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Lam applied to ban masks and face covers in early October, but protesters largely ignored him and police were unable to enforce the ban on a large scale. Hong Kong, the former British colony, has been under almost daily protests for four months after the pro-China government tried to pass a law allowing extradition to Beijing.

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The automotive-enthusiast world is in a bit of a bad state when, along with a few other remaining outliers, we need a limited-production, $180,000 sports car to remind us of the manual transmission's enduring pleasures. The car in question, the 2020 Aston Martin Vantage AMR, comes with a seven-speed Graziano gearbox that will be rowed by just 200 stick-shift holdouts around the globe. Those determined buyers join an equally small club of refuseniks: People who demand a high-end sports car that's not some flavor of Porsche 911. Hell, should an AMR buyer spec some unusual, custom paint color, he'll surely be the only driver in the world with a car like it. Fortunately, the Vantage will continue to do its part to stave off the stick's extinction. At Aston's AMR racing shop, tucked alongside the Nürburgring Nordschleife in Germany, company officials confirmed next year's 2021 Vantage will offer the same, dogleg-patterned manual as an option. Spend more for features such as carbon-composite brakes and carbon-fiber exterior bits, and 2021-model-year buyers will be able to create a literal carbon copy of the AMR version we've just driven. Aston fans will recall a version of this manual transmission pulling duty in the previous-generation Vantage V12 S. And this smartly reworked manual makes the new Vantage even more of a dream car than it already was. Let's review: Take a crowd-slaying gorgeous Aston Martin. Power it, lustily and vocally, with a hand-built, twin-turbo, 503-hp Mercedes-AMG V-8. Add brilliant steering and handling courtesy of Matt Becker and his team—Becker is Aston's handling chief and former maestro of Lotus's renowned chassis engineers. And now you tell me I can have three pedals and a stick? Heaven might have been assured had I lapped the Vantage AMR on the 'Ring, where you would expect its impeccable speed, agility, and balance to suit the 73-turn task. Instead, Aston Martin—perhaps wanting to avoid saying prayers for its cars—turned us loose on public roads. But when life hands you lemons, turn them into Le Mans, including gunning the Vantage to a heady 186 mph on the autobahn, as translated from the 300-kph indicated on its digital speedometer. This exotically styled two-seater will reach a no-fooling 205 mph with the stick popped into seventh, the company says. That compares to 198 mph for the automatic version. The Vantage AMR weighs a svelte 3,298 pounds in dry form, a significant 220 fewer than a standard, paddle-shifted Vantage. Weight savings include 154 pounds between the manual gearbox and mechanical limited-slip differential (the standard Vantage uses a heavier, electronic rear diff); 24 pounds from standard carbon brakes; and 22 pounds via handsome forged 20-inch wheels, wrapped with staggered Pirelli P Zero tires. To compensate for reduced and shifted weight, rear spring rates decrease slightly. A rear antiroll bar is 20-percent stiffer and works in concert with a mechanical limited-slip diff that can force more oversteer than the e-diff. Electric power steering is retuned, as are the selectable powertrain and damper settings in Sport, Sport Plus, and Track modes. But the manual is the star, even if that star aligns differently than any stick sold in America: The dogleg shift pattern removes first gear from the familiar H-pattern of gates, positioning it down and to the left, with reverse being above that. Second gear is where you'd normally find first, third where you'd expect to find second, and so on. The race-bred idea, which originated with early five-speed transmissions, is that you only need first gear to roll from the pits; the dogleg pattern then makes it a breeze to shift from second to third and back again—the most common changes on a track—without having to move sideways between gates. Departing Nürburg and heading for Germany's verdant countryside, I review and practice the pattern, accompanied by the growling, spitting 4.0-liter V-8. Every once in a while, I find myself reaching for the wrong gear, but I acclimate quickly enough. Becker has an analogy for the quirky layout: "It's Marmite," he says, referring to the yeasty British foodstuff that Aussies call Vegemite. "People either love it or hate it." Marmite, for the record, is disgusting. But dogleg be damned, this manual feels improved over its Vantage V-12 execution: Still charmingly mechanical and analog, but with less tendency to jam or slip into the wrong gear during brisk changes. Aston fitted a dual-mass flywheel to the Mercedes V-8 to keep driveline resonance from rattling the gearbox. The dhift cables are revised, a new shift lever and knob feel better to use, and shift "fingers" are chamfered to help guide the lever into its proper gate. Asked the "why" of the dogleg box, Becker answers frankly. Other than its supposed on-track benefit, he says with a sly grin, "Because it was available." Yep, manufacturers aren't lining up to supply seven-speed manuals to companies that will count sales in the hundreds. The clutch and its take-up are sports-car perfection, including an action point near the very top of a short overall pedal stroke. A dual-chamber clutch master cylinder, developed from a previous Formula 1 brake-cylinder design, moves a high volume of fluid quickly without undue pedal pressure. The resulting effort is meaty, but not so meaty as to torture your left quad when you are stuck in traffic. An "AM Shift Mode" console button delivers not only rev-matching downshifts, but matched, full-throttle upshifts that make any driver look and sound like a pro. To help promote the increasingly lost art of heel-and-toe downshifts, Aston also gentled the standard model's brake booster. "Otherwise you'd be head-butting the steering wheel," during forceful heel-and-toe maneuvers, Becker says. Aston Martin also did its homework on the proper placement of shifter and pedals in relation to the driver and steering wheel, including benchmarking its Porsche 911 rival. "The relationship between the steering wheel, shifter, and pedals is just about perfect," Becker says. To keep this gearbox in equally good health, the standard Vantage's peak torque is lowered from 502 lb-ft to 461, with further reductions in first and second gear. Without those critical torque decreases, "the gears will just fail," Becker says. The upshot is a self-shifting, 3.9-second squirt to 60 mph. Yes, a Vantage with its eight-speed ZF automatic turns the trick in 3.5 seconds. But would you prefer to win a stoplight race as an algorithm sorts you out, or get to the end of the run knowing you did the shift-timing part yourself? A relationship coach should give the Aston straight A's in fun, driver engagement, and old-school physical education. Driving the Aston is like being reintroduced to a beloved, classic movie you'd nearly forgotten. Certainly, controlling this sports car with a manual clutch instead of paddles heightens every sensation of an already sensational conveyance. That traditional shifter partners beautifully with new-school turbocharged might. So I shut off the rev-matching function through a misty green playground of switchbacks and sweepers. I brake late into corners for downshifts, heel-and-toeing as though I'm driving some vintage supercar, and catapult out the exits. Second gear, third gear, fourth—it doesn't matter, as the Aston pulls like the dickens, with oodles of front-end grip and the kind of can't-go-wrong confidence that characterizes the world's very best sports cars. This beauty's balletic moves are choreographed through a squircle-shaped steering wheel, and if you told someone the Vantage had a hydraulic steering rack, most people would never question it; it's that good. If the Vantage AMR has issues, they're all cabin-related. The Alcantara-heavy interior is stylish, but some materials and controls are so-so considering the price. Chintzy plastic seat switches are still located awkwardly on the transmission tunnel. Next year, Aston's eagerly awaited DBX SUV will adopt a newer version of Mercedes' infotainment system and screen, though not the German maker's latest MBUX unit. This Vantage soldiers on, limpingly, with a poorly integrated Mercedes Comand system that dates back more than a decade, including its thick-framed and stingy central screen. By some standards—especially, say, C8 Corvette standards—this Aston plays in rarefied company. At $183,081 to start, it costs $20,000 more than a 911 Turbo and just $12,000 less than a McLaren 570S. Fifty-nine of the 200 AMRs will be sold in "59 Edition" trim, priced from $204,995. The car's most direct competitor is probably its engine-sharing cousin, the Mercedes-AMG GT, including a 550-hp GT C coupe at roughly $152,000.

Are we running out of time to stop climate change? Nearly a year has passed since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that limiting global warming to the 1.5-degree Celsius (2.6 degrees Fahrenheit) mark by the end of the century — a goal set to stave off the worst impacts of climate change — "would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society." Some politicians and writers have thrown their hands up in the air and argued that it's too late, and that human civilization is simply not up to the task. Others, meanwhile, took the report as a call to arms, reframing one of its points as a political organizing message: We have only 12 years to stop climate change, and the clock is ticking. (A year later, we're down to 11.) But the full picture is both more and less dire than a slogan can capture. We can't stop climate change — because it's already here, and it's already too late to reverse many of its catastrophic effects. What's true is that things are on track to get much worse over the course of this century, and that if we're going to stop those things from happening, society is going to have to start hitting some important deadlines fast. There's a big one coming 12 years after the IPCC report. Blowing through it won't immediately plunge society into a "Mad Max"-style dystopia, as some have suggested — perhaps tongue in cheek — but it will make sure everything keeps getting steadily worse, and it will make turning things around down the road that much harder. Related: The Reality of Climate Change: 10 Myths Busted RECOMMENDED VIDEOS FOR YOU... video playingClimate Change is Impacting Human Health Science and Sci-Fi at the Movies, with Live... 28/12/17Science and Sci-Fi at the Movies, with Live Science and Space.com Slime Made Simple! Live Science Shows You How 10/08/17Slime Made Simple! Live Science Shows You How Fearsome Armored Dino 'Frozen in Time' for 110... 03/08/17Fearsome Armored Dino 'Frozen in Time' for 110 Million Years NASA's Climate Change Data Key To Preparing... 17/11/16NASA's Climate Change Data Key To Preparing Cities For Possible Catastrophes | Video "Rick and Morty" Gets Some Science Right! 03/10/19"Rick and Morty" Gets Some Science Right! Some scientists are nervous that overemphasizing the 2030 deadline might mislead the public about the nuances of climate change. But others pointed out to Live Science that activists have a task that's different from that of researchers — one that requires straightforward goals and clear, simple ideas. The IPCC report, which the U.N. climate science body released Oct. 8, 2018, revealed that the best path to limiting warming to an increase of 1.5 C by 2100 involves cutting net human carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions 45% by 2030 (12 years after the report was published) and then cutting emissions further to net zero by 2050. It was far from the first dire warning that the agency had issued. But this one seemed to take root in the public discourse around climate change, possibly because of how news stories summarized the report. An Oct. 8, 2018, headline in The Guardian read, "We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN." Vox headlined its article "Report: we have just 12 years to limit devastating global warming." Smithsonian.com wrote, "The World Was Just Issued 12-Year Ultimatum On Climate Change." In an interview with writer Ta-Nehisi Coates three months later, on Jan. 21, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D.-N.Y., spelled out how the report's conclusions had entered the zeitgeist: "Millennials and Gen Z and all these folks that come after us are looking up, and we're like, 'The world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change, and your biggest issue is how are we gonna pay for it?'" Here's the thing: Scientists never said the world was going to end in 12 years if we don't stop climate change. Even researchers known for ringing the alarm bells on climate change are far more likely to speak in terms of decimal places and nonlinear effects than to talk about the end of civilization as we know. Prominent activists rarely bring up doomsday, either. Messages from the Global Climate Strike organizers and the U.S.-based Sunrise Movement focus on long-term climate shifts, not an impending, sudden disaster. Still, the 12-year deadline looms large in the culture. "It has achieved an absoluteness in its role in societal dialogue that's not in line with scientific fact," said Katharine Mach, a climate scientist at the University of Miami and one of several lead authors of the IPCC report. "The world will not end if we pass 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming above preindustrial levels," Mach said. Related: 8 Ways Global Warming Is Already Changing the World And failing to hit a 45% reduction target won't lead to 1.5 C of warming by 2030, as Lini Wollenberg, a University of Vermont climate researcher and leader of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security, told Live Science. It does, however, increase the chances of hitting 1.5 degrees C by 2100 and experiencing many more climate catastrophes on our way through the 21st century, Wollenberg said. The issue is that any program set up to mitigate warming will have two basic components: short-term cuts to emissions and longer-term efforts to pull carbon out of the atmosphere. (This doesn't necessarily mean giant, futuristic CO2-sucking machines, but may mean things like growing forests.) "Some people — I'm hazarding industry and those focused on maintaining a growth-focused economy — would argue that we don't want to sacrifice things in the short term, and that society will figure out the technology to deal with it later," Wollenberg said. But every year of delay on cutting greenhouse gas emissions means that carbon-capture efforts down the road will have to be even more fantastical and dramatic (including heavy reliance on carbon-capture technologies that may never work). And each year in which we do nothing, the world will cross more climate tipping points that will be difficult to undo, Wollenberg said. The year 2030 has been bouncing around climate-policy documents for a while, Wollenberg said. (It also turned up in the Paris Agreement, for example, as did the goal of net zero by 2050.) Researchers saw that target as part of a reasonable time frame for drawing down emissions without it resulting in unbearable economic costs or having humanity rely too heavily on future carbon-capture efforts, she said. "It could have been 2020, 2012 or 2016," Wollenberg said, adding that 2030 "used to seem a lot further away." The 1.5 C target was picked for similar reasons — an effort to balance what's possible against what's necessary. But, similar to the 12-year time frame, 1.5 degrees is a target set by scientists, not an immutable scientific fact. "We know that the risks go up [as temperature rises]. We're already experiencing widespread impacts of the changing climate," Mach said, pointing to the ongoing consequences of 2019's 1 C (1.8 F) of warming above preindustrial levels. "It will be greater at 1.5 degrees of warming, and may go up from there in some very substantial ways … with severe, irreversible impacts." Holding warming to 1.5 degrees won't reverse climate change. In fact, the catastrophic impacts in that idealized scenario will be much worse than they are now. Colin Carlson, an ecologist at Georgetown University who studies how climate change influences infectious diseases, said that one problem with imagining that we have 12 years until a huge disaster hits is that such thinking obscures the ongoing horrors of climate change in 2019. "Climate change has already killed hundreds or thousands — or more — of people," Carlson said, "through malaria, through dengue, through a hundred other avenues that we're only now starting to be able to quantify." Advertisement Mosquito-borne diseases flourish in a warming world, his research has shown. And the world has already warmed enough that many people have gotten sick and died from those diseases — people who otherwise would have been spared. Related: 5 Deadly Diseases Emerging from Global Warming "So this is not as simple as 'Can we stop this coming?' It's already here," he said. Similarly, Wollenberg’s work has shown that severe climate impacts are devastating food production worldwide in 2019. Vast regions of North and South America, Asia and Africa are becoming too hot for growing grains. The soil in low-lying, coastal regions of Bangladesh and China is getting saltier as rising seas contaminate groundwater, threatening rice production. (A few places are becoming more hospitable to certain crops. A warming Vermont, for example, is growing more hospitable to peaches, even as a shortened ski season threatens its economy.) The overall impact is to drive up food prices and create global unrest. Long term, these trends will make it impossible for some countries to produce enough food to feed their po[CENSORED]tions, she said. To manage all that complexity, researchers tend to break down responses into two broad categories: mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation is, in short, the work of preventing climate change from worsening. Reducing emissions and growing forests fall into this category. Adaptation is learning to deal with the warming that's already here and the additional warming that's coming: building sea walls and flood-abating salt marshes around coastal cities; studying changes in precipitation so farmers know when to plant their crops; and engineering crops to better withstand harsh environments. But ultimately, all the researchers Live Science contacted said these problems become less catastrophic with less warming. Holding the world to a 1.5-C warming increase by the end of the century creates much more manageable short- and long-term problems than holding it to 2 C of warming, which is much less harmful to Earth than 3 C, which is much more survivable than 4 C, which is still less catastrophic than 6 C … and so on. None of those possible futures necessarily leads to a charred, lifeless global desert in our lifetimes. But each increase is almost unimaginably more dire for life on this planet than the one preceding it. "It's always worth it to prevent more warming," Mach said. With regard to the spread of mosquito-borne diseases, Carlson said, "We can stop it. Mitigating climate change is truly the silver bullet. Sometimes it is as simple as, 'If we stop climate change, we can stop a lot of the bad health impacts that are coming.'" (Though the devil is in the details, he added. The level of disease reduction will depend on how fast the carbon-mitigation project moves, and its effects won't be felt immediately or equally everywhere.) The science points relentlessly to one reality: The best way to deal with climate change is to start cutting emissions now. It's easier to stop warming by keeping CO2 in the ground now than it is to pull carbon out of the air later. And mitigation makes adaptation much more effective. Bringing up the 12-year time frame, then, is a way of drilling down on the first step the world has to take to move down the most effective mitigation path still available — even if it doesn't capture the full scope of the issue. So, is it irresponsible for public figures to employ the 12-years rhetoric? "I think the role of public figures is to set visions and create the urgency that we need," Wollenberg replied. "The scientific community is sometimes uncomfortable with that, but if you started talking to the general public about, 'Well, you could trade off your long-term emissions and delay the decline by 5%, or we could do a 4% reduction every year, but that would contrast with a 7% reduction where we could wait until 2035,' it would not be an effective message." “I would blame the public figures who aren't taking steps more than I would blame the people who are trying to promote a vision," she said. We're at a point in time when people are feeling the effects of climate change on their lives, said Jewel Tomasula, a doctoral student ecologist at Georgetown University, who studies the health of salt marshes in New Jersey. As Live Science has previously reported, the world in 2019 is hotter, monster storms are more frequent, diseases are on the move, and fires and floods are happening more often. Talking about 2030, Tomasula said, is about creating a window for activism to take effect — a decade of meaningful global movement on the problem. "Science is great for understanding the problem," she said. "Climate change is a physical problem, and we can work on it with our data and really understand it. But that's not what's really going to fix it. … The way that problems like this have been addressed in the past is by having that political will and mobilization." The notion of a 12-year deadline can be misleading and obscures some of the hedging and nuance scientists like to emphasize. But it also seems to offer climate mobilizers a focal point for their efforts, and people really are getting out into the streets.

Tunisia's newly elected President Kais Saied takes an oath at the Assembly of People's Representatives' headquarters in Tunis, Tunisia, Oct. 23, 2019. According to Article 76 of the Tunisian Constitution, the elected president took the oath for the next five years before assuming his duty as president. Saied won the second round of the presidential election on Oct. 13 with 72.71 percent of the vote against 27.29 percent garnered by his contender Nabil Karoui, a businessman. (Photo by Adele Ezzine/Xinhua) TUNIS, Oct. 23 (Xinhua) -- Tunisia's newly elected President Kais Saied took an oath on Wednesday at the Assembly of People's Representatives' headquarters in the capital Tunis. The session was attended by senior officials of the country and members of the diplomatic corps in Tunisia. According to Article 76 of the Tunisian Constitution, the elected president took the oath for the next five years before assuming his duty as president. "I swear by Almighty God to safeguard the independence of the homeland and the integrity of its territory, to respect the Constitution of the country and its legislation, to watch over its interests and to owe it allegiance," Saied said. He stressed that the dignity of the homeland is of the dignity of its citizens. Saied encouraged the fight against terrorism in all its forms and manifestations. "One bullet from a terrorist will be met with countless bullets," he said. After taking the oath before the parliament, Kais Saied headed to the Carthage Palace in a formal procession where the handover ceremony took place with the acting President Mohamed Ennaceur. "This is a remarkable day because it represents an important transition in the lives of the Tunisians," Ennaceur said in a brief statement. "What distinguishes Tunisia is the smooth transition of power that has not affected the continuation of the state," he added. Saied won the second round of the presidential election on Oct. 13 with 72.71 percent of the vote against 27.29 percent garnered by his contender Nabil Karoui, a businessman. Saied, a constitutional professor born on Feb. 22, 1958, has become the eighth president of the Tunisian republic since its independence in 1956, and the second directly elected leader since the 2011 uprising. It is worthy noting that the president of the Tunisian republic possesses the sovereign powers to determine the general orientations of the defense and foreign affairs, and to ensure the internal security of the republic.

From the moment I first heard about Days Gone, I wondered about its reason for existing. With so many open-world titles and games that use post-apocalyptic setting featuring zombies and/or other types of deformed creatures, why make another one? Maybe someone at Sony was looking at Horizon Zero Dawn, first announced around the time that work on Days Gone officially began, and said right girls, you've had your metaphorical glass of 'secco with this one, let's make a post-apocalyptic game for real men. Maybe someone looked at all these other existing titles and thought why not make another - people keep buying them, they'll buy this one, too. But there are only so many times that works. In Days Gone, you can see why. Days Gone review Developer: Sony Bend Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment Platform: PS4 Availability: Out 26th April on PS4 Days Gone starts with a familiar scene. We meet Deacon St. John and his wife Sarah in Seattle, the streets filled with panicked people and overturned vehicles. You don't yet see what everyone is running from, but of course you know - this is a zombie game, get with the programme. Accompanying the two is Deacon's best friend Boozer. He seems to exist for one reason only - to justify why Deacon would leave his wife after she's gravely wounded in an act of violence so senseless it literally doesn't make sense. I've watched it over several times, not least because the game makes you reminisce about it more than once, and the big moment that defines nearly the story just doesn't add up. Oregon is gorgeous, also this is the size of subtitles you have to make do with from 30 feet. Sarah (seemingly?) dies. This is not a spoiler, because it's so essential to Days Gone it's alluded to in the marketing materials. I'm glad to say that after everything games have done in recent years to establish women, in Days Gone we're back to them existing entirely to enable the male protagonist's pain. This isn't helped by Sarah coming across as a woman who seems to be as dumb as bricks for most of the flashbacks. Take her first meeting with Deacon. She is out in the mountains with a broken car and no phone reception when a stranger on a bike stops and aggressively asks her for directions, before pretending to drive off so she has to ask him for help. No woman would ever. If a woman would in fact ever, she would then proceed to fling herself off Deacon's bike as soon as the words "so what's a nice lady like you doing in a place like this" leave his mouth. Maybe someone at Sony was looking at Horizon Zero Dawn and said, right girls, you've had your metaphorical glass of 'secco with this one, let's make a post-apocalyptic game for real men. Several years after the incident we're back with Deacon and Boozer, hunting down a guy on their bikes. It's a fun intro that gave me a lot of hope, because manoeuvring through the forest without hitting a tree while shooting at someone is always fun - it was fun in Uncharted, it was fun in Far Cry and it's certainly fun here. For all that I'm busy with dodging trees, it's also immediately obvious that virtual Oregon is a beautiful place. Whether during the downpours or in the snow, it's frequently breathtaking. This first mission introduces you to all Days Gones' tricks in short order. You chase a guy, track him down once he's wounded and meet your first zombies, called freakers this time around. Freakers exhibit more animal-like behaviour by being out during both day and night and by building nests. If you want to reduce the concentration of enemies in an area, you need to burn these nests by chucking a Molotov cocktail at them and shooting the small horde of zombies that comes rushing out at you. This mission type introduces you to the crafting wheel for the first time. Most items in Days Gone are either crafted or found. You can craft healing items, bombs like the molotovs, traps and ammo for special weapons like your crossbow. There's a great selection of weapons on offer, and trying them and the traps out in a variety of ways keeps combat interesting. You collect ears from killed freakers, which work as the game's currency. At camps you can use that to buy parts for your bike, weapons or items. This is all standard stuff, so let's address the big, roaring elephant in the room. I'm of course talking about the bike. The bike is what's meant to set Days Gone apart from other open-world games since it's your only means of transport and your way of life. Biker's gon' bike. It's frankly a major source of tedium, and if Deacon didn't love it so much I would've abandoned it in the first lake I drove it into. The apocalypse isn't short of cars to pilfer for scraps. The bike you own at the start of the game is stolen and parted out, so you have to start from scratch. Successfully finished missions reward you with paints, custom decals and other cosmetics, meanwhile you'll have to spend some of your hard-earned ears on upgrading the engine to allow for more quiet driving, the tank for reduced fuel consumption and the tires for better traction. I can't say that any of these upgrades made much difference, likely deliberately so. Days Gone wants you to consider the time of day to drive so you'll come across fewer zombies, which means the engine is always going to attract zombies you swerve around on the street, and you're supposed to plan your route carefully to include stops for fuel and avoid just pelting down a mountain range to take a shortcut. Falls from any height and crashes will damage your bike; you can collect scrap to repair it on the go or pay a mechanic to fix it. If your bike lands in a body of water, the engine dies immediately. If it's too deep you also won't be able to retrieve it, which means you'll have to walk the entire way to a settlement, on foot, to pay a mechanic to get it back for you. Oh, you don't have enough currency? Well, you better jog to a nest of freakers then to grind for some ears! To be fair, this happens very rarely. What happens a lot, though, is you nervously staring at your tank metre or sneaking an extra victory lap around a combat area to find a canister of petrol because you just run out so incredibly fast. Main story locations will provide you with canisters, so they're not super rare, and I know refuelling is meant to aid realism, but it's just not fun. Having to park your bike a sufficient distance away to not get killed immediately and then having to run back during a few missions that take you across large distances without your bike also isn't fun. Walking your empty bike isn't fun - it means certain death if a horde of zombies is on your tail. Apart from their nest-building, freakers don't differ from other game zombies in any meaningful way. They're devastating in hordes, a bit laughable on their own. You'll likely take down most of them with melee weapons, as they're more common than ammo and because freakers are quite fast. You're frequently encouraged to sneak around large groups, which is when the AI regularly just stops playing nice. Here I am, several feet away, my noise metre shows me I'm completely silent, when suddenly, out of nowhere, raaah! At other times I'm convinced they're popping up out of nowhere, because my proximity radar on the mini map will show nothing, I've turned around several times and should see a freaker running at me, and yet I hear them gobbling, swing my bat in a random direction and meet a decaying head as if by accident. What is that, an emotion? There are so many freaker nests, too. Most of the time can't clear all nests in one area at once because you need ammo to kill that many, so you maybe do one or two whenever you pass them on the road, but don't do it en route to a main mission, because you'll use all of your ammo, and on the way back you'll likely have used all of your resources in a big fight, so when to do this type of mission that amounts to you standing in front of a house and emptying all of your magazines into a horde? Never isn't an option, because until you clean out the nearby nests you won't be able to fast-travel to important places nearby. It just makes me feel actively punished for not wanting to engage in a type of mission that's just no fun. Everything I've talked about here, the chases, sneaking, camps, nests, is side mission stuff that appears in the main mission in exactly the same way, in several instances even in the same environments because the map isn't as big as it looks. Any game I can name you that shares similarities with Days Gone - Far Cry, The Last of Us, Horizon Zero Dawn, Shadows of Mordor, Shadow of the Tomb Raider - has managed to adapt familiar mechanics in their main missions to introduce some variety. Not so Days Gone, where you will be doing the exact same thing, in the exact same way, for hours on end. It's likely that at one point you will have to pick up a side mission just to grind, too, because resources you can pick up in the world will get tight at some point, making you dependant on currency. What's more, you'll only be able to buy certain things such as bandages once you raise a camp's trust level, which you do by - all together now - completing side missions. This can of course be perfectly enjoyable, I've played many a game this way, never bothering with the main story, just clearing out camps and such for a bit each evening, but if you want to continue on with the main story and the game forces your hand in this way it just gets very frustrating, very quickly. The bike is what's meant to set Days Gone apart from other open-world games since it's your only means of transport and your way of life. It's frankly a major source of tedium. When you're not fighting freakers you're fighting infected animals or marauders and rippers, the human enemy types in Days Gone. I liked the suitably horror-tinged introduction to the infected birds, but most other enemy types just turn up in a mission. Marauders set up camps for you to take out, and human enemies behave in more varied ways from freakers, which makes fights against them more interesting. I particularly liked fighting humans on stormy nights, when their flashlights blind you, and I cackled with glee every time I attracted freakers to chokepoints to do the dirty work for me. Narratively, your reason for clearing out camps is them encroaching on territory belonging to the camps you're aligned with, and because those murder hobos, unlike you, aren't nice people. See Far Cry. Marauders also set up traps on the open road, preferably when you're just coming back from a main mission and have no ammo left. Ngh. Rippers meanwhile look and behave like the War Boys from Mad Max, which should be enough of a reason to kill them, and it's also the only reason you're getting, so chop chop. This isn't a point of criticism I only level at Days Gone, by the way, I'd always enjoy more of a reason for virtual mass killing than "they bad", but Days Gone in particular is so shadowy about its motivations that Deacon froth up in a rage at seeing Rippers before you even find out who they are. Which brings me to the story. Deacon St. John, save for his bandana which he wears at his own wedding, is kind of a nothing. He either says "Sonofabitch" to express any and all emotions or spells everything out, from the plot you've just witnessed to his own feelings: "I care because I feel like it was my fault." Days Gone tells you either everything or nothing, but it's never subtle, never lets you uncover anything for yourself. Deacon tracks the local shadowy pharmaceutical corp, which Sarah used to work for, to find out what happened to her. When he witnesses Nero experimenting with freakers, he seizes a chance to continue the investigation. That in itself is ok as far as plots go, it's just that in order to stretch that across a game you're regularly sidetracked by stuff no one cares about. You're chasing a lead, but before you do that you first have to go back to a camp to do a fetch quest. Then there's the fact that there's not that many people to talk to who don't actively want to kill Deacon. Boozer has fulfilled his role in the exposition, so Deacon gets his own personal young woman to protect named Lisa, who is modelled like a short 20-year old but talks like a 6-year old who got hit in the head. The reason Deacon cares about her? She allegedly looks like Sarah's sister, which is never addressed in-game, just stuffed into a mission description. After you've temporarily dropped Lisa off somewhere, there is an entire story mission which you drive from one end of the map to the other only to witness this legendary exchange: Lisa I don't like it here. Deacon Okay Here are your EXP, thanks for playing! Days Gone carries with it the expectation that if you cobble a game together from parts of other games that are already massively successful, you'll have yourself a winner, but it has no awareness of why these games were successful, or simply no means to replicate them. I'm not sure whether you should blame a troubled production process, which Days Gone definitely had, for the state of the game or if it's just an attempt to hoodwink you into paying for a game you've already played several times over. I wasn't expecting Days Gone to add anything new to the genre, but both in terms of its systems and its story it's uninspired, which is driven home by the fact that it's endlessly, needlessly long. I'm begging you, haven't we done this enough? Read the Eurogamer.net reviews policy Sometimes we include links to online retail stores. If you click on one and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. For more information, go here.

Zoe Andrews found her copy of The Secret Garden in Reading’s Museum of English Rural Life A woman has been reunited with a copy of The Secret Garden she owned as a child, serendipitously discovering it for sale on the shelves of the Museum of English Rural Life shop.The MERL, which made news last year for sending an 18th-century schoolboy’s doodles of a chicken in trousers viral, acquired the Ladybird Children’s Classics edition from a charity shop in Wallingford for its collection of second-hand books. On Friday, it was picked up by its former owner, Zoe Andrews, who looked inside and saw it had her sister’s name in the front cover, written in characters that she’d dreamed up as a child.Eighteenth-century doodles of a chicken in trousers go viral Read moreThe MERL’s digital editor Joe Vaughan tweeted about the discovery. “Today, the past sent something back, in our museum, in our strange house of time, like a letter returned to sender,” he wrote. “It’s not every day that you pick up a book, open it, and, in the inside cover, find your sister’s name, in hieroglyphics … the ones you wrote when you were kids.”Andrews “couldn’t believe it when I found this book … Had to repurchase it. What are the chances?!” She couldn’t remember any details about the secret language her and her sister had written on the book. “I had a grid on a sheet of paper with a ‘key’ as to what symbols meant what. This is going back many years, probably 1993/94.”AdvertisementMERL director Kate Arnold-Forster said: “One of the most unexpected yet fascinating aspects of libraries is discovering books that bear traces of their readers’ lives, moving us to speculate about how they were read and enjoyed. That it’s The Secret Garden – a novel that has survived generations and provided a magical escape for so many readers – makes this story all the more wonderful.”The discovery prompted other readers to share on social media stories of unexpectedly discovering their former books. One person wrote that their “father-in-law unpacked a box of books one day and found a hardcover Biggles given to him by auntie Eva – 60 years before, 11th birthday in a totally different part of the country. Awesome roundtrip. His most treasured book now.”Of her Secret Garden find, Andrews said: “When things work their way back to you, they were never meant to leave you in the first place.” She added on Twitter that “it feels right to have the book back”, and after all, it was “only a quid”.Since you’re here…… we have a small favour to ask. More people are reading and supporting The Guardian’s independent, investigative journalism than ever before. And unlike many news organisations, we have chosen an approach that allows us to keep our journalism accessible to all, regardless of where they live or what they can afford. But we need your ongoing support to keep working as we do.The Guardian will engage with the most critical issues of our time – from the escalating climate catastrophe to widespread inequality to the influence of big tech on our lives. At a time when factual information is a necessity, we believe that each of us, around the world, deserves access to accurate reporting with integrity at its heart.Our editorial independence means we set our own agenda and voice our own opinions. Guardian journalism is free from commercial and political bias and not influenced by billionaire owners or shareholders. This means we can give a voice to those less heard, explore where others turn away, and rigorously challenge those in power.We need your support to keep delivering quality journalism that’s open and independent. Every reader contribution, big or small, is so valuable. Support The Guardian from as little as $1 – and it only takes a minute. Thank you.

“I’m hoping that it will create a dialogue and a collective therapy for those that are still suffering"LAGOS - British-born Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje was taken into foster care 1960s. As a youth, the unthinkable happened: the black boy joined a gang of violent white supremacists.Now an award-winning actor, he has brought his story to cinemas in his country of origin - Nigeria. He hopes his directorial debut will be part of a “healing” process for people who sought foster care to give their children a better life.Farming, the film’s title, takes its name from a term used to describe the practice of Nigerian immigrants fostering their children to white families in Britain so they could work, study and save money. It refers to the idea that the children were “farmed” out.The aim of the practice, mainly prevalent from the 1960s to 1980s, was for the immigrants to eventually return to Nigeria.“Perhaps this can provide a healing in some sense but ultimately a re-evaluation of our child-rearing processes,” Akinnuoye-Agbaje told Reuters at the film’s Nigerian premiere on Saturday in the country’s commercial capital, Lagos, after first being screened in London last month.“I’m hoping that it will create a dialogue and a collective therapy for those that are still suffering, and a healing because many of the Nigerian farmers don’t actually go back for the children that were fostered,” he said.As a six-week-old baby in 1967, Akinnuoye-Agbaje was left in the care of a white family in Tilbury, a southeast England town around 20 miles east of central London. And, as a youth, he joined a gang of skinheads - a far-right subculture often associated with racist violence in Britain.Membership in a gang that previously tormented him ended when his biological father, who had relocated to Nigeria where he worked as a barrister, paid for him to attend a private school in the affluent English county of Surrey.That step was taken after he was contacted by Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s foster mother.“It is an important part of British history as well as Nigerian culture, so to be able to bring a story that I have harboured for so long home to the Nigerian audience is... a wonderful sense of accomplishment,” said Akinnuoye-Agbaje.The film - which cost 3 million pounds ($3.89 million) to make and stars British actor Kate Beckinsale as the foster mother - was greeted with cheers and applause in a packed cinema hall in the upmarket Lagos district of Lekki.Thousands of Nigerians leave the west African country each year in search of a better life abroad - often in Europe and the United States. Some of those who attended the screening said it was interesting to see a depiction of life overseas that differed from their expectations.“When it comes to racism... we normally focus on America but it was nice to see what actually happened in the UK (United Kingdom),” said broadcaster Simi Drey.Similarly, a cinematographer who goes by the name T-Cent said he was surprised by the portrayal of people typically seen as having benefited from life in a nation richer than Nigeria, where most people live on less than $2 a day.“We look at these people and we say they are very, very privileged, but then everyone has their internal struggles,” he said.

SCOTS endurance racer Sandy Mitchell heads into his busiest race week of the year knowing that when he leaves Southern Spain this weekend, he could well have a Lamborghini world title tucked away in his racesuit.The 19-year-old from Forfar — backed by Huntly-based Black Bull Whisky — heads to Spain’s Circuit de Jerez for a series of four races in his No. 1 Prestige Performance Lamborghini Huracán, prepared by Wayne Taylor Racing.Partnered by Italian team-mate Andrea Amici, come Thursday and Friday, Mitchell will tackle the final double header in the Lamborghini Super Trofeo North American Championship on the 2.75-mile Spanish track.The duo head into the final two races just 12 points off the lead in the championship, and with every chance of lifting the US title.Immediately after the North American Championship is decided, Mitchell and Amici will then contest the Lamborghini Trofeo World Final. Run over Saturday and Sunday at the same track, these two rounds mark the end of the season of all of Lamborghini’s one-make series, which also includes Europe and Asia, in addition to North America. It also serves as the ultimate challenge between the best drivers from around the world to decide the world champion of Lamborghini Super Trofeo. “It’s going to be an absolutely fantastic week’s racing,” Mitchell, part of the Lamborghini Squadra Corse GT3 Junior Program and a member of the prestigious British Racing Drivers’ Club Rising Star scheme, admitted.“I’ve never raced at Jerez before, but I’m looking forward to it immensely. I think the Huracan will suit the circuit’s fast flowing corners.“The bulk of the Super Trofeo tracks I’ve raced at in the States this year have been new to me. On a couple of the circuits I’ve managed to set new track records, so with plenty of testing at Jerez on Tuesday and Wednesday I’m confident I’ll be fast and ready for the races. “Our first target is to win the opening two races to ensure we have every chance of lifting the Lamborghini Super Trofeo North American Championship.“It’s going to be tough, because we have 12 points to make up on the leaders, but Andrea and I have won already this season and we’re certainly up for the fight in Spain.”But it’s the chance to be crowned Lamborghini World Champion which is the ultimate goal for Mitchell.“To have the opportunity to race for a world championship is fantastic,” the young Scot explained. “To be able to pit myself against the best in the world from not only North America, but also North Europe and Asia, is something I’m really looking forward to.“First though we’ll focus on the American championship. Let’s deal with that first; then we can concentrate on the Lamborghini World Final. I can’t wait.”

“How the MCU Was Made” is a series of deep-dive articles that delve into the ins and outs of the development history, production, and release of all the Marvel Studios moviesWhen Spider-Man: Homecoming hit theaters in 2017, it faced an uphill battle. Sure, the more serious MCU fans knew how exciting it was to finally see Spider-Man as crafted by the fine folks at Marvel Studios, but general audiences saw this as yet another reboot of the famous webslinger just five years after the last one. Luckily, critics raved and word of mouth won out, leading Homecoming to the best box office of the Spider-Man franchise in years. Going into the sequel, Spider-Man: Far from Home, audiences were now onboard with this new take on the character and ready to see where things went next, so the filmmakers didn’t have to worry about reintroducing this iteration of Peter Parker once more. One minor adjustment though: the film would also need to serve as the postscript to the biggest film of all time, Avengers: Endgame. This is the story of how Spider-Man: Far from Home was made.The initial deal that brought Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios together for Spider-Man: Homecoming included at least one additional standalone movie, and given the success of Homecoming, all involved moved forward enthusiastically on a sequel. During the press tour for Homecoming, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige revealed that they had discussed the idea of each new Spider-Man movie covering a different school year for Peter Parker, not unlike the Harry Potter series. With that understood, we knew at the very least Far from Home would explore Parker’s junior year of high school. However, Sony and Marvel butted heads early on when Sony was keen on releasing Far from Home in July 2019, whereas Marvel would have preferred to put the film’s release off a bit longer. You see, Avengers: Endgame—a culminating event for the Marvel Cinematic Universe which would mark the farewell for a number of characters—was due to be released in April 2019, and Marvel wanted to keep all the secrets under wraps. But with Far from Home releasing in July, Sony’s marketing campaign would have to begin before Endgame hit theaters, meaning they’d have to show footage from what happens after Endgame—much to Marvel’s chagrin. But more on that later.By the end of 2017, director Jon Watts and writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers had been enlisted to return and spearhead the sequel. Sommers shed some light on their working relationship at Marvel, revealing that the studio handed over some story ideas before they got to work on the script: “Typically, when we start on a Marvel movie—and we’ve done three now—they’ll have a document that they have put together with ideas for the movie based on source material, their own internal conversations, things from the overall MCU that might be pulled in, things that need to be addressed based on other movies. That’s always a really useful starting point, and we’ll all look at that document and that’ll be sort of a source for conversations. And then we’ll take it from there, but things can change a lot. It’s just a set of ideas to sort of get the whole conversation started.” Specifically for Far from Home, Marvel had two major points that needed to be addressed as it related to the events of Avengers: Endgame: the Blip and Tony Stark’s death:“We had to deal with the Blip, and we had to deal with Tony,” said McKenna. “Those were the two big plot points that we were handed. Knowing that we had to deal with this time transition, which I think everyone had kind of questions about, and we ran towards it in a fun way. Like what’s the nitty-gritty of half the world disappearing and half the world staying? It all worked pretty well, particularly in high school because high school is embarrassing and humiliating and weird enough without having half your class disappearing and then coming back, and you’ve moved on to college, and half your friends are still now in high school. Or in, specifically from the movie, an eleven-year-old elementary school student is now the class hunk.”The team considered a number of different villains before hitting upon Mysterio, whose obfuscation of the truth fit into themes that Watts wanted to explore relating to the “fractured reality” we currently live in, wherein lies become truth. And after settling on Mysterio, the plot began to unfold with regards to painting him as an ally before the reveal that he’s actually an antagonist:“I think once we settled on Mysterio, it was definitely a challenge to figure out exactly what his plan was going to be, and how he was going to carry it out,” said Sommers. “Once we decided that it was going to be a deception, or a con, we knew that he was going to be portraying himself as a friend, portraying himself as an ally and a potential replacement mentor to Peter. We knew that we were going to have to then show our cards at some point, and reveal that this was a trick. Where that happens in the movie now is pretty much where we always wanted it to happen. We didn’t really want to hold it that much longer.” Jake Gyllenhaal was the team’s first choice to play the villain, with the “pie in the sky” idea that this version of Mysterio allows the Oscar-nominated actor to play both the kind of dashing leading man he’s played in the past and the more tortured Nightcrawler-type character he’s also played before. Luckily, Gyllenhaal was game to sign on, adding a bit of irony to the film as the actor was first in line to replace Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man 2 during a rocky period of contract negotiations.Another major plot element of Spider-Man: Far from Home is the reveal that Mary Jane (Zendaya) finds out that Peter Parker is Spider-Man. McKenna said they began with the idea that there’s a big kiss at the end of the movie, but what happened in between was up for debate:“There was a lot of debate about—everyone felt like we wanted to have them have a nice kiss by the end of the movie, but also differentiate that from, say, the big romantic moments and kisses that we’ve seen in previous Spider-Man movies. Then what we were going to do between the start of the movie and that was a topic for much, much conversation, and just when were we going to have them tell each other how they feel and things like that. At some point, [Watts] pitched the idea that she would figure out that he’s Spider-Man. And in the very moment that he’s about to say how he feels, she’s just going to say, ‘Oh you’re Spider-Man. I know you’re Spider-Man.’ That was just one of those moments where we all looked at each other and said, ‘Yeah, that’ll be great.’ That’s where a whole bunch of other conversations came from, and I think that was sort of the basis for the progression of their relationship, was building it out all around that, just to make it all fit.” Far from Home is a movie chock-full of reveals, and indeed the biggest is saved for last: Mysterio tells the world Spider-Man’s true identity from beyond the grave. This plot point was hit upon early on by the creative team, and eventually they decided the best person to follow-up on this would be J. Jonah Jameson. Given that J.K. Simmons’ performance as Jameson in Sam Raimi’s trilogy is iconic, the team reached out to the Oscar-winning actor about filling the role once more, albeit with a different Alex Jones-type twist on the character. As Watts explains, Simmons was… confused:“That was always the plan because we knew that we wanted to reveal Peter’s identity, and we wanted to bring in this idea of the news and not being sure exactly what you can believe or not believe. And it was always going to be him, but we didn’t want to say anything to him or to anyone because we didn’t want any press to leak out about it, via his agents or whatever. So we waited until the very, very last second and called him up, and he came by and he was like, ‘Wait, what? You want me to do what?’ It took him a second to understand, but as we pitched the idea he was totally on board and he really loved getting to be the person who finally outs Peter Parker.”The moment was shot to be part of the film, but actually appears as the first post-credits scene so the audience can linger with Peter/Spider-Man and MJ a little bit longer. As for that second post-credits scene, well it turns out Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) haven’t really been Nick Fury and Maria Hill this entire time. Instead, the movie reveals that they’re the Skrull characters Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) and Soren (Sharon Blynn) while Nick Fury’s been on a Skrull ship in space, a plot point that Watts said was inspired by seeing Captain Marvel:“Once you get into the vocabulary of a con man movie like this, I feel you have more leeway to just keep doing reversals like that,” Watts said. “Everyone is lying. Everyone is hiding something. No one is who they seem. It just made sense that at the end of it we would do this. As we were developing the story, there was always a lingering question of, ‘But, how could anyone fool Nick Fury? His super power is being skeptical.’ But we knew he needed to be fooled in order to make the story work. So as soon as I saw Captain Marvel it became obvious how we do it. When you watch the movie again with this knowledge about the Skrulls there are some fun things you will catch, especially Fury’s dialogue.” Indeed, throughout the movie Watts hides clues to some of the major reveals. You’ll see Gyllenhaal sitting on the sidelines while his projected version of Mysterio “performs,” and even in the bar scene in which Peter hands over E.D.I.T.H. to Quentin Beck, the art direction is designed to subtly influence Peter’s decision:“You may not have caught this, but all the things on the wall behind Quentin [in the bar scene] are things that feed into the idea that Peter would hand the glasses over to him,” Watts said. “So even the art direction is part of the con. There’s military medals, that sort of helps remind Peter what Quentin said about being a hero soldier. There’s a picture of glasses, again, embedding that idea. So there are all these things in the background of the bar in Peter’s eye line that will subconsciously motivate him to hand these glasses over.”While Spider-Man: Homecoming shot in Atlanta, the production of Far from Home was based in London. Filming began on July 2, 2018, and the major Endgame-related elements were only on a need-to-know basis—most of the actors in the movie besides Holland, Gyllenhaal, and Jon Favreau were unaware that Tony Stark dies in Avengers: Endgame.The first trailer for Spider-Man: Far from Home was released on January 15, 2019, months before Avengers: Endgame came out. Sony’s workaround to not spoiling the massive Marvel movie was to simply not reveal to audiences at which point in the MCU timeline Far from Home takes place. The trailer and early marketing materials simply showed Peter taking a European vacation, and audiences would either accept that this sequel was actually a prequel, or simply be down for being kept in the dark for a bit. Indeed, after Avengers: Endgame came out, Sony released an additional Far from Home trailer that teased the actual plot—and the reveal that a significant portion of the movie would revolve around Peter Parker reeling from the death of his mentor, Tony Stark.