We’re masking Microsoft’s big wager on the metaverse and the contenders on the Australian Open.
Microsoft bets on gaming and the metaverse
Microsoft agreed to purchase Activision Blizzard, the online game maker behind hits like Call of Duty and Candy Crush, for $68.7 billion in money. The deal will place Microsoft for the subsequent era of the web.
The acquisition, Microsoft’s largest ever, would catapult the corporate into a number one spot within the online game business and will strengthen its hand in digital and augmented actuality. The takeover would make Microsoft the world’s third-largest gaming firm by income, behind Tencent and Sony, the corporate mentioned.
U.S. regulators face a problem in deciding strategy the large deal. Microsoft has expanded its gaming enterprise to surpass $10 billion in annual income. In anticipation of an extended evaluation, Microsoft mentioned it didn’t count on the Activision deal to shut till the subsequent fiscal 12 months, which ends in June 2023.
Metaverse: The identify for the digital worlds many corporations are placing cash into is extra of a buzzword than a giant enterprise for now. But the Activision deal might give Microsoft a major increase in opposition to Facebook, which is taken into account the chief within the metaverse. Our tech columnist explains what the hype is about.
Context: One most important driver of online game offers is the race for unique content material: Locking up a serious franchise like Call of Duty or Skyrim, as an example, might drive followers to change from Sony’s PlayStation to Microsoft’s Xbox, if Microsoft selected to make a sport unique.
Omicron within the U.S. hits hospitals arduous
A wave of Omicron instances could also be cresting within the northeastern U.S., however the variety of Covid sufferers is at a document excessive and climbing, overwhelming hospitals whose staffs have been hollowed out by the COVID-19 coronavirus.
The common variety of Americans hospitalized with the COVID-19 coronavirus is 157,000, a rise of 54 p.c over two weeks. And the quantity might proceed growing for a while. Experts say knowledge on deaths and hospitalizations tends to lag behind case numbers by about two weeks.
Hospital staffs are severely stretched, medical doctors’ teams say, after relentless surges within the U.S. which have surpassed these of most international locations. Many staff are sick with Covid and others have stop below the strain of the pandemic.
Though the concept of the virus turning into a manageable a part of every day life has gained traction, specialists warn that there is no such thing as a assure that the inhabitants is constructing sufficient pure immunity and that there is no such thing as a certainty round future variants.
Data: More than 790,000 new infections are being reported within the U.S. every day. Deaths now exceed 1,900 a day, up 50 p.c over the previous two weeks.
Here are the newest updates and maps of the pandemic.
In different developments:
Big comebacks on the Australian Open
After a tumultuous 12 months and a four-month layoff throughout which she questioned what she needed from tennis, Naomi Osaka is again on the courtroom.
Today she is going to play Madison Brengle within the second spherical on the Australian Open after successful her Monday match.
Before her pause from tennis, Osaka was the dominant determine within the sport and the world’s highest-paid feminine athlete at simply 23 years outdated. On her return, she mentioned, “I’m not sure if this is going to work out well.”
Also on Wednesday, Simona Halep will play Beatriz Haddad Maia.
Ashleigh Barty, the ladies’s No. 1, is again, too, after ending her season following the U.S. Open final 12 months. Her attainable matchup with Osaka will probably be her hardest take a look at.
Men’s gamers will profit from Novak Djokovic’s absence after Djokovic misplaced a visa battle with the Australian authorities. Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer are tied with Djokovic for 20 Grand Slam titles every, and each wish to be the primary to hit 21 and make historical past.
THE LATEST NEWS
Asia Pacific
Many Georgians imagine that Bidzina Ivanishvili, an eccentric billionaire and the previous prime minister of Georgia, nonetheless wields energy behind the scenes. A park that opened to the general public in 2020 is a manifestation of his opaque however overwhelming presence in Georgia. Ivanishvili personally vetted many of the 200 timber that had been transplanted to the park, which price him tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars} to create, on Georgia’s Black Sea Coast.
What Is the Metaverse, and Why Does It Matter?
Card 1 of 5
The origins. The phrase “metaverse” describes a totally realized digital world that exists past the one during which we dwell. It was coined by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 novel “Snow Crash,” and the idea was additional explored by Ernest Cline in his novel “Ready Player One.”
The future. Many folks in tech imagine the metaverse will herald an period during which our digital lives will play as vital a task as our bodily realities. Some specialists warn that it might nonetheless develop into a fad and even harmful.
Fuller views of motherhood
Mainstream movies and TV usually paint motherhood in broad strokes. A mom is both endlessly dedicated to her youngsters, or her absence serves as fodder for a protagonist’s origin story, as our critic at giant Amanda Hess writes. But extra productions at the moment are difficult these notions with complicated portrayals.
In “The Lost Daughter,” Leda (performed by Olivia Colman), a tutorial, leaves her younger daughters to pursue her profession, as many deadbeat fathers have performed earlier than her. “Children are a crushing responsibility,” she tells a pregnant character. Yet the film reserves judgment and depicts Leda as a human being, not a monster. “We can dislike her, but we are never permitted to revile her,” Jeannette Catsoulis writes in a evaluation.
There’s additionally Penélope Cruz’s character, in “Parallel Mothers,” a pregnant 40-year-old girl who befriends a teenage mother-to-be and makes an immoral choice about their newborns. “Instead of reassuring audiences that mommy is always a bastion of safety, these filmmakers have created mother heroines who are unpredictable, erratic and even a little bit frightening,” Emily Gould writes in Vanity Fair.
Even the “Sex and the City” reboot “And Just Like That …” is a part of the pattern. At one level, Miranda — a mom to a hormonal teenager — tells a personality who’s contemplating having youngsters that there are a lot of nights she needs to “go home to an empty house.”
These works, Gould writes, “present their mothers as full human beings, even when their needs are structurally opposed to those of their children.”