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Two retro THQ games are up for grabs, but you better move quickly. THQ Nordic is celebrating its 10th anniversary with a Steam sale, so you can currently grab a bunch of the publisher's titles for cheap. Better still, two classic PC games from the THQ Nordic catalogue are being offered for free: Titan Quest Anniversary Edition and Jagged Alliance: Gold Edition. That edition of Titan Quest is actually the overhauled 2016 edition, so the action-RPG is a pretty decent experience by today's standards. It features "restored and improved" multiplayer, support for a range of resolutions and a host of other improvements over the 2006 original. As for Jagged Alliance, that 1994 turn-based strategy is pretty much untouched, though it does include the standalone expansion Deadly Games. It's a classic of the genre and well-worth a playthrough if you're starved of XCOM-likes. Both games will be free until September 23, so you'd better add them to your account before that deadline. Meanwhile, the Epic Games Store is currently offering Speed Brawl and Tharsis entirely free of charge, so go and grab them now if your backlog is feeling a bit slight.

https://www.livescience.com/ Hunters in the Faroe Islands riding speed boats and jet skis ambushed and slaughtered a super-pod of more than 1,400 white-sided dolphins on Sunday (Sept. 12), leading to outcry from conservationists and even some supporters of the archipelago's centuries-old tradition of killing the marine animals for food. The dolphins' bloody, lacerated corpses have been left lined up on the beach following the killings. The scale of the slaughter drew outrage from conservationists, Faroese natives and pro-hunting parties alike. The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society described the killings as a "massacre." Dolphin hunting is an ancient tradition in the Faroe Islands — an autonomous territory of Denmark located between Norway, Scotland and Iceland — that dates back to Viking times. Known as a Grindadráp, or just "the grind," the controversial custom involves driving pilot whales or other large dolphin species into the islands' fjords in order to kill them with a specialized lance. It is the only Indigenous whaling practice still undertaken in Western Europe. Related: Photos: Orcas are chowing down on great-white-shark organs Ordinarily, the butchered dolphin meat is portioned out to help feed the community. But some worry that this year's haul will be far too much for the archipelago's roughly 53,000 residents, according to Faroese locals interviewed by the Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet. "For such a hunt to take place in 2021 in a very wealthy European island community just 230 miles [370 kilometers] from the UK with no need or use for such a vast quantity of contaminated meat is outrageous," Rob Read, chief operating officer of Sea Shepherd U.K., said in a statement. According to locals, the hunters vastly underestimated the size of the pod. "It was a big mistake," Olavur Sjurdarberg, the chairman of the Faroese Whalers Association, told the BBC. When they first spotted the dolphins, the hunting party estimated the pod's numbers to be around 200. Once the killing started, though, it continued until the animals were dead. Bjarni Mikkelsen, a Faroese marine biologist, said it was the single largest kill in the grind's recorded history — the previous record, set in 1940, was 1,200 pilot whales. An average year brings in around 600 pilot whales and 250 white-sided dolphins, according to the Faroe Islands government. "Somebody should have known better," said Sjurdarberg, who was not involved in the hunt. "Most people a re in shock about wha While the grind has been heavily criticized by conservation groups for years, it only bubbled up into the wider pop culture consciousness recently, after being featured in the 2021 Netflix documentary "Seaspiracy," a film about the fishing industry's impact on global oceans. Currently, dolphin hunting in the Faroe Islands is legal, though it does require a license and permission from local authorities. Proponents of the grind worry that Sunday's mass killing will give leverage to environmentalists looking to outlaw (or at least tightly regulate) the practice. And they might be right. The event sparked a massive backlash on social media worldwide, including calls to boycott Faroe Island exports, such as salmon.

https://www.bbc.com/news Earlier this week, North Korea announced it had successfully tested a long-range cruise missile capable of hitting much of Japan. Cruise missiles, unlike ballistic missiles, can swerve and turn through most of their flight - allowing them to attack from unexpected angles. It shows North Korea is continuing its pursuit of ever more diverse and sophisticated means to deliver nuclear weapons. It's clear the pandemic, a spate of natural disasters, and internal economic difficulties have done little to deter North Korea's fundamental prioritisation of its nuclear deterrent. The latest successful test brings up a series of questions - why is North Korea doing this now, how significant is this, and what does it tell us about its priorities? Pyongyang remains unshifting North Korea has broadly been on a trajectory of qualitatively refining and quantitatively expanding its nuclear capabilities since the spring of 2019. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, since returning from the failed February 2019 summit with former U.S. President Donald J. Trump in Hanoi, Vietnam, expressed resolve to continue investing in North Korea's nuclear deterrent and pursuing a "self-reliant" national defence strategy. But why is North Korea choosing to do this even as it struggles through food shortages and a deepening economic crisis? It serves multiple ends. Internally, these tests amplify Mr Kim's narrative of pursuing self-reliance in national defence and bolsters morale. In practical terms, new capabilities, like these cruise missiles, complicate planning by North Korea's adversaries, who must now contend with new capabilities. North Korea's missile and nuclear programme North and South Korea test missiles hours apart Unlike ballistic missiles, cruise missiles fly low and slow towards their target. The cruise missiles North Korea tested recently covered a range of some 1,500km (930 miles) over a little more than two hours of flight time. Ballistic missiles of equivalent range would take a matter of minutes, but North Korea's interest in cruise missiles may be due to the difficulty for its adversaries in detecting their launches and in defending against them. And what these tests show is that Mr Kim - despite openly contending with the country's difficulties - has maintained his determination to continue advancing his nuclear capabilities. Unless we see a fundamental shift in priorities by North Korea or successful diplomatic outreach by the United States, Pyongyang should be expected to continue refining and advancing its capabilities. But is it notable that North Korea chose to introduce this weapon system at this point in time? Despite commentary to the contrary, the introduction of this weapon system and its testing likely have little to do with the policy specifics of the Biden administration or the twentieth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, which coincided with these recent tests. Nuclear carrying capabilities Of greatest concern to South Korea, Japan, and the international community is the North Korean state media description of these newly tested missiles as "strategic weapons." This usually means that the regime hopes to attach a nuclear warhead to the weapon. No previous cruise missile system in North Korea has had an implied nuclear weapon delivery role. But the development of these cruise missiles shouldn't come as a surprise. Mr Kim had in January 2021 announced that such a system was under development. He also implied that this missile system could be used in the future for a potential tactical nuclear weapon delivery role. What else do we know about these missiles? Cruise missiles are also functionally different from ballistic missiles - which the North tested just two days later. The UN Security Council sanctions actually forbid North Korea from testing ballistic missiles - but not cruise missiles. This is because it considers ballistic missiles to be more threatening because they can carry a bigger and more powerful payloads, have a much longer range and can fly faster. But unlike ballistic missiles, which have a limited ability to manoeuvre in the final stages of their flight, as their payloads hurtle down to the earth, cruise missiles can swerve and turn through the majority of their flight, allowing them to attack from unexpected angles. Meanwhile, their low altitude flight means that ground-based radar systems will often only detect these missiles in the final stages of their flight, when it may be too low to successfully attempt to intercept them. Cruise missiles aren't a fundamentally new technology for North Korea. For years now, it has tested and refined Soviet-derived anti-ship cruise missiles. The recently tested missiles, however, exceed the range of those older cruise missiles by an order of magnitude. But these cruise missiles are but one part of this broader effort by North Korea. As the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency recently assessed, Pyongyang has also resumed operations at the gas-graphite reactor at the Yongbyon complex, implying the resumed production of plutonium for use in nuclear weapons. The test of ballistic missiles in the days after the cruise missile tests underscores the possibility of North Korea resuming a sustained campaign of missile development, testing, and evaluation.

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