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According to GLHF sources, Amazon will announce today that it has put in a formal offer to acquire Electronic Arts (EA), the publisher behind Apex Legends, FIFA, Madden, and more.

Rumors have been circling online for a few weeks about a potential EA buyout, with Apple, Disney, and Amazon listed as potential buyers. As per our sources, Amazon has finally made an offer.

Its a smart business move from Amazon, which is also making big moves in television. After the success of The Witcher and Arcane on Netflix both shows built around big video games Amazon could potentially use EAs franchises as settings for new shows. Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Dead Space theres plenty of potential in EAs library for transmedia opportunities.

This news comes after a range of unprecedented acquisitions and consolidation in the video game space, with the biggest of them being Microsofts purchase of Bethesda for $7.5 billion.

According to our sources, the announcement will be made later today. Weve reached out to Amazon and EA for comment and will update you if we hear anything back.

The brazen assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe with a handmade gun shocked a nation unused to high-profile political violence.

But there has been another surprise in the weeks since the murder as details have emerged about an alleged assassin who was well-off until his mothers huge donations to the controversial Unification Church left him poor, neglected and filled with rage.

Some Japanese have expressed understanding, even sympathy, for the 41-year-old suspect, especially those of a similar age who may feel pangs of recognition linked to their own suffering during three decades of economic malaise and social turmoil.

There have been suggestions on social media that care packages should be sent to suspect Tetsuya Yamagamis detention center to cheer him up. And more than 7,000 people have signed a petition requesting prosecutorial leniency for Yamagami, who told police that he killed Abe, one of Japans most powerful and divisive politicians, because of his ties to an unnamed religious group widely believed to be the Unification Church.

Experts say the case has also illuminated the plight of thousands of other children of church adherents who have faced abuse and neglect.

If he hadnt allegedly committed the crime, Mr. Yamagami would deserve much sympathy. There are many others who also suffer because of their parents faith, said Kimiaki Nishida, a Rissho University psychology professor and expert in cult studies.

There also have been serious political implications for Japans governing party, which has kept cozy ties with the church despite controversies and a string of legal disputes.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishidas popularity has plunged since the killing, and he has shuffled his Cabinet to purge members with ties to the religious group. On Thursday, the national police agency chief submitted his resignation to take responsibility over Abes assassination.

Yamagami, who is being detained for mental evaluation until late November, has previously expressed on social media a hatred for the Unification Church, which was founded in South Korea in 1954 and has, since the 1980s, faced accusations of devious recruitment practices and brainwashing of adherents into making huge donations.

In a letter seen by The Associated Press and tweets believed to be his, Yamagami said his family and life were destroyed by the church because of his mothers huge donations. Police confirmed that a draft of Yamagamis letter was found in a computer confiscated from his one-room apartment.

After my mother joined the church (in the 1990s), my entire teenage years were gone, with some 100 million yen ($735,000) wasted, he wrote in the typed letter, which he sent to a blogger in western Japan the day before he allegedly assassinated Abe during a campaign speech on July 8 in Nara, western Japan. Its not an exaggeration to say my experience during that time has kept distorting my entire life.

Yamagami was four when his father, an executive of a company founded by the suspects grandfather, killed himself. After his mother joined the Unification Church, she began making big donations that bankrupted the family and shattered Yamagamis hope of going to college. His brother later committed suicide. After a three-year stint in the navy, Yamagami was most recently a factory worker.

Yamagamis uncle, in media interviews, said Yamagamis mother donated 60 million yen ($440,000) within months of joining the church. When her father died in the late 1990s, she sold company property worth 40 million yen ($293,000), bankrupting the family in 2002. The uncle said he had to stop giving money for food and school to the Yamagami children because the mother gave it to the church, not her children.

When Yamagami tried to kill himself in 2005, his mother did not return from a trip to South Korea, where the church was founded, his uncle said.

Yamagamis mother reportedly told prosecutors that she was sorry for troubling the church over her sons alleged crime. His uncle said she seemed devastated but remained a church follower. The authorities and the local bar association refused to comment. Repeated attempts to contact Yamagami, his mother, his uncle and their lawyers were unsuccessful.

Beginning in October 2019, Yamagami, who is widely reported to have tweeted under the name Silent Hill 333, wrote about the church, his painful past and political issues.
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Yamagamis case also has shed light on the children of Unification Church adherents. Many are neglected, experts say, and theres been little help because government and school officials tend to resist interference on religious freedom grounds.

If our society had paid more attention to the problems over the past few decades, (Yamagamis) attack could have been prevented, said Mafumi Usui, a Niigata Seiryo University social psychology professor and cult expert.

More than 55,000 people have joined a petition calling for legal protection for second generation followers who say they were forced to join the church.

Abe, in a September 2021 video message, praised the churchs work for peace on the Korean Peninsula and its focus on family values. His video appearance possibly motivated Yamagami, said Nishida, the psychology professor.
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The case has drawn attention to ties between the church, which came to Japan in 1964, and the governing Liberal Democratic Party that has almost uninterruptedly ruled post World War II Japan.

A governing lawmaker, Shigeharu Aoyama, last month said a party faction leader told him how church votes could help candidates that lack organizational backing.

Tomihiro Tanaka, head of the churchs Japan branch, denied political interference with any particular party, but said the church has developed closer ties with governing party lawmakers than with others because of their shared anti-communist stance.

Members of the National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales, which for decades has provided legal assistance for people with financial disputes with the church, say theyve received 34,000 complaints involving lost money exceeding a total of 120 billion yen ($900 million).

Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a closely-watched bill Monday that would have allowed San Francisco, Oakland and Los Angeles to open supervised drug use sites in an effort to curb the states rising opioid overdose rate.

Instead, the governor called for Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly to join with with city and county officials to study minimum standards and best practices for overdose prevention programs.

Newsoms decision against Senate Bill 57, announced just hours ahead of the legal deadline for a veto, will almost certainly be seen by supporters as a retreat from his commitment to progressive California policies. It is also likely to heighten speculation that his possible aspirations as a Democratic presidential candidate might have compelled him to row back support for an idea he was very, very open to when he ran for governor in 2018.

Approval of the five-year pilot program would almost certainly have been used by Republicans against Newsom, who is up for re-election in November.

It would also have provided fresh material for national GOP attacks on Newsom an outspoken critic of governance in red states such as Texas, Florida and Alabama as an enabler of legally sanctioned drug dens. The term is intentionally used to conjure images of 19th-century opium dens or more contemporary crack houses where drugs are sold or made.

The bill received broad support from public health groups like the Drug Policy Alliance and California Association of Alcohol and Drug Program Executives, both of which co-sponsored it with Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco. All but a handful of Democrats favored it and pushed Newsom to sign amid heavy opposition from conservatives.
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Wiener, the bills author, called the veto tragic and a huge lost opportunity on Twitter.

We dont need additional studies or working groups to determine whether safe consumption sites are effective, Wiener said in a statement. We know from decades of experience and numerous peer-reviewed scientific studies that they work.

Safe consumption sites have been in operation around the world for approximately 30 years, with great success and literally zero overdose deaths, he added. These sites are a proven strategy to reduce overdose deaths, pressure on emergency rooms, and public drug use, while expanding access to drug treatment.
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Outside of the U.S., such sites are not a new phenomenon. Research shows that they are a cost-effective method for reducing overdoses and other related public health issues.

Proponents say they do not promote drug abuse but are places where people can safely use illicit drugs under medically trained staff, rather than on their own in dangerous public settings far away from medical care. These centers also assist people in obtaining addiction support services.

California would have been the third state to authorize these sites, also called overdose prevention projects. Rhode Island was the first to legalize them in 2021, but a center has yet to open. New York state opened two in 2021. Officials reported that within the first few months of operation, staff prevented more than 150 overdoses.

would you have stayed on his side if he was like, "hey Jesse, wanna cook meth?", and Jesse was like, "yes"?

Wait for the diofield chronicle next month instead

Guns are, at present, an inseparable part of American culture.

If you haven't played Stardew Valley yet that's a no brainer time waster.

Pretty easy to pick up and play (assuming you've played another in the series before)

This might look like an easy solution, but would be a bad idea in the long run.

So it is a better to live with the fascists?

huh

Advocating giving LITERAL drugs to LITERAL minors? Well that's one way to fight the fight

We need to do like Ukraine did, ban this garbage ass party, they do nothing for the American people but cause more division and death or tank the economy.

i like how every yakuza game has to have a weird plot twist

So he's not going to buy it