Department are cooperating related to Cipollone’s testimony to the panel.
Flights leaving one Australian airport have had the largest delays in the entire country, with almost 70 per cent of planes delayed.
Figures, released by the Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics report, found less than 30 per cent of flights headed from Broome to Perth left on time, the worst route in the entire country.
The report looked at delays and cancellations across all major Australian airport in the month of June.
Airlines included in the report were Virgin Australia, Qantas, Jetstar, QantasLink and Rex Airlines.
The figures for on time arrivals in June reached all time lows for all 58 travel routes looked at.
Qantas recorded the highest percentage of cancellations at 8.1 per cent during the month, followed by QantasLink, Virgin Australia, Jetstar, Virgin Australia Regional Airlines and Rex Airlines.
Australia’s signature airline company Qantas recorded just over half of their airlines arrived on time in June, at 59 per cent, while Virgin achieved the highest level of on time departures among the major domestic airlines at 60 per cent.
A Qantas spokesperson told NCA NewsWire these flight delays and cancellations are not the kind of performance that they were delivering pre-Covid.
“A rise in COVID and other illnesses among airline crew as well as the tight labor market led to flight disruptions for all domestic airlines in June.” they said.
“We had rostered additional crew on standby which helped lessen the impact of COVID-related crew absences and meant 85 per cent of our domestic flights for the month departed within an hour of schedule.”
“Flight cancellations in July were lower than they were in June, call center wait times are now better than they were pre-COVID and our mishandled bag rates are close to what they were before the pandemic.”
Mildura Airport, which is located in northwest Victoria, recorded the lowest percentage of on time arrivals sitting at more than 47 per cent, while Alice Springs Airport recorded the highest rate of on time arrivals at 87 per cent.
Cancellations were highest on the Sydney-Melbourne route at 15.3 per cent, followed by the Melbourne-Sydney route at 14.9 per cent, and the Sydney-Canberra route at 11.1 per cent.
The report follows after more than 21 flights were canceled in Sydney across the Qantas, Virgin Australia, Jetstar and Rex networks on Tuesday.
Virgin dumped 10 flights, Qantas nixed eight, with two pulled from Jetstar and one from Rex, combined with an additional 20 flights scrapped at Melbourne Airport as of 8.30am on Tuesday.
Both domestic and international flights with major aussie airlines alongside Emirates, British Airways and American Airlines were also dumped on Monday between 6.30am-7am.
Rigorous chemical treatments of pure bleached pulp are the most common approaches used to obtain cellulose nanofibrils. These processes incur significant expenses and are detrimental to the environment.
Study: Lignocellulosic nanomaterials production from wheat straw via peracetic acid pretreatment and their application in plastic composites. Image Credit: OskarsK/Shutterstock.com
A paper published in the journal Carbohydrate Polymers reports the synthesis of lignocellulosic nanofibrils (LCNF) using wheat straw (WS) feedstock. The LCNF shows great promise in bioplastic applications.
Cellulose Nanofibrils – A Green Alternative to Plastics
Products manufactured from green and renewable sources are in high demand. Cellulose, a plenteous natural resource, is renewable, non-toxic, and biodegradable.
Plastic detritus has accumulated because of the regular dumping of non-biodegradable plastics, causing severe contamination of terrestrial as well as marine environments. Cellulose nanofibrils (CNFs) are a more environmentally friendly alternative to plastics in a variety of applications.
The poor manufacturing volume and significant production costs of cellulose nanofibrils prevent them from reaching their true potential in different industries. Therefore, inexpensive and efficient production techniques must be developed to encourage the use of cellulose nanofibrils as viable alternatives to plastics.
How Are Cellulose Nanofibrils Synthesized?
Cellulose nanofibrils are typically made using bleached kraft fibers, a quality raw material providing nearly pure cellulose. The kraft fibers are mechanically fibrillated to extract the cellulose nanofibrils.
Mechanical fibrillation processes require a considerable amount of energy. To advance the fibrillating phase and minimize energy needs, pre-treatment procedures may be used.
An extensively used pre-treatment process for synthesizing cellulose nanofibrils is TEMPO (2,2,6,6 Tetramethylpiperidin-1-oxyl) oxidation. This technique stimulates cellulose fiber oxidation, which increases the charge density on their surface. This ultimately leads to electrostatic repulsion among the cellulose nanofibrils and yields significant fibrillation output.
Drawbacks of Using TEMPO
The downsides of employing the TEMPO oxidation technique include substantial chemical expenses and the toxic nature of TEMPO. Moreover, costly removal methods like dialysis are required to eliminate small quantities of leftover TEMPO from the cellulose nanofibrils, making scalable application of the approach quite difficult.
Fabrication of cellulose nanofibrils needs a more economical conversion technique if the scalable implementation of CNFs is to be achieved.
Developing Lignocellulosic Nanofibrils with Wheat Straw
To avoid the drawbacks of TEMPO oxidation, fabrication of LCNF may be the key. LCNF production requires less expensive lignin-carrying feedstock rather than completely bleached pulp. Moreover, moderate treatment procedures may suffice for LCNF, resulting in high-output products comprised of lignin, cellulose, and hemicellulose constituents.
Production of wheat creates a byproduct known as wheat straw. WS contains the residual stalk left after the harvest of the wheat grains.
Wheat straw acts as a suitable raw material for the manufacture of LCNF because it is abundantly available. Being an agricultural leftover, the expenses of using wheat straw are much less as compared to other raw materials.
Wheat straw therefore provides a low-cost and plenty of non-wooden fiber resource to produce LCNF.
Advantages of Peracetic Acid Treatment
Peracetic acid (PAA) is a biodegradable reagent that can engage in reactions with lignocellulose biomass at temperatures less than 100 °C. Therefore, using PAA for pre-processing of LCNF appears to be a viable strategy.
PAA treatment produces greater yields because of its high oxidizing capability, which selectively eliminates lignin while preventing solubilization of the carbohydrates.
Peracetic acid can trigger the oxidation of the reducing parts of carbohydrates, which results in a negative charge on the surface. This could aid in the nanoscale fibrillation process and produce stable colloidal suspensions.
Compared with the traditional TEMPO oxidation process for cellulose nanofibril synthesis, peracetic acid treatment provides several benefits. PAA has lower toxicity and is ecologically friendlier than TEMPO, and it allows more control over the removal of hemicellulose and lignin from the pulp material.
The architecture and content of nanofibrils generated by peracetic acid treatment differ significantly from the cellulose nanofibrils produced by traditional TEMPO oxidation.
Applications of Cellulose Nanofibrils in Plastic Composites
Cellulose nanofibrils may be utilized as reinforcements in plastic composites to minimize the quantity of petroleum components while also improving the characteristics of the plastic composites.
Hydrophilic and biodegradable polymers, like polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), show weaker mechanical characteristics than their synthetic alternatives, necessitating the addition of different additives to improve their qualities.
Higher aspect ratios and better interface interactions with the polyvinyl alcohol array enable cellulose nanofibrils to enhance the mechanical properties of PVA nanocomposites when introduced in small quantities (<5% wt.).
Results of the Study
The team showed that it is possible to fabricate lignocellulosic nanofibrils having excellent plastic reinforcement characteristics using low-cost agricultural residue. They achieved this by alkaline peroxide pulping, after which the LCNF was treated with PAA.
The lignin and hemicellulose parts of the nanofibrils, formed using wheat straw, were retained, which was critical for enhancing productivity.
While the PAA treatment generated nanomaterials with a lower charge density on the surface than TEMPO oxidation, the material characteristics were unaffected. All specimens demonstrated high colloidal stability under aqueous conditions.
PAA-treated materials improved thermal stability due to their decreased charge density and increased lignin level. Furthermore, irrespective of charge density, all nanofibrils dispersed well in the polyvinyl alcohol matrix. This enhanced the tensile strength and Young’s modulus of the composites, showing a unique case of concurrent strengthening and toughening.
The study established a novel way of producing lignocellulosic nanofibrils from agricultural residue. This economically feasible approach has the potential to enable scalable production of nanomaterials with commodity product costs, allowing them to be used in high-volume industries like bioplastics.
Reference
Pascoli, DU, Dichiara, A., Roumeli, E., Gustafson, R., & Bura, R. (2022). Lignocellulosic nanomaterials production from wheat straw via peracetic acid pre-treatment and their application in plastic composites. Carbohydrate Polymers. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.carbpol.2022.119857
Disclaimer: The views expressed here are those of the author expressed in their private capacity and do not necessarily represent the views of AZoM.com Limited T/A AZoNetwork the owner and operator of this website. This disclaimer forms part of the Terms and conditions of use of this website.
Aug 3 (Reuters) – Pro-Trump operatives are flooding local officials with public-records requests to seek evidence for the former president’s false stolen-election claims and to gather intelligence on voting machines and voters, adding to the chaos rocking the US election system .
The Maricopa County Recorder’s Office in Arizona, an election battleground state, has fielded 498 public records requests this year – 130 more than all of last year. Officials in Washoe County, Nevada, have fielded 88 public records requests, two-thirds more than in all of 2021. And the number of requests to North Carolina’s state elections board have already nearly equaled last year’s total of 229.
The surge of requests is overwhelming staffs that oversee elections in some jurisdictions, fueling baseless voter-fraud allegations and raising concerns about the inadvertent release of information that could be used to hack voting systems, according to a dozen election officials interviewed by Reuters.
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Republican and Democratic election officials said they consider some of the requests an abuse of freedom-of-information laws meant to ensure government transparency. Record requests facing many of the country’s 8,800 election offices have become “voluminous and daunting” since the 2020 election, said Kim Wyman, head of election security at the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Last year, when she left her job as Washington secretary of state, the state’s top election official, her office de ella had a two-year backlog of records requests.
“You still have a group of people in each state that believe that the election was stolen,” said Wyman, a Republican.
In April, the official in Arizona’s Maricopa County in charge of responding to public records requests, Ilene Haber, assigned four of her nine staffers to pull 20,000 documents out of holding boxes, sort them for scanning, and then carefully return them to their proper place . It took four days.
The staffers were filling just one of several records requests from Haystack Investigations, who had asked for chain-of-custody records for all 2.1 million ballots cast in the election. The firm says on its website that it conducts a variety of investigations for companies, law firms and individuals. The company worked on Arizona’s “forensic audit,” the examination of Trump’s defeat in the county by pro-Trump partisans that ended last year without uncovering voter fraud.
The labor-intensive Haystack requests illustrate the growing challenge facing stretched election offices across the country. In Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, extensive requests like the one submitted by Haystack make up about one-quarter of the total the office has received this year, said Haber, the director of communications and constituent services in the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office.
“The requests are getting bigger, more detailed, more burdensome, and going back even further” in time, she said.
Heather Honey, who heads Pennsylvania-based Haystack, said the requests were unrelated to the firm’s work on the Arizona audit and were for her own investigation. “All are meaningful and contribute to specific professional research activities,” said Honey, who has sought similar election-related records in Pennsylvania.
The local officials told Reuters that the surge in requests from election deniers is drowning their staffs in extra work at a time when they are struggling to recruit and retain voting administrators vital to democracy. Election workers have already endured an onslaught of death threats and harassment from Trump activists. Reuters has documented more than 900 such hostile messages since the 2020 vote.
“The concern is burnout,” said Jamie Rodriguez, the interim registrar of voters in Washoe County, Nevada. “With burnout does come the potential for mistakes.”
Rodriguez took over this week from the former registrar, who resigned after being targeted with death threats and other harassment.
Ryan Macias, an election security consultant for CISA, likened the swarm of records request to a denial-of-service cyber-attack, in which hackers attempt to overwhelm a network with internet traffic, and said it was creating potential security risks given the stresses already weighing on election workers.
“We have the attrition rate; we have people who are under threat from the community, people who are getting death threats, people who are overworked,” Macias said at a gathering of state election directors in Wisconsin on July 19.
SECURITY RISKS
All 50 US states have freedom-of-information laws that are used routinely by journalists, advocates, academics and everyday citizens to access records on government. Such statutes aim to ensure the public has the information needed to hold their leaders accountable. Local officials told Reuters they believe in the importance of such laws and said they are trying to find creative ways to lessen the burden of the election-related requests on their staffers.
Rather than ask for a bigger budget, Haber of Maricopa County said she has trained her whole team to help respond. Washoe County temporarily halts the production of documents at a certain point prior to the election, to ensure staff can focus on administering the vote, Rodriguez said. Donald Palmer, a commissioner on the federal Election Assistance Commission, told a gathering of secretaries of state on July 8 in Baton Rouge that they should help local officials more efficiently respond to the deluge of requests by, for instance, creating a “reading room” site to simultaneously respond to duplicative requests from different people.
Rodriguez said most of her nine current staffers joined in 2021 or 2022 after a rash of staff departures. She is trying to limit their overtime to keep them fresh for November.
But the records requests aren’t letting up. One request sought various information on the county’s election workers during the 2022 primary, including their phone number, mailing address and party affiliation. Another one was filed in late June by Robert Beadles, a businessman who moved from California to Reno in 2019 and is now leading a movement to push election-fraud theories and target politicians who do not support his agenda. Beadles requested 38 different data sets.
Beadles tells visitors to his website, operationsunlight.com, to send requests to their county clerks for a list of voters in the November 2020 election, broken down by voting method, and the total number of ballots cast for each candidate. He asks them to email the records to Shiva Ayyadurai, a leading purveyor of election fraud conspiracies.
Neither Beadles nor Ayyadurai responded to emails seeking comment.
As strapped government staffs struggle to keep up with the extensive inquiries, some election officials express concern about slipping up and releasing information that could compromise election security.
Samuel Derheimer, director of government affairs at voting-equipment manufacturer Hart InterCivic, said his company has seen an explosion of requests from election officials for help determining when releasing certain records threatens election integrity. Public records requests sometimes target operational manuals containing security protocols that should not be released to the public, he said.
Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said one of the challenges is analyzing whether seemingly separate individuals or groups might be working together to piece together sensitive information about voting equipment and processes.
“That’s when your antenna starts going up,” she said. “We are having to spend a lot of extra time thinking in those terms.”
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Reporting by Nathan Layne; editing by Jason Szep and Brian Thevenot
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Demand is weakening across the board. New mortgage lending shrank at the fastest pace in more than two years in June, according to separate official figures published this week. The PCI, published by Ai Group and the Housing Industry Association, shows housing activity weakened for a third month in July.
The monthly index of activity in detached house building – based on a sentiment survey of purchasing managers in the sector – fell 4.6 points to 34.6 points on an index where a figure below 50 indicates contraction.
‘End to the boom’
“Confidence in the housing sector has been adversely impacted by rising rates which will compound the rise in the cost of construction,” HIA economist Thomas Devitt said.
“This has not yet materialized in slowing sales or approvals of new homes and there is still a large volume of building work in the pipeline to complete. Recent declines in confidence … reflect an anticipation on the part of builders of less new work entering the pipeline in coming months as the RBA’s current tightening cycle will, inevitably, bring an end to the boom.”
For a company such as Metricon, which expanded rapidly thanks to the federal government’s HomeBuilder scheme and other stimulus programs – its dwelling commencements surged 33 per cent – that means a huge hangover has set in as it is crunched by surging material costs and labor shortages.
Metricon, which had 6052 housing starts last year, said on Tuesday it had started a consultation process with affected staff that would lead to redundancies.
Mr Langfelder said Metricon expected to continue to sign 100 contracts a week, in line with pre-pandemic levels, and that it expected more than 6000 housing starts next year.
The Gold Coast and Brisbane home building markets have suffered some of the biggest increases in overall construction costs, in residential and commercial, and it was in these markets that Metricon earlier this year tried to renegotiate higher prices with contracted customers, before giving up on the idea.
In mid-May, the builder also suffered the sudden loss of founder and chief executive Mario Biasin, who was said to have experienced mental health issues.
It is not the only home builder caught between fixed-price contracts and rapidly rising costs. Sydney-based Rawson Group last year received a $40 million loan from parent company Daiwa House to help it trade through the current tough conditions.
Despite his long absence from the gaming scene, Klonoa has remained as a fond memory in gamers’ hearts — just check the secondhand prices on copies of the original two games for proof. Fortunately, the Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series has returned the fuzzball to modern consoles, upscaling the classic 2.5D platformers into HD and allowing a new generation of players to discover what makes these games so special.
RELATED: The Best 2D Games With 3D Graphics
But while Klonoa’s return is cause for celebration, Namco missed a few opportunities to make this collection into a true celebration of the series.
THEGAMER VIDEO OF THE DAY
10 Bring Back The Cel-Shading
Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series compiles and remasters the series’ two mainline console entries, Klonoa: Door To Phantomile and Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Veil. Both games in their original form featured a charmingly cartoonish graphical style; the first game utilized 2D sprites on 3D backgrounds, while the sequel worked around early-PS2 graphical limitations by using a gorgeous cel-shaded aesthetic.
In the remaster, though, Lunatea’s Veil is presented naturalistically, without the original cel-shading. It’s not bad-looking, and it keeps both games visually in line with each other, but as a result the game doesn’t have quite the same atmosphere.
9 Improve Performance On The Switch
Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series is available on pretty much every major console. It’s no surprise that the game runs like butter on the Playstations and Xboxes of the world, but its performance on the less-powerful Switch is a little rockier.
The game targets 60 FPS and hits it the majority of the time, but you’ll likely notice a few glaring hitches every now and then. And while it’s still perfectly playable, it’s disappointing and strange that these decades-old games don’t run perfectly on modern hardware.
8 Let Us Choose Between CG And In-Engine Cutscenes
Klonoa: Door To Phantomile was originally released on the PS1, during an era when developers used the freedom of the CD format to cram their games chock-full of fancy prerendered cutscenes. Klonoa was no different, featuring gorgeous prerenders for major story events… that the Phantasy Reverie Series remaster excises in favor of stiffer in-engine sequences.
It makes sense, since this version of the game is built on the Wii remake rather than the original, but it loses some of the original’s charm.
7 Stop With The Dang Tutorials
When you boot up either game in Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series, you’ll jump into a level and instantly be greeted with a series of tutorials. These range from somewhat useful to completely useless, like telling you to collect the glowing collectibles that litter each stage. (What else would you do with them?)
Even worse are the pop-up tutorials that tell you exactly how to defeat bosses, sucking all the fun out of the encounters. And that’s not even mentioning the tutorials that greet you on level loading screens, which display information for levels you’ve already beaten. What gives?
6 Feature More Adjustable Difficulty Options
Klonoa isn’t known for being a challenging series, but the later segments of both games ramp up the challenge, asking you to expertly juggle Klonoa’s flutter-jump and enemy-grabbing abilities while landing precisely on tiny platforms.
So it’s nice that Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series introduces a lower difficulty setting, which provides unlimited lives, increased health, and a longer grab range to make these segments less demanding. Still, you can only take all of these options together — it would’ve been nice to mix and match these options to customize the gameplay and offer more gradients of challenge.
5 Includes A Collectibles Finder
Another way that Klonoa’s levels introduce complexity is through branching, nonlinear paths. The early levels in both games are straightforward romps from beginning to end, but as the games progress, they’ll use their 2.5D perspective to introduce new paths and hide secrets.
It’s a fun twist on a traditional gameplay loop, but it also means that hitting 100% on each level can be frustrating, since certain collectibles are hidden behind optional paths or obscured by environmental elements. It would have been nice to include some kind of hint system or collectible finder to cut down on that frustration.
4 Let Us Skip Through The Text More Quickly
Aside from its cutesy aesthetics and thoughtful gameplay, the Klonoa series sets itself apart from the platforming competition by focusing heavily on its story and world, making the game feel almost like a playable Studio Ghibli film. As such, if you want the full Klonoa experience, you’ll want to pay attention to the dialogue exchanges that bookend the levels.
Phantasy Reverie Series includes the option to skip these scenes, but you can’t just… press X to advance to the next text box. Since you’ll probably read faster than the game displays text, your options are basically to just wait around for the text to advance or to skip over these cutscenes entirely. There’s definitely room for some middle ground there.
3 Include The Other Games
Door To Phantomile and Lunatea’s Veil are easily the most well-known games in the Klonoa series, but they’re by no means the only ones. The cuddly rabbit-cat… uh, dog… dude has had his fair share of spin-offs, like Klonoa Heroes, an overhead action-RPG that mixes Klonoa’s whimsical aesthetic with Zelda-like gameplay. There’s even a Klonoa Beach Volleyball game!
But of these spinoffs, the only ones that made it out of Japan are the breezy GBA platformers Empire Of Dreams and Dream Champ Tournament… and the only way you can play them these days is by going through the dying Wii U eShop. Bandai Namco missed a huge opportunity by leaving these games out of the Phantasy Reverie Series.
two Put A Little More Effort Into The Title Screen
Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series locks two of the most charming, whimsical games ever made behind the blandest title screen you’ll ever see. When you boot the game up, you’re greeted with a flat, washed-out background and a prompt to hit start. There isn’t even any music playing!
RELATED: Things You Didn’t Know About The Klonoa Series
As delightful as these games are, the start screen feels empty and lifeless. It’s a curiously flat gateway into a beloved series.
1 Include Any Supplementary Content…Like, At All
Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series was released to coincide with the series’ 25th anniversary, so you’d think the collection would serve as a celebration of this adorable, underappreciated mascot.
But nearly all the celebratory features you’d expect — like concept art, or an option to listen to the soundtrack, or cute costumes, or developer commentary — are completely missing. That is, unless you’d like to spend $20 on a DLC pack!
NEXT: Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series Review: Time Travel Is Real And This Game Proves It
A kidnapped 12-year-old girl who escaped captivity and was found walking on the side of a road in rural Alabama helped lead police to discover two decomposing bodies at the residence where she was held, authorities said on Tuesday.
Police responded to a 911 report on Monday before 8:30 am from a driver who noticed a girl walking along a road in Dadeville, Tallapoosa County Sheriff Jimmy Abbett said at a news conference. The girl’s escape sparked a kidnapping investigation over 24 hours that led to the residence of José Paulino Pascual-Reyes, Abbett said.
The search of his mobile home in Dadeville resulted in the discovery of two decomposing bodies, Abbett said.
Pascual-Reyes, 37, was arrested in Auburn, Ala., and charged with first-degree kidnapping, three counts of capital murder and two counts of corpse abuse. He’s being held in Tallapoosa County Jail pending a bond hearing, police said. It’s unclear whether Pascual-Reyes has an attorney.
Court documents indicate that the girl had been tied to bed posts for nearly a week, and was assaulted and drugged with alcohol, according to WSFA in Montgomery, Ala. The girl, who has not been publicly identified, had not been reported missing, Abbett said. She managed to escape when she chewed through her restraints, according to the documents.
“She’s a hero,” Abbett said of the girl.
At the news Tuesday, Abbett declined to give additional details regarding whether the girl had any relationship to Pascual-Reyes or when she might have been kidnapped.
“It’s a fluid investigation,” the sheriff said, adding that authorities wouldn’t address whether the girl and man knew each other “until later.” “Things are changing, and I don’t want to jeopardize the identification of our juvenile.”
Authorities also declined to share information regarding the identification and cause of death for the two bodies found at Pascual-Reyes’s home in Dadeville, located about 60 miles outside Montgomery. The remains were sent to the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences for autopsies and identification.
Tallapoosa County District Attorney Jeremy Duerr told reporters that more capital murder charges could come against Pascual-Reyes.
“Once we continue and finish our investigation, I feel certain that several more charges will follow,” he said.
More than 365,000 reports of missing youths were filed into the FBI’s National Crime Information Center in 2020, according to the Justice Department’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the leading clearinghouse of information about missing children in the United States, has noted that the figures show reports of missing children, not active cases, Reuters reported. As of Dec. 31, 2021, the FBI says that youths under age 18 account for about one-third of the more than 93,000 active missing-person cases.
Abbett said Pascual-Reyes had appeared to have lived in the mobile home since February. The sheriff said other people were at the home when authorities arrived but declined to share details.
“It’s horrendous to have a crime scene of this nature,” he said.
The sheriff praised the many agencies that helped in the arrest of Pascual-Reyes, including the FBI, the Tallapoosa County district attorney’s office, the Alabama State Bureau of Investigation and the Dadeville Police Department.
He also lauded the girl for her bravery in escaping captivity and pointing police toward Pascual-Reyes and the two decomposing bodies. The girl was “doing well” after receiving medical attention, the sheriff said.
“She’s safe and we want to keep her that way,” Abbett said.
It was another big summer season for Pokémon GO, Niantic’s wildly popular mobile adventure game. While the COVID-19 pandemic forced Niantic to adjust how Pokémon GO functioned in order to keep trainers safe while exploring, the game has since been returning to normal over the past year while restrictions have started to relax. Unfortunately, a portion of the player base hasn’t been thrilled with these changes as many player friendly changes have been reverted to their pre-pandemic style.
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One major piece of Pokémon GO that was shelved due to the pandemic were the GO Fest events, these massive gatherings and celebrations for the community at various cities. However, Niantic finally brought back the in-person event this year, splitting it into 3 different locations from Berlin, to Seattle, and finally Sapporo. Offering unique opportunities and special research, these events have also introduced Ultra Beasts into the mobile game for the first time including the likes of Buzzwole, Xurkitree, and others.
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During the latest Pokemon Presents direct, Pokémon GO also had a few announcements in store for fans. While the Sapporo GO Fest is happening this coming weekend, the reveal touched on what fans can expect for the Finale event coming on August 27 from 10am-6pm local time. All four Ultra Beasts, Nihilego, Buzzwole, Pheromosa, and Xurkitree will be gathering at the FInale global event, open to all trainers across the globe to participate in.
During the Finale, players will also encounter Pokemon not normally seen in the wild while also helping the GO Ultra Recon Squad character Rhi with the Ultra Beast and figure out what happened to Professor Willow. Special Research will also be available and those who manage to complete it will encounter the mythical Sky Forme Shaymin. Originally introduced inside of Generation 4, Shaymin’s Sky Forme is a dual Flying and Grass type that looks a little more imposing than it’s traditional hedgehog-like grass form.
Along with the GO Fest Finale, August is set to be a busy month for Pokémon GO players as Niantic recently revealed the schedule of activities including which Legendaries and Mega Raids will be available. For August, players can go up against the likes of Palkia, Genesect, and then the Sword and Shield legendaries, Zacian and Zamazenta. In addition, Pokémon GO will have limited time events including one called Bug Out which, as expected, features only bug-type Pokemon to catch for a limited time.
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