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Oxfam forced to suspend Ebola response in DR Congo following pre-election...
Oxfam has been forced to suspend its work in the Ebola ravaged areas of Beni and Butembo, due to violent protests following the announcement that people in these areas wont be able to cast their votes for a new president, when the rest of country goes to the polls this Sunday.
Raphael Mbuyi, Oxfams acting Country Director in the DRC said: “This is an extremely worrying situation, as every time the Ebola response has been suspended before weve seen a big spike in the number of new cases. This could mean Ebola spreading to even more people and potentially other countries in the region, putting many more lives at risk.
“However, its not surprising that people who have had their votes taken away at the last minute are frustrated and going to the streets. These people deserve to have their say as well.
“All parties need to find a way for people who have been devastated by Ebola and have lived through decades of violent conflict, to cast their vote.
“Whatever the outcome, there needs to ..
Tech
Rage 2 Review: Avalanche and id’s latest is the ultimate ‘popcorn...
Rage 2 Review: Avalanche and id's latest is the ultimate 'popcorn game' – and thats okay (Pic: BETHESDA)
After a cinematic gets you up to speed with the original title and covers the 30 years since, Rage 2 opens with a bang.
Hell is raining down around Walker, our protagonist. With no choice but to don the armour of a fallen Ranger, youre thrown head-first into the role of super-soldier.
The cybernetically enhanced maniac, General Cross, is behind the attack, hell-bent on capturing “first genners” (not the Pokémon, sadly, what a crossover that would have been!)
When the dust settles, its apparent that youre the lone ranger and youve no Tonto in sight to assist you. As generic as the plot may seem, you have buckets of bullets, butchery, and blood ahead of you in your journey across the wasteland.
Rage 2 is the twisted love child of elite triple-A titans id Software and Avalanche Studios, and it plays exactly as youd expect from that mayhem-fuelled partnership.
The game builds on the weighty, visceral gunplay of ids DOOM franchise, while Avalanche – of Just Cause and Mad Max fame – has improved on the original Rage with its own zany open-world touches.
You can really feel the studio's DNA when you get hands-on with the Grav-Dart Launcher, which functions much like the hilarious tether physics from Just Cause, and the hovering Icarus vehicle.
The combat, however, is id Software through and through.
(Pic: BETHESDA) Related Articles
To call it “visceral” is bordering on an understatement; enemies explode into showers of scarlet, kills adorn the reticule with a bloodied skull and headshots are accompanied by a horrific (yet satisfying) squish.
The weapons are loud and packed with force, while the abilities rock the screen and add a new layer of havoc. The omnidirectional dash is liberating, really putting you in the combat boots of a Nanotrite-enhanced super-soldier as you duck and dart across the battlefield.
It also makes traversing Rage 2s environment a breeze when coupled with the double jump and Rush ability – more like a gale force hurricane, actually, in Rushs case.
The crown jewel of Rage 2s combat, however, is Overdrive, the combo-driven meter that elevates the gunplay to another level. You can, and should, use Overdrive regularly, not only because its efficient and incredibly useful, but also because its just plain awesome.
It cranks everything up to 11, boosting weapons rates of fire, damage, and all-round carnage. The screen goes wild with saturation and retro glitches, while the audio becomes a pulsating techno pandemonium in your eardrums.
There are a few mini-boss fights where you feel hampered, though, without any cannon fodder to generate Overdrive from.
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Thankfully, there is an Overdrive Infusion that you can craft and upgrade, which can max out your meter at the touch of a button.
Rage 2s gunplay is brilliant on its own, but once youve grown accustomed to unleashing Pandoras box at will, youll be jonesing for another hit of the psychoactive Overdrive.
The loud, fluorescent visuals certainly portray the effects of narcotics. Rage 2 replaces DOOMs gloomy grittiness with a vibrant, punky color palette. Seriously, there's a lot of neon pink here, far more than you'd expect from the post-apocalyptic moniker.
The different sections of Rage 2s sprawling map are also home to unique biomes, from arid, desolate deserts to boggy swamplands. Though its an attractive game to look at, theres currently a fair share of performance issues, at least on the PS4 Pro.
The menus are laggy, sometimes taking up to 10 seconds to navigate to the right tab. I also managed to lose my HUD on a number of occasions and kept encountering NPCs that I couldnt interact with, despite them having a “Talk” prompt.
Hopefully, these issues can be improved in future patches, as it can definitely get in the way of the frenetic fun you should be having with Rage 2.
(Pic: BETHESDA)
Fortunately, microtransactions are far from a distraction, being hidden behind a login page on the main menu, and only being used for cosmetic items. The infamous cheat codes and experience booster can be purchased using in-game currency, too.
Though you never level up yourself, you are constantly progressing towards a host of different things at once.
You can upgrade your weapons, abilities, equipment, and vehicles, all of which require their own unique items and currencies, and its easy to lose track of everything.
Im a sucker for skills trees and constant progression systems, but Rage 2 feels like its trying too hard when it should have narrowed everything to 2 or 3 upgrade modifiers.
On top of everything else, there are 3 friendly factions that youll be assisting, eacRead More – Source
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Celebrities
The Sun Is Also a Star: A Silly but Sweet Gen-Z...
Call it fate. On the morning of an important college interview, Daniel Bae (Charles Melton), the son of Korean immigrants, writes a phrase in his notebook: Deus ex machina. An overtly symbolic phrase if ever there were one.
Daniel, one of the heroes of Ry Russo-Youngs love-drunk romantic comedy The Sun is Also a Star, wants to be a poet. But his parents, who run a black haircare shop in Harlem, New York, want him to be a doctor for the sake of the familys name. Hes a romantic; his family is practical. When the movie opens, Daniel and a friend are making their way into the city from Queens on a crowded subway train, and the train stalls. A metro worker pipes up over the PA to tell the frustrated passengers to relax—and then tells the train full of wary rush hour commuters a story about the day a loved one was meant to catch a train to get to work at the World Trade Center, but was made late by fate (or so the story goes). That day? September 11, 2001. The lesson? Sometimes “late” is exactly where youre meant to be.
If it all sounds a little overbearing, well, it is. And thats the secret to the mysterious charms and flaws of The Sun is Also a Star, a movie that overwhelms us with its coincidences and turns of fate, announcing these gestures loudly and lovingly every step of the way, sometimes to egg on the shock and suspense of romantic possibility, other times to simply make us marvel at the beauty of it all. Mostly—somehow—it works.
Just take Daniel. He is made a little late by that stalled train. And so is Natasha Kingsley (Yara Shahidi), herself an immigrant, this time by way of Jamaica. Thanks to a random ICE raid at her fathers work, Natashas family is being deported. Theyve got 24 hours to get out of dodge—hence Natashas breathlessness, running from office to office, making a last-ditch effort to keep her family here, in America, where she grew up. But even Natasha—scientifically inclined, practical—isnt immune to the beauties of the unknown. For just a moment, in Grand Central Station, surrounded by the bustle and hum of a busy New York, she stops to look up and take in the view. Thats when Daniel sees her.
The Sun is Also a Star is a movie romance to a tee. Its overstuffed with pillow-lipped, heart-beaming feats of longing, extraordinary moments of chance, a camera that twirls and rumbles with affection for the beautiful lovers at its center. Its one of those city romances thats as much about the city as it is about the romance, routinely directing its gaze at the warm, flesh-and-blood terrarium of New York on a lovely spring day. Overhead shots of Queens and Manhattan tilt deliriously with love—and maybe even danger. Even if you sense from the start that the movie has a happy ending—and youre not necessarily right about that–the movie so thoroughly dresses itself up as a tale of chance, of being swept up in new emotions, that its hard not to feel strung along by its blooming possibilities.
Thats largely thanks to its stars, and to the writing, which serves them well. When Daniel and Natasha meet (another moment of chance, mixed with some deliberate pursuit on Daniels part), theyre initially at odds. Shes anti-romance, for one thing—she takes the scientific line that romance is really just a matter of hormones and natural urges—and anyway, shes got to fight for her family and barely has time for a boy. Whereas he, eager to fall in love, is set on derailing her day bit by bit. Soon, her mind is no longer on the America shes likely to leave behind; its on the possible future she might have with this charming, sensitive boy, who sees as much beauty in her as he does in herself.
But of course, with the specter of deportation overhead, there is no future with this boy. The curiosity of The Sun is Also a Star, as it was adapted from Nicola Yoons novel by Tracy Oliver, is its genuinely political urgency, even as the film isnt effective in political terms. A romance needs a real sense of threat to make it seem like these star-crossed lovers might not wind up together after all. Romeo and Juliet had their family names; Natasha and Daniel have ICE and the Trump presidency, which goes unnamed in the movie but is felt looming just beyond the movies richly textured margins.
Its a romance that stands out for its immediacy, in that regard, and also suffers for it. Maybe we shouldnt need beautiful young people tugging at our heart-strings to convince us that American immigration policy has already long-abandoned empathy in favor of exclusion; the ironic distance there, between their beauty and the policies ugliness, isnt what it should take to get us out of our seats, ready to rage. Maybe, additionally, love really cant save the day—there are few indications in real life, anyway, that this is so.
But The Sun is Also a Star isnt real life. And the specific chemistry of these two lovers—an atypical pair for a movie romance, being a mix of Jamaican and Korean—cannot be taken for granted. Though the films most dramatic scenes sometimes never recover from their silliness, the romantic scenes are full of spontaneous, humorous delights and the actorly sleights of hand romances need, but which cant be taught. Melton and Shahidi are both hyper-charismatic, and the supporting cast—bolstered by the likes of Jake Choi and John Leguizamo—thrives with a sense of community.
I believed in Natasha and Daniel; I believed in the implausibility of their day. And I believed in the movies mission, however overpronounced. I chalk its obviousness, its hammering home of the basic themes of fate and love, up to the lack of great romantic comedies in recent memory. Its as if the movie knows the genre has been lacking, and is trying to teach a new, young demographic how it all works: Serendipity for the Gen-Z set. So be it. If only the movie could also teach us all how to love.
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Day 4: Penelope Cruz
At the premiere of Pain and Glory.By Gisela Schober/Getty Images.
Day 4: Bella Hadid
At the premiere of Pain and Glory.By Stephane Cardinale/Corbis/Getty Images.
Day 4: Nick Jonas and Priyanka Chopra
Out and about in Cannes.From IMP Features/Splash News.
Day 4: Amber Heard
At the premiere of Pain and Glory.By Dominique Charriau/WireImage.
Day 4: Araya Hargate
At the premiere of Pain and Glory.By Gisela Schober/Getty Images.
Day 4: Penelope Cruz
Out and about in Cannes.From Iconic/GC Images.
Day 4: Ashlee Simpson
By Simone Comi/Cannes/IPA/REX/Shutterstock.
Day 4: Gayle Rankin
At the photo call for The Climb.By Stephane Cardinale/Corbis/Getty Images.
Day 4: Patricia Contreras
By Gisela Schober/Getty Images.
Day 4: Julianne Moore
By Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP/REX/Shutterstock.
Day 4: The Papicha Crew
Amira Hilda Douaouda, Shirine Boutella, Mounia Anna Meddour, Lyna Khoudri and Zahra Manel Doumandji at the photo call for their film.Stephane Cardinale – Corbis
Day 3: Shailene Woodley
Wearing Christian Dior haute couture at the Rocketman premiere.By Dominique Charriau/WireImage.
Day 3: Priyanka Chopra
Wearing Roberto Cavalli at the 5B premiere.By Daniele Venturelli/WireImage.
Day 3: Dita von Teese
At the Rocketman premiere.By Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images.
Day 3: Bella Hadid
At the Rocketman premiere.By Samir Hussein/WireImage.
Day 3: Julianne Moore
Wearing Givenchy Haute Couture at the Rocketman premiere.By Gisela Schober/Getty Images.
Day 3: RocketmanCrew
From left, Bryce Dallas Howard, David Furnish, Kit Connor, Richard Madden, Taron Egerton, director Dexter Fletcher, and Adam BohlingBy Daniele Venturelli/WireImage.
Day 3: Elton John and Taron Egerton
John, wearing Gucci, and Egerton, wearing Etro, at the photo call for Rocketman.By Daniele Venturelli/WireImage.
Day 3: Chloe Sevigny
Out and about in Cannes.From Splash News.
Day 3: Amber Heard
Out and about in Cannes.By Simone Comi/Cannes/IPA/REX/Shutterstock.
Day 3: Richard Madden
At the photo call for Rocketman.By Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP/REX/Shutterstock.
Day 3: Rita Ora
Out and about in Cannes.By Arnold Jerocki/GC Images.
Day 3: Eva Longoria
By Stephane Cardinale/Corbis/Getty Images.
Day 3: Kiddy Smile
At the premiere of Atlantics.By Dominique Charriau/WireImage.
Day 3: Sara Sampaio
Wearing Casadei at the Read More – Source
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