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You might think Beavers was smoking something. After all, the billions from the settlement were supposed to help fund smoking-prevention campaigns and lessen the fiscal burden states bear by caring for sick smokers. Indeed, pundits noted the irony of Big Tobacco, in effect, paying the states to put them out of business. Only it hasn’t worked out that way. In the last four years, North Carolina has spent almost three quarters of the settlement money it’s received on tobacco marketing and production....

Considering the impact opening levels can have on gamers, we polled our writers to see what games they thought have the best start. In our list below, we’ve selected games whose first level impressed us, challenged us, and sparked within us a love for gaming. Considering the subject matter, there are spoilers ahead. Super Mario Bros. [HTML1] It’s quite possible that the opening level in Super Mario Bros. is the most-played in video game history....

Created by Twitch streamer Momo Misfortune, the Change.org petition asks for non-binary and transgender-inclusive language to determine the gender identity of a Sim, instead of the game’s default pronouns by body type. “If we could have the option to choose pronouns for our Sim or for the team to switch older game texts to be gender neutral like current pack dialoged [sic] it would be impactful for those of us who are still unable to truly feel represented in the game by having our Sims selves misgendered,” the petition read....

The winner was supposed to push on towards world titles, and he eventually did, but no one was quite sure what would happen to Fielding. A fight with the biggest name boxing has to offer didn’t quite fit into his forecasts. MORE: Join DAZN and watch more than 80 fight nights a year On Dec. 15th in New York City, with the entire world watching, Rocky Fielding will put his WBA belt on the line against Canelo Alvarez at Madison Square Garden....

The announcement wasn’t so much a surprise as an overdue expectation among fans, as rumors and details surrounding a Resident Evil 4 remake had been circling online for years before this latest confirmation. However, it does pose a new challenge for Capcom regarding the prospect of future remakes, since there’s an ever-dwindling supply of outdated games that could do with a fresh lick of paint that fans would want to see....

The face of war–frightened allied POWs and the dazed survivor of yet another Iraqi missile attack on Tel Aviv–became visible to all Americans last week. These images were among the latest evidence of Saddam Hussein’s willingness to use every means at his disposal–terror weapons, blatant propaganda, even environmental catastrophe–to counter the technological superiority of the United States and its allies. It may be true, as historians say, that the tendency to demonize the enemy is a regrettable byproduct of modern war....

The current body of evidence has shown that the benefits of ART can be great in mixed-status couples, effectively eliminating the risk of HIV if the virus is fully suppressed (undetectable). PARTNER 1 Reports Zero Infections At the 2014 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) in Boston, researchers with the ongoing PARTNER1 study reported that among 767 mixed-status couples using TasP alone, not one infection occurred despite over 44,000 condomless sex acts....

What we have now is an unannounced and almost unconscious policy to eliminate inflation in fits and starts. This is one cause of today’s faltering economic recovery, whose fragility was underlined by last week’s sharp stock-market decline. Unlike the 1960s and 1970s, the Federal Reserve is serious about moving toward price stability. But the Fed’s new caution, coupled with consumer and business pessimism, is hobbling the recovery. Price stability is worth having....

Now my old shop has been connected to the Democratic fund-raising scandal–John Huang, the suspicious DNC official, was a Commerce of- ficial first. You can’t understand the 1996 money mess without grasping the environment in which commercial diplomacy was born. It is, after all, the major thrust of the president’s foreign policy: Al Gore is in Asia this week talking about just these issues. In our single-minded drive to help American companies, we dramatically expanded our commercial involvement in big emerging markets like China, India and Brazil....

But in a speech that mentioned some very familiar names within the royal family, the silence around the royals the king did not make mention of spoke louder than words. In a video speech recorded in the Chapel of St. George at Windsor Castle—the royal residence in Berkshire, southeast England—King Charles opened his speech talking about his “beloved mother” laid to rest with his “dear father” (the late Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh), before mentioning the many letters and cards he and his wife Camilla (now the Queen consort) have received from members of the public expressing their sympathy for the grieving king....

While a game based on The Mandalorian would have plenty of potential on its own, it would also be in a unique position compared to recent Star Wars games. The franchise has yet to receive a major modern game that tackles life as a bounty hunter in one way or another, and it’s not for lack of trying. Almost ten years ago, fans nearly got a game that would finally let them explore the seedy underbelly of the Star Wars galaxy in the form of the cancelled Star Wars 1313....

Whatever inner need that decision served, it has made Neil Bush a political lightning rod. The blame game got so rough last week that an unnamed GOP operative declared that Bush “is going to become the Savings and Loan poster child.” Instead of closing the book on the Neil Bush case, the Office of Thrift Supervision pressed ahead. OTS officials released 1,000 pages of documents from the case last week and alleged that Neil Bush engaged in “one of the worst kinds” of conflicts of interest while serving as a director of Silverado....

He’s not the only one. Cheap hardware and user-friendly software are creating a new generation of religious computer junkies. An estimated 13 million Christians have computers in their homes, and a slew of companies have sprung up to target the estimated $25 million market. Software programs addressing every need, from tracking church attendance to playing Biblical crossword puzzles and games, are now extending beyond religious bookstores into mainstream retailers like Egghead....

Taylor and his girlfriend were sleeping with their 18-month-old daughter beside them when someone broke into his house and shot him. So far, investigators are considering it a botched robbery and have brought in two teens and a young man for questioning. Within hours of his death, though, cable-news hosts and sports columnists were looking for proof that he was a bad boy who lived and died gangsta. Taylor did give them some ammo: he skipped a day of the NFL-mandated rookie symposium three years ago and was fined seven times for late hits and uniform infractions....

However, the most longstanding and impactful Isekai titles all manage to take basic elements of the genre and do something unique with them. Popular titles like Sword Art Online, Re:Zero, KonoSuba, That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime, and more all have benefitted from putting their own twist on the formula, with multiple seasons and sustained success to show for it. But one of the genre’s most popular and unique titles stands with only one season to its name....

Law-enforcement sources say that Reid told FBI interrogators he came up with the bomb plot, recipe and supplies on his own in Amsterdam (with help from the Internet). But Dutch authorities don’t believe him. They are investigating contacts they believe he made in the Netherlands, including reports he may have hooked up with Jerome Courtailler, a suspected French terrorist. Dutch police arrested Courtailler on Sept. 13; he is still being held on terrorism conspiracy charges....

Bangladesh 56% India 53% Ethiopia 48% Vietnam 40% Nigeria 39% Indonesia 34% United States 55% Russia 54% Britain 51% Germany 50% Colombia 43% Brazil 31%

Trump’s disastrous decision to try and pressure Georgia’s secretary of state to effectively falsify the presidential vote in that state (which played a key role in the loss of the two Senate run-off elections there) and his role in fomenting the Capitol riot were both indefensible—as are many of the tweets he’s sent out since losing the 2020 presidential election, in which he has relentlessly hyped unsubstantiated claims of massive fraud....

Health monitoring smart home products, in particular, bring many opportunities. Some argue that nine-to-five health care might soon be a thing of the past. However, individual smart health gadgets such as smartwatches and activity trackers are not currently suitable to monitor our health holistically. New solutions are required, and many are currently being innovated. Experts agree that these solutions should be based on interoperability where devices can communicate with each other....

With the announcement of the Nintendo Switch OLED edition, many were hoping that improvements would be made to the platform’s existing joy-cons. After all, since the launch of the original console, these controllers have been plagued with a myriad of technical faults (most notably the infamous drift issue) and many gamers find that they are not particularly ergonomic either. Unfortunately, Nintendo has already confirmed that the OLED model will not be addressing any of those problems, and that the joy-cons will remain fundamentally the same....