Sega is the latest publisher to make its views about physical media clear, in the wake of Sony's controversial decision to kill off the manufacture and sale of discs by 2028. The president of the Japanese publisher, Shuji Utsumi, noted that he believes physical media is still important, though digital distribution is "crucial", mostly thanks to the "steadily increasing" number of people playing on PC.

"When it comes to titles we call 'full games' for consoles and PCs, we believe that a digital shift is crucial," he notes in an interview with Japanese publication Famitsu. "Of course, consoles are important, but the proportion of people who play on PCs is steadily increasing. Even in areas where consoles are not widely available, there are many people who say, 'I can play it on PC.

"In order to cultivate that market, we believe it is important to strengthen our digitalisation. We tend to think from a physical perspective, so I think we need to be more digitally conscious and become more global."

He then draws on Sega's own legacy, noting that - once upon a time - the company was in the hardware market itself. It learned some pretty important lessons back then, and since dropping out of the hardware race, Sega has found massive success as a publisher. This seems to colour Utsumi's belief in physical media.

"We were originally a platform provider, and of course, we still value the culture of physical media. Rather than completely abandoning that, we are currently challenging ourselves to shift so that we can think about and act on the important aspects of digital media in parallel."

Given the response to Sony and PlayStation's decision to move away from physical media altogether, this is quite refreshing. Many have outlined how a digital-only future could impact consumer rights, whilst others have begun petitioning Sony in the hopes the company will change its mind. The hardware giant seems immovable in its stance at the moment, however, likely emboldened by the fact that even the EU will be unable to influence its decision.

Other creators have begun weighing in on the matter, too, with the most recent comments coming from the creator of the RPG series, Disgaea. Sohei Niikawa believes that if PlayStation kills physical media, it should "get rid of the hardware" too.

President Donald Trump’s name came off the Kennedy Center in the dead of night Saturday. More than 60 hours later, almost no one has seen it gone. Around 3 a.m. Saturday, a 14-member crew pried the 18 letters “The Donald J. Trump and” off the building’s exterior, after a thrumming crowd of more than 200 chanting “Take it down!” had dwindled to a dozen or so die-hards. Then, the workers climbed down and left — without removing the scaffolding they’d erected or the massive tarps they’d draped over it. Security guards have flanked the barricaded scaffolding ever since.

Laura Bligh, 66, continued her weeks-long vigil to see the restored Kennedy Center signage. A lifelong Washington-area resident, Bligh has spent a week-and-a-half planted outside the center waiting to see Trump’s name come down. After watching AI-generated videos and misdated photos purporting to show a restored facade, she wants to lay eyes on it and send verification to friends. “Seeing is believing,” she said. Bligh said she is not troubled by the damage the Trump letters might have left. “We are going to have some beautiful battle scars here on this building,” she said. “Our head is bloody, but unbowed.” Around noon, Suzanne Spiekerman, 67, sat watch on the fourth day of a trip from Foster City, California, to visit her brother. It was a coincidence that her stay overlapped with Friday’s deadline. That afternoon, Spiekerman came down, joined a watch-party crowd and watched scaffolding going up. But she, like all the others, left without satisfaction.

The Kennedy Center declined to answer questions on the record about when it planned to remove the tarp and scaffolding. Now, some visitors are reading political meanings into the cover-up. Pamela Iden, visiting from near Flint, Michigan, watched a live stream of the Kennedy Center drama that unfolded Friday. When she and her husband had free time on Monday, they hopped on a Metro train to the Foggy Bottom station and walked to the center, expecting to find what they see as a happy ending to that drama. Like everyone else, they found a tarp instead. For Iden, the grievance ran deeper than the covering, which she described as the last gasp of a sore loser. The building was dedicated to John F. Kennedy, she said, not to a sitting president who decided it would carry his name instead. Iden saw the still-shrouded signage as a snub. The center had technically complied — the order required only that the name come down, and Executive Director Matt Floca attested in court that it had. But to Iden, leaving the tarp sent an unspoken message: If Trump’s name couldn’t be seen, no name would be. “He’s thumbing his nose at the court, he’s thumbing his nose at the people,” she said. (The White House has disputed that the court orders were a defeat for the president.) Carmen Chávez put it less gently. The 52-year-old Miamian had never set foot in the Kennedy Center and wouldn’t have come while it bore Trump’s name. Now she had walked over from her hotel on her one free day. To her, the tarp was Trump in miniature — the work of a man, she said, “so egocentric” he’d brand his name on a national monument against the public’s will. She, too, left without achieving her goal but struck a note of optimism that she might later in the week. “I hope this gets taken down in the next couple of days, so I can come back and see it,” she said.

Alternative link: https://archive.ph/E0P4e#selection-583.0-669.98

For those who can't open the link: https://archive.ph/B8JEN

Among elected officials and Iranian Americans in the New York City area, the response to the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran and the killing of the country’s longtime leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ranged from fervent opposition to unrestrained celebration.

New York City’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, condemned the attacks on Saturday as “a catastrophic escalation in an illegal act of war of aggression.”

Mr. Mamdani, a Democrat, added: “Americans do not want this. They do not want another war in pursuit of regime change. They want relief from the affordability crisis. They want peace.”

Brad Lander, the former city comptroller who is running for Congress, had even stronger words on Sunday.

“This is an illegal war being waged by a sociopathic president whose goal is to distract people from his failing administration,” Mr. Lander said.

Other New York politicians were more restrained in their criticism. Mr. Lander’s opponent in the Democratic primary, Representative Dan Goldman, said in a statement that Iran had a “treacherous regime” but added, “Recent history has taught us that toppling Middle East dictators in the name of regime change is the beginning — not the end — of a process that too often results in expensive and deadly forever wars.”

Julie Menin, a Democrat and the first Jewish speaker of the City Council, stopped short of agreeing with Mayor Mamdani but criticized President Trump’s unilateral action, saying, “The Constitution entrusts Congress with the solemn responsibility to decide questions of war and peace.”

For some Iranian American New Yorkers, the response to the attacks was much more complicated than rejoicing over the death of a dictator.

Bahareh Ebne Alian, a junior fellow ​at the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies at the New School who has studied Iran extensively, was among those who were wary.

“There are people who are extremely fearful of what this war — that doesn’t seem to have a very clear end — is going to bring to Iran,” Ms. Ebne Alian said, “in terms of civil war, in terms of the disintegration of Iran, or in terms of just another failed state in the region.”

Staunch supporters of the president’s actions included New York City’s former mayor, Eric Adams, who was sharply critical of Mayor Mamdani’s response, and Fabien Levy, an Iranian American who served as deputy mayor under Mr. Adams.

Mr. Levy lashed out at Mr. Mamdani on X, writing, “Now, as every single Persian and person of Persian descent praying for a free Iran looks for a regime change, you say nothing that provides our families comfort.”

Another supporter of the attacks was Councilwoman Inna Vernikov, a Republican who represents a Brooklyn district. On Saturday, she posted on X: “The world is safer today because US & Israel eliminated a top sponsor of GLOBAL TERRORISM.”

In Great Neck, on Long Island, where there is a large Jewish Iranian American community, the attacks brought a sense of hope.

At the Everfresh Supermarket on Middle Neck Road, shoppers perused aisles of Middle Eastern spices and kosher foods.

“The minute I walked in, I noticed a lightness in the store, a happiness,” said Laurence Goldstein, the store’s manager. “I’m surprised there hasn’t been a parade up and down the road in favor of what’s going on.”

Kathy Cohen, 52, an employee at the market, was born in Tehran and fled Iran when she was 15. Her memories are vivid. “Me as a child standing in line for class, we had to say ‘death to America’ and ‘death to Israel,’ or they wouldn’t let you go to class,” she said. “Every single morning we had to say this.”

Ahmad Abuobead, 31, who is Palestinian and works as a chef, said the U.S. and Israeli actions were “an illegal attack to a sovereign country.”

He added, “I don’t think the U.S. has the right to actually just go ahead and just attack a country and kill its president — which is more like an assassination.”

I was recently watching the Sixth Sense, which prompted me to wonder if I'm the only one that feels like some movies feel truly impossible to follow everything in the story without captions. For this movie specifically, Haley Joel Osment's character was difficult to hear in his particular speech patterns and hushed voice.

I know Tenet is infamously not-great with it's sound design that this could be another example.

What are some of yours? Tell me I'm not the only one.

Donald Trump supercharged his political career by claiming that Barack Obama wasn’t American. Yesterday, 16 minutes before midnight, the president’s account on Truth Social posted a video that suggests Obama isn’t even human. It briefly shows the head of the first Black president and that of his wife superimposed onto the bodies of apes. They dance along to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”

The video, which Trump’s account shared twice, seems to be a screen recording. Its first minute shows a clip promoting the lie that voting-machine tampering handed Joe Biden the presidency in 2020. Then, someone seems to swipe up, and the clip depicting the Obamas as apes flashes into focus.

The video, which Trump’s account shared twice, seems to be a screen recording. Its first minute shows a clip promoting the lie that voting-machine tampering handed Joe Biden the presidency in 2020. Then, someone seems to swipe up, and the clip depicting the Obamas as apes flashes into focus.

The clip is on the screen for only a moment before the recording returns to the voting-machine video. And just before noon today, both posts of the video were removed from the president’s Truth Social account. (When I asked why, a White House official who declined to provide their name claimed that an unnamed employee “erroneously made the post.”)

In the interim, hundreds if not thousands of people responded to the clip with enthusiasm. Immediately after the video was first posted on Truth Social, the memecoin $APEBAMA was minted. Within 12 hours, more than $4 million worth of $APEBAMA had been traded back and forth.

The “joke” that Trump’s account spread is plainly sinister. The idea that Black people sit somewhere between white people and apes has long been used to justify cruelty. In 1377, a historian wrote that Africans “have attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals,” meaning they “are, as a whole, submissive to slavery.” Cartoons circulated during the Civil War were printed with images similar to the one Trump posted: One labels a monkey holding a book upside down as a negro-man;

The ape caricature still colors how Black people are received in America. But this morning, the administration played the video off for laughs. “This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote in response to a comment request before the Truth Social posts were removed. (The Lion King features a monkey named Rafiki, but no apes appear in the film.) The White House did not answer my questions about why the administration initially defended the video, or why it remained up on the president’s account for 12 hours. Even if a staffer did post the Obama video, its message is resonant with the president’s past statements and actions. Trump has called Somalis “low-IQ,” and his administration recently announced rules that will ban nearly 90 percent of African immigrant visa applicants.

Full article can be found: https://archive.ph/SuWQW#selection-803.0-815.38

A man has been arrested after Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar was sprayed with an unknown substance during a town hall in Minneapolis on Tuesday.

Anthony Kazmierczak, 55, was arrested and booked into Hennepin County Jail for third-degree assault, a spokesperson for the Minneapolis Police Department confirmed to Newsweek. It was not immediately clear if he had an attorney.

Minneapolis police previously told Newsweek that officers working at the town hall observed a man "use a syringe to spray an unknown liquid onto U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar." According to videos of the incident, the man appears to shout at Omar: “You must resign… you’re tearing Minnesota apart."

Shortly before the incident, Omar had called for the abolishment of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to resign or face impeachment. In Minneapolis, tensions over federal immigration enforcement have escalated after the fatal shootings of two residents by federal agents this month during President Donald Trump’s enforcement surge in the city.

Lawmakers have spoken about the impact on their ability to hold town halls and public events, and some cited the threat environment in their decisions not to seek reelection.

Last week, a man was arrested in Utah after allegedly punching U.S. Representative Maxwell Frost, a Florida Democrat, at a private party during the Sundance Film Festival and telling him Trump was going to deport him.

Kazmierczak does not appear to have ever been charged with a violent crime in Minnesota. He has twice been convicted of driving while under the influence of alcohol, according to court records reviewed by Newsweek. Court filings from a divorce case in 2017 said he has two children, was not employed and was receiving disability insurance payments. He has been married and divorced twice, CNN said, citing Minnesota’s official marriage and divorce records.

A bankruptcy petition for an Anthony Kazmierczak filed in Minnesota's third district in January 2019 showed he had credit, medical and legal debt. The filing said he was living in the Lynnhurst neighborhood of Minneapolis, not married, registered as disabled and receiving Social Security payments.

A Facebook profile, reported by CNN to belong to Kazmierczak, has a history of political posts, including criticism of Democrats such as former President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris. In October 2021, he posted a political cartoon criticizing Omar’s security spending.

Following the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in September, Kazmierczak changed his profile picture to a photo of Trump speaking at a Turning Point USA event. A couple of weeks later, he changed it to a photo of Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, being comforted by Trump. He previously added badges to his profile pictures to show his support for Ukraine.

U.S. Capitol Police said in a statement to Newsweek: "A man is in custody after he decided to assault a member of Congress—an unacceptable decision that will be met with swift justice. We are grateful for the rapid response from on-site security and our local law enforcement partners. We are now working with our federal partners to see this man faces the most serious charges possible to deter this kind of violence in our society."

CAIR national executive director Nihad Awad said in a statement sent to Newsweek: "We strongly condemn the attack on Representative Ilhan Omar at her community town hall, which comes after years of racist and Islamophobic incitement against her.

"We call on all members of Congress to condemn this assault, which was entirely predictable. The dangerous incitement that politicians like President Trump, pro-Israel lobby groups like AIPAC, and anti-Muslim hate groups have spent years spewing against Representative Omar must end immediately.

"We commend Representative Omar for her courage in continuing to speak out for justice here and abroad, despite the hate and threats she has faced for doing so. The American Muslim community stands in solidarity with her. An attack on Representative Omar is an attack on all of us and on the rule of law."

Nurses across New York City walked out on the job on Monday after their union and employers failed to agree on a new contract.

Nearly 15,000 nurses at Mount Sinai Hospital, Mount Sinai Morningside and West, Montefiore, and NewYork-Presbyterian started their strike at 6 a.m. The New York State Nurses Association demanded an increase in pay for nurses, safe staffing levels to improve the nurse-to-patient ratio, full health care benefits and pension and protection from workplace violence.

Hospitals argued that the demands were too costly and said they had spent millions preparing for a strike – including hiring replacement nurses. Mount Sinai released a statement that reads, “Unfortunately, NYSNA decided to move forward with its strike while refusing to move on from its extreme economic demands, which we cannot agree to, but we are ready with 1,400 qualified and specialized nurses – and prepared to continue to provide safe patient care for as long as this strike lasts.”

Gov. Kathy Hochul urged both sides to stay at the table and negotiate, but is now preparing for a state of emergency. The state’s Department of Health will also supply staff to affected hospitals.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani will attend the strike at 9:45 a.m.

If there was any hope New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani would inch towards the middle or appeal to moderate Democrats as he launched his administration, it vanished in the bitter January air that ushered in the start of his term.

During his inaugural address Thursday, Mamdani sought to send a clear message: That the left had won the hard-fought race for mayor, and his administration is now intent on showing the rest of the country that progressive liberals can, in fact, govern.

At a time of deep political division across the US, Mamdani stuck to his political identity and ideology, reminding the crowd he had been “elected as a democratic socialist,” promising to “govern as a democratic socialist” and castigating the politics of complacency and the political establishment for failing its constituency.

It was an unapologetically progressive speech, in which Mamdani framed the mainstream Democratic party as one that lacked imagination and ambition. Then, he vowed to not “abandon my principles for fear of being deemed radical.”

“In writing this address, I have been told that this is the occasion to reset expectations, that I should use this opportunity to encourage the people of New York to ask for little and expect even less,” he said. “I will do no such thing. The only expectation I seek to reset is that of small expectations.”

Mamdani also tried to strike a unifying tone. He spoke directly to opponents and critics who remain skeptical the 34-year-old former state assemblyman will be able to run the largest city in the nation and enact an agenda many consider too liberal and unrealistic.

Mamdani has proposed taxing the city’s wealthiest residents and raising the corporate tax rate – moves that would require the support of the state legislature and the governor – to pay for his signature agenda items: universal childcare, “fast and free” city buses and enacting a rent freeze for rent stabilized tenants.

“If you are a New Yorker, I am your mayor,” Mamdani told the crowd. “Regardless of whether we agree, I will protect you, celebrate with you, mourn alongside you and never, not for a second, hide from you.”

Mamdani’s focus on working-class New Yorkers was peppered throughout his speech. He spoke of taxi drivers and restaurant servers, hospital workers and subway operators, describing people who work in the shadows and often go unnoticed while struggling to stay afloat.

Shortly before addressing the crowd, a duo performed the “Bread and Roses” anthem –– the title a nod to a political slogan that became a rallying cry for workers’ rights in 1912. The imagery is meant to symbolize people’s need for basic necessities, but also beauty. In choosing the performance, Mamdani’s administration appeared to try and tell New Yorkers it was possible to have both.

“What’s radical is a system which gives so much to so few and denies so many people the basic necessities of life,” Mamdani said, quoting Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who administered Mamdani’s public oath of office. Sanders praised New Yorkers and Mamdani for giving hope and inspiration to “people all over this country.”

Australia has enacted a world-first ban on social media for users aged under 16, causing millions of children and teenagers to lose access to their accounts.

Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, YouTube, Snapchat, Reddit, Kick, Twitch and TikTok are expected to have taken steps from Wednesday to remove accounts held by users under 16 years of age in Australia, and prevent those teens from registering new accounts.

Platforms that do not comply risk fines of up to $49.5m.

There have been some teething problems with the ban’s implementation. Guardian Australia has received several reports of those under 16 passing the facial age assurance tests, but the government has flagged it is not expecting the ban will be perfect from day one.

All listed platforms apart from X had confirmed by Tuesday they would comply with the ban. The eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, said it had recently had a conversation with X about how it would comply, but the company had not communicated its policy to users.

Bluesky, an X alternative, announced on Tuesday it would also ban under-16s, despite eSafety assessing the platform as “low risk” due to its small user base of 50,000 in Australia.

Parents of children affected by the ban shared a spectrum of views on the policy. One parent told the Guardian their 15-year-old daughter was “very distressed” because “all her 14 to 15-year-old friends have been age verified as 18 by Snapchat”. Since she had been identified as under 16, they feared “her friends will keep using Snapchat to talk and organise social events and she will be left out”.

Others said the ban “can’t come quickly enough”. One parent said their daughter was “completely addicted” to social media and the ban “provides us with a support framework to keep her off these platforms”.

“The fact that teenagers occasionally find a way to have a drink doesn’t diminish the value of having a clear, ­national standard.”

Polling has consistently shown that two-thirds of voters support raising the minimum age for social media to 16. The opposition, including leader Sussan Ley, have recently voiced alarm about the ban, despite waving the legislation through parliament and the former Liberal leader Peter Dutton championing it.

The ban has garnered worldwide attention, with several nations indicating they will adopt a ban of their own, including Malaysia, Denmark and Norway. The European Union passed a resolution to adopt similar restrictions, while a spokesperson for the British government told Reuters it was “closely monitoring Australia’s approach to age restrictions”.

President Donald Trump's administration has warned that Europe faces "civilisational erasure" and questioned whether certain nations can remain reliable allies, in a new strategy document that puts a particular focus on the continent.

The 33-page National Security Strategy sees the US leader outline his vision for the world and how he will wield US military and economic power to work towards it.

Trump described the document as a "roadmap" to ensure America remains "the greatest and most successful nation in human history".

European politicians have begun to react, with Germany's Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul saying his country did not need "outside advice".

A formal National Security Strategy is typically released by presidents once each term. It can form a framework for future policies and budgets, as well as signalling to the world where the president's priorities lie.

The new document follows similar rhetoric to Trump's speech to the United Nations earlier this year, where he had harsh criticism for Western Europe and its approach to migration and clean energy.

The new report doubles down on Trump's point of view, calling for the restoration of "Western identity", combatting foreign influence, ending mass migration, and focusing more on US priorities such as stopping drug cartels.

Focusing on Europe, it asserts that if current trends continue the continent would be "unrecognisable in 20 years or less" and its economic issues are "eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure".

"It is far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies," the document states.

It also accused the European Union and "other transnational bodies" of carrying out activities that "undermine political liberty and sovereignty", said migration policies were "creating strife" and said other issues included "censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence".

Conversely, the document hails the growing influence of "patriotic European parties" and says "America encourages its political allies in Europe to promote this revival of spirit".

The Trump administration has fostered links with the far-right AfD party in Germany, which has been classified as extreme right by German intelligence.

The document says there must be a readjustment of "our global military presence to address urgent threats in our Hemisphere". To do this, the strategy calls for moving assets away from theatres which are less important to American national security than they once were.

This re-prioritising of military power can be seen already in the Caribbean, where the US military has a growing presence and has carried out repeated deadly strikes on boats which the government alleges are carrying drugs. The world's largest warship, the USS Gerald Ford, is currently based in the Caribbean along with its strike group.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., once one of President Trump's strongest supporters in Congress, called his foreign policies "not America first positions" and said his recent attacks against her can "put my life in danger." Greene and Trump have traded barbs in last few days over the future of the Make America Great Again movement, raising new questions about the president's firm grip on the Republican Party.

On Friday, Trump withdrew his endorsement of the Georgia lawmaker calling her "Wacky" and claiming Greene's recent criticism of him was all about his refusal to support her future political ambitions. On Saturday, Trump called here a "traitor" in a social media post.

"He called me a traitor and that is so extremely wrong," Greene said during an interview on CNN's State of The Union with Dana Bash on Sunday. "And those were the types of words used that can radicalize people against me and put my life in danger."

When asked about her previous attacks against political opponents — such as in 2020 when she posted an image of a gun alongside a group of progressive Democratic congresswomen — Greene apologized.

"I think that's fair criticism," Greene said. "And I would like to say humbly I'm sorry for taking part and the toxic politics. It's very bad for our country."

During the extensive interview, Greene also criticized Trump's recent defense of the H-1B visa program — which lets companies sponsor foreign-born workers for skilled labor. During a Tuesday Fox News interview, Trump said the U.S. has "to bring this talent" and he said the country doesn't have enough of it.

"Those are not America first positions," Greene said on Sunday before voicing displeasure at his frequent foreign trips. "And continuing to really travel all over the world doesn't help Americans back at home. I really — and I said this to him and I will say it out loud — I would love to see Air Force One be parked and stay home."

Despite her break with Trump, local GOP leadership in Georgia's 14th Congressional District are standing with Greene.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., once one of President Trump's strongest supporters in Congress, called his foreign policies "not America first positions" and said his recent attacks against her can "put my life in danger." Greene and Trump have traded barbs in last few days over the future of the Make America Great Again movement, raising new questions about the president's firm grip on the Republican Party.

On Friday, Trump withdrew his endorsement of the Georgia lawmaker calling her "Wacky" and claiming Greene's recent criticism of him was all about his refusal to support her future political ambitions. On Saturday, Trump called here a "traitor" in a social media post.

"He called me a traitor and that is so extremely wrong," Greene said during an interview on CNN's State of The Union with Dana Bash on Sunday. "And those were the types of words used that can radicalize people against me and put my life in danger."

When asked about her previous attacks against political opponents — such as in 2020 when she posted an image of a gun alongside a group of progressive Democratic congresswomen — Greene apologized.

"I think that's fair criticism," Greene said. "And I would like to say humbly I'm sorry for taking part and the toxic politics. It's very bad for our country."

During the extensive interview, Greene also criticized Trump's recent defense of the H-1B visa program — which lets companies sponsor foreign-born workers for skilled labor. During a Tuesday Fox News interview, Trump said the U.S. has "to bring this talent" and he said the country doesn't have enough of it.

"Those are not America first positions," Greene said on Sunday before voicing displeasure at his frequent foreign trips. "And continuing to really travel all over the world doesn't help Americans back at home. I really — and I said this to him and I will say it out loud — I would love to see Air Force One be parked and stay home."

Despite her break with Trump, local GOP leadership in Georgia's 14th Congressional District are standing with Greene.

Foo Fighters - a name that’s synonymous around the world with heavy guitar anthems and the legend that is Dave Grohl. But why did Big Dave pick such an unusual name? What does “Foo Fighters” actually mean?

Back in the Nirvana days, Grohl had written and recorded songs but had kept them to himself as he considered Kurt Cobain to be the musical genius in the group. When Cobain died in April 1994, it looked like Dave would join another band as a superstar drummer, but the world was surprised when he came out of the studio with a whole album’s worth of his own songs, recorded pretty much by himself.

But Dave still wasn’t confident enough to release the music under his own name. He told Clash magazine in 2010: “Around the time that I recorded the first FF [demo] tape, I was reading a lot of books on UFOs. Not only is it a fascinating subject, but there's a treasure trove of band names in those UFO books!"

"I had recorded the first record by myself, but I wanted people to think that it was a group, I figured that FOO FIGHTERS might lead people to believe that it was more than just one guy. Silly, huh?"

"Had I actually considered this to be a career, I probably would have called it something else, because it's the stupidest fucking band name in the world."

The term “foo fighter” was first coined by the US Air Force in World War II, as a term for strange phenomena sighted in the sky, before the term “unidentified flying objects” became a term. In November 1944, pilots flying over Western Europe had spotted glowing objects flying quickly around the night sky - which were thought to be a new German “secret weapon”.

They were quickly dubbed “foo-fighters” by Donald J. Meiers, a radar operator in the 415th Night Fighter Squadron, who named them after a then-current comic strip called Smokey Stover. Smokey was a fireman, or “foo fighter”, who travelled to incidents in his “Foomobile”.

So when airmen saw bright balls of “fire”, flying in the sky, they called them “foo fighters”… and Dave Grohl picked up the term from one of the many, many books on UFO history.

OpenAI says it has released new policies for an artificial intelligence tool called Sora 2, in response to concerns from Hollywood studios, unions and talent agencies.

The tool allows users to create realistic, high-quality audio and video, using text prompts and images.

"It's about creating new possibilities," OpenAI promised in a promotional video for Sora 2. "You can view the power to step into any world or scene, and letting your friends cast you in theirs."

But with Sora 2, some creators have also made fake AI-generated videos of historical figures doing things they never did. For example, Martin Luther King, Jr. changing his "I Have a Dream" speech, Michael Jackson, rapping and stealing someone's chicken nuggets, or Mr. Rogers greeting rapper Tupac Shakur to his neighborhood.

Some videos reimagined the late Robin Williams talking on a park bench and in other locations. His daughter Zelda begged fans to stop sending her such AI-generated content, calling it "horrible slop."

"You're not making art," she wrote on Instagram, "You're making disgusting, over-processed hotdogs out of the lives of human beings."

Last year, California's governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill requiring the consent of actors and performers to use their digital replicas.

Now, the talent agencies and SAG-AFTRA (which also represents many NPR employees) announced they and OpenAI are supporting similar federal legislation, called the "NO FAKES" Act.

The Motion Picture Association, which represents major Hollywood studios, said in a statement that since Sora 2's release, "videos that infringe our members' films, shows, and characters have proliferated on OpenAI's service and across social media."

Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the national executive director of the union SAG-AFTRA told NPR last week that it wasn't feasible for rightsholders to find every possible use of their material.

"It's a moment of real concern and danger for everyone in the entertainment industry. And it should be for all Americans, all of us, really," says Crabtree-Ireland.

OpenAI says it has released new policies for an artificial intelligence tool called Sora 2, in response to concerns from Hollywood studios, unions and talent agencies.

The tool allows users to create realistic, high-quality audio and video, using text prompts and images.

"It's about creating new possibilities," OpenAI promised in a promotional video for Sora 2. "You can view the power to step into any world or scene, and letting your friends cast you in theirs."

But with Sora 2, some creators have also made fake AI-generated videos of historical figures doing things they never did. For example, Martin Luther King, Jr. changing his "I Have a Dream" speech, Michael Jackson, rapping and stealing someone's chicken nuggets, or Mr. Rogers greeting rapper Tupac Shakur to his neighborhood.

Some videos reimagined the late Robin Williams talking on a park bench and in other locations. His daughter Zelda begged fans to stop sending her such AI-generated content, calling it "horrible slop."

"You're not making art," she wrote on Instagram, "You're making disgusting, over-processed hotdogs out of the lives of human beings."

Last year, California's governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill requiring the consent of actors and performers to use their digital replicas.

Now, the talent agencies and SAG-AFTRA (which also represents many NPR employees) announced they and OpenAI are supporting similar federal legislation, called the "NO FAKES" Act.

The Motion Picture Association, which represents major Hollywood studios, said in a statement that since Sora 2's release, "videos that infringe our members' films, shows, and characters have proliferated on OpenAI's service and across social media."

Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the national executive director of the union SAG-AFTRA told NPR last week that it wasn't feasible for rightsholders to find every possible use of their material.

"It's a moment of real concern and danger for everyone in the entertainment industry. And it should be for all Americans, all of us, really," says Crabtree-Ireland.

Pope Leo said “we’re in big trouble” when it comes to the ever-widening pay gap between the rich and poor, citing Elon Musk, who may be on course to become the world’s first trillionaire.

Leo made the remarks while criticising executive pay packages during his first interview with the media.

Reflecting on why the world was so polarised, he said one significant factor was the “continuously wider gap between the income levels of the working class and the money that the wealthiest receive”.

“CEOs that 60 years ago might have been making four to six times more than what the workers are receiving … 600 times more [now],” the pontiff said in excerpts of the interview conducted by Elise Ann Allen, a senior correspondent with the Catholic newspaper Crux as part of a forthcoming biography.

Earlier this month, the board of the electric car maker Tesla said it had proposed a new trillion-dollar pay package for Musk, its chief executive and largest shareholder, if he hit targets set by the company.

Outlining the incentive package, which is unprecedented in corporate history, in a stock market update, the company said: “Yes, you read that correctly.”

The pope, who turned 70 on Sunday, has so far shown to be much more low-key than his predecessor, even if they shared similar progressive political views.

Francis often clashed with the US president, Donald Trump, over his hardline immigration policies, while Leo, formerly Cardinal Robert Prevost, also criticised Trump’s policies on his X account before becoming pope.

“Put moral formation at the centre of your society”

David Brooks' speech was challenging and thought provoking, calling for us to reassess what we think cultural renewal looks like and to reconnect to our spiritual roots.

The FBI on Friday searched the home of President Trump's former national security adviser, John Bolton.

Bolton served in Trump's first term in the White House for just over a year but has since become a sharp critic of the president. He has said he believed Trump would use the Department of Justice to enact a "retribution presidency."

The FBI on Friday said it conducted "court-authorized activity in the area" when asked about a search at Bolton's Maryland home.

"There is no threat to public safety. We have no further comment," the FBI added. The search of Bolton's home was first reported by the New York Post. Bolton's office declined immediate comment.

Bolton was one of the former administration officials whose security clearances Trump stripped when he returned to office. Trump also revoked Bolton's security detail, which was in place because of threats from Iran.

Bolton published The Room Where It Happened in 2020, a memoir about his time in the White House that was critical of Trump's approach to foreign policy and the presidency in general.

The Trump administration sued to try to block the book's publication, alleging that Bolton hadn't gone through the proper clearance process and that his manuscript contained classified information. A judge declined that request, but said Bolton's conduct raised national security concerns. The Biden administration dismissed the lawsuit, and prosecutors dropped a grand jury investigation the following year.

Feel free to share when you came in with a line or joke at just the right time - nothing beats a well timed moment!

The Trump administration has released records of the FBI’s surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr., despite opposition from the slain Nobel laureate’s family and the civil rights group that he led until his 1968 assassination.

The release involves more than 240,000 pages of records that had been under a court-imposed seal since 1977, when the FBI first gathered the records and turned them over to the National Archives and Records Administration.

In a lengthy statement released Monday, King’s two living children, Martin III, 67, and Bernice, 62, said their father’s killing has been a “captivating public curiosity for decades.” But the pair emphasized the personal nature of the matter and urged that the files “be viewed within their full historical context.”

The Kings got advance access to the records and had their own teams reviewing them. Those efforts continued even as the government granted public access. Among the documents are leads the FBI received after King’s assassination and details of the CIA’s fixation on King’s pivot to international anti-war and anti-poverty movements in the years before he was killed. It was not immediately clear whether the documents shed new light on King’s life, the Civil Rights Movement or his murder.

“As the children of Dr. King and Mrs. Coretta Scott King, his tragic death has been an intensely personal grief — a devastating loss for his wife, children, and the granddaughter he never met — an absence our family has endured for over 57 years,” they wrote. “We ask those who engage with the release of these files to do so with empathy, restraint, and respect for our family’s continuing grief.”

They also repeated the family’s long-held contention that James Earl Ray, the man convicted of assassinating King, was not solely responsible, if at all.

Besides fulfilling the intent of his January executive order, the latest release serves as another alternative headline for Trump as he tries to mollify supporters angry over his administration’s handling of records concerning the sex trafficking investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, who killed himself behind bars while awaiting trial in 2019, during Trump’s first presidency. Trump last Friday ordered the Justice Department to release grand jury testimony but stopped short of unsealing the entire case file.

Bernice King and Martin Luther King III did not mention Trump in their statement Monday. But Bernice King later posted on her personal Instagram account a black-and-white photo of her father, looking annoyed, with the caption “Now, do the Epstein files.”

And some civil rights activists did not spare the president.

“Trump releasing the MLK assassination files is not about transparency or justice,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton. “It’s a desperate attempt to distract people from the firestorm engulfing Trump over the Epstein files and the public unraveling of his credibility among the MAGA base.”

The King Center, founded by King’s widow and now led by Bernice King, reacted separately from what Bernice said jointly with her brother. The King Center statement framed the release as a distraction — but from more than short-term political controversy.