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#1 The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III • Trails – Erebonia Arc • PlayStation 4 • Nippon Ichi Software • Nihon Falcom • Marvelous USA The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III – Announcement Trailer (PS4)
The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III is finally coming to North America
Above: The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III.
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NIS America announced today that the Japanese role-playing game The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III is coming to North America on the PlayStation 4 during fall 2019.
Trails of Cold Steel III came out in Japan back in 2017. The Legend of Heroes series contains acclaimed titles like the Trails in the Sky games. Trails of Cold Steel is a sub-series within The Legend of Heroes set after the events of Trails in the Sky.
A fourth and concluding entry in the Trails of Cold Steel series came out in Japan last fall. With Trails of Cold Steel III now finally coming to the U.S., the odds of its sequel’s translation happening are now higher.
NIS America, Inc.✔@NISAmerica
When it seems as if peace has finally settled over the empire of Erebonia, the embers of war stir anew just a mere year-and-a-half later in The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III coming exclusively to PlayStation®4 in Fall 2019! #TrailsofColdSteelIII #PlayStation4
Nihon Falcom, the studio that’s also behind the action RPG Y’s series, develops Trails of Cold Steel. The games, similar to the Trails in the Sky titles, stand out for their world-building and expansive narratives.
The first two Trails of Cold Steel games are available on PC via Steam. Trails of Cold Steel is a PlayStation 4 exclusive at the moment.
Trails of Cold Steel III Is Coming West on PS4 Later This Year
The trio should be complete
If all goes to plan, this means that the first three Trails of Cold Steel games will be playable on Sony's current-gen system in 2019. Although Trails of Cold Steel and Trails of Cold Steel II don't have concrete release dates yet, they're still pencilled in for "early 2019", so we should have some news on those soon.
Still, this announcement gets a big thumbs up from us. If you haven't already sampled the series on PS3 or Vita, be safe in the knowledge that these are some of the best Japanese role-playing games of the last decade or so.
image: https://gematsu.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Cold-Steel-III_01-17-19.jpg
The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III is coming to PlayStation 4 in North America and Europe this fall, publisher NIS America announced. It will feature Japanese and English audio, and English and French text options.
In addition to the standard edition, a $99.99 “Thors Academy Edition” including a copy of the game, “Intelligence Division Files” hardcover art book, “Symphony of Class VII” soundtrack, “Einhel Keep” collector’s box, SteelBook, five postcards, and Mishy plushie is also available for pre-order at the NIS America Online Store.
Here is an overview of the game, via NIS America:
About
Nearly a year and a half has passed since the Erebonian civil war, and much has changed since then. From the shifting stances of countries to the internal politics of the Empire, and even the life of Rean Schwarzer, the shadows of the past have given way to the embers of a new chapter. Now graduated from Thors Military Academy, Rean has become an instructor at the Thors Branch Campus, a newly-opened academy that quickly finds itself thrust onto the national stage. It is here that he takes the lead of a brand new Class VII, and must guide a new generation of heroes into an unknown future. Though all is calm now, the nefarious Ouroboros organization continues to weave a dark plot that could engulf the entire continent in war…or perhaps something even more sinister.
Trails of Cold Steel III invites players into a world full of intrigue and excitement that is years in the making. They will embark on a whirlwind tour through the never-before-seen lands of the recently expanded Erebonian countryside, and encounter fresh faces as well as old friends familiar to fans of the series. In true Trails fashion, the deep, engaging story pairs with an incredible cast of characters and a combat system refined over decades of innovative RPG worldbuilding. This renowned title has also now been developed natively for PlayStation 4 hardware, a series first.
Key Features
- Welcome to the New Class VII – Explore the newly annexed lands of the Empire with a brand new squad, and catch up with familiar faces from the past.
- An Immersive Story – Experience an epic story developed across three titles, and crafted for new and old fans alike. Also includes an interactive introduction to catch up new players to the ongoing story so anyone can dive right in to the world of Trails of Cold Steel.
- Combat Honed to a Fine Edge – Challenge oncoming threats with a combat system that has been refined over the course of decades. The addition of features like Brave Order and the Break System opens up new possibilities in battle.
NIS America will share more about the game during its PAX South 2019 panel “JPN → USA : Danganronpa, Touhou, and Beyond” on January 18 at 11:00 a.m. CST. You will be able to watch it live on Twitch.
#2 Earthquake • San Francisco Bay Area • California Bay Area Quake
Second earthquake in two days wakes up Bay Area
On the 25th anniversary of the Northridge earthquake, the second temblor in two days has woken up the Bay Area, with the last seismic event a magnitude 3.5 centered in the Oakland-Berkeley Hills.
The latest temblor struck at 6:11 a.m., with an epicenter less than a mile west of the western edge of the Caldecott Tunnel — about 2 miles southeast of the UC Berkeley campus and 4 miles northeast of downtown Oakland.
An earlier quake, a magnitude 3.4, hit a day earlier at 4:42 a.m.
The U.S. Geological Survey reported light shaking, or Intensity Level 4 shaking, on the Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale. Shaking of this type generally is felt indoors by many, and rattle dishes and windows and cause walls to make a cracking sound. It can feel like a heavy truck striking a building, and rock standing cars noticeably.
The East Bay is threatened by the Hayward fault, which has been called a “tectonic time bomb.” A landmark report by the USGS last year estimates that at least 800 people could be killed and 18,000 more injured in a hypothetical magnitude 7 earthquake on the Hayward fault centered below Oakland.
The Hayward fault is so dangerous because it runs through some of the most heavily populated parts of the Bay Area, spanning the length of the East Bay from the San Pablo Bay through Berkeley, Oakland, Hayward, Fremont and into Milpitas.
Out of the region’s population of 7 million, 2 million people live on top of the fault, and that proximity brings potential peril.
The fault has shaped the history of the Bay Area. Old city halls in Hayward and Fremont have been abandoned because they lie on the fault. At Memorial Stadium at UC Berkeley, seating was recently broken up and rebuilt so that the facility’s western half could move 6 feet northwest from the other side. In the hypothetical earthquake scenario, half of Memorial Stadium moves 2 feet northwest during the main earthquake, another foot over the next 24 hours, and yet another foot or so over the next few weeks or months.
The so-called HayWired scenario envisions a scale of disaster not seen in modern California history — 2,500 people needing rescue from collapsed buildings and 22,000 being trapped in elevators. More than 400,000 people could be displaced from their homes, and some East Bay residents may lose access to clean running water for as long as six months.
In some respects, the HayWired scenario would be at least 10 times as bad for the Bay Area as the magnitude 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake, despite the similar magnitude. The 1989 earthquake is blamed for about 60 deaths and produced $10 billion in damage; the HayWired scenario envisions $82 billion in property damage and direct business losses, with fire following the earthquake potentially adding $30 billion more.
A Hayward fault earthquake could trigger significant aftershocks on other faults for up to half a year after the main shock. In the HayWired scenario, a large aftershock comes nearly six months after the main quake — a magnitude 6.4 close to Cupertino, the home of Apple’s headquarters, followed in close succession by a magnitude 6.2 temblor near Palo Alto, a key city in Silicon Valley, and a 5.4 back in Oakland.
The Hayward fault is one of California’s fastest moving, and on average produces a major earthquake about once every 150 to 160 years, give or take 70 or 80 years. The last major earthquake on the Hayward fault, a magnitude 6.8, had its 150th anniversary on Oct. 21.
In December, Oakland passed a law requiring some of its most vulnerable buildings — so-called “soft-story” apartments with flimsy first stories, often for garages — to be retrofitted. San Francisco, Berkeley and Fremont have similar laws, but many other Bay Area cities in the heart of California’s booming tech region, including Palo Alto and Burlingame, have not acted. Hayward, a city that shares its name with the Hayward fault, also has not passed a mandatory retrofit law for soft-story buildings.
No, these small earthquakes won't prevent 'The Big One'
You probably know earthquake weather is bogus and that no warning system will give you time to safely escape a quake, but you may still have questions about how minor quakes work to relieve stress on the San Andreas or Hayward faults.
The truth is that minor quakes do relieve pressure from our tectonic plates, but seismologists do not believe the effect is enough to prevent the larger magnitude earthquakes.
The large earthquakes are needed to release the energy being loaded into the Bay Area by the motion of tectonic plates, explains Andrew Michael, a research geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Society. There are 10 times more earthquakes every time you go down one unit in magnitude, and so lots of little tremors are happening deep below the Earth's surface.
"But every time you go down one unit in magnitude, each earthquake releases 1/32 as much energy," explains Michael. "So the total energy released by small earthquakes is less than what is released by the largest events."
California sits on an active zone where the Pacific tectonic plate is continuously sliding past the North American plate. The San Andreas Fault, which has experienced two magnitude 7.8–7.9 earthquakes in recorded history, is the fastest slipping fault along the plate boundary, but in the Bay Area there are also the Hayward, Rodgers Creek, Calaveras, and San Gregorio and Concord Faults, and the list goes on.
The region has actually seen a period of seismic calm in the past four years and the last truly damaging earthquake struck the Napa area in 2014, but the Earth could come alive at any time.
The U.S. Geological Survey's calculations reveal there is a 72 percent chance a magnitude 6.7 quake or larger will occur in the next 30 years.
An earthquake this large is capable of causing widespread damage, and tomorrow, during the national Great ShakeOut event, schools, hospitals, banks and other organizations will be practicing earthquake readiness drills and reviewing preparedness plans throughout California and the world.
This is also a good time to review what we know about earthquakes. To help you do that, check out the gallery above, where we debunk some of the most common myths about earthquakes.
#3 Syria CNN’s Clarissa Ward in Syria: “ISIS is still a very real threat here”
Initial US assessment says ISIS behind Syria bombing
(CNN)The initial US assessment of the deadly bombing in Syria that killed four Americans is that ISIS was behind the attack, two US officials said Thursday.
ISIS-claimed attack on Americans in Syria renews criticism of Trump policy
- Around 1 p.m. local time Wednesday, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a popular area of downtown Manbij, a northern Syrian city that's been controlled by U.S.-supported Kurdish militias since it was wrested from ISIS in 2016.
- Four Americans were killed — two service members, a civilian Pentagon official and a U.S. contractor — and three more injured, U.S. Central Command confirmed in a statement.
- ISIS has claimed responsibility. While the group has not so far offered physical evidence to support the claim, critics have been quick to link the attack to President Donald Trump's decision last month to withdraw all U.S. troops from Syria.
CNBC.com
Wednesday's attack on U.S. forces in Syria has stoked fresh criticism over President Donald Trump's claim that the so-called Islamic State has been defeated renewed debate over his decision to withdraw all troops from the war-torn country.
Around 1 p.m. local time, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a popular area of downtown Manbij, a northern Syrian city that's been controlled by U.S.-supported Kurdish militias since it was wrested from ISIS in 2016.
Four Americans were killed — two service members, a civilian Pentagon official and a U.S. contractor — and three more injured, U.S. Central Command confirmed in a statement, reportedly marking the largest single loss of American life since the counter-ISIS campaign began. Nineteen people are believed to have died in total, including civilians and local coalition partners, according to monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
ISIS quickly claimed responsibility. While the group has not so far offered physical evidence to support the claim, critics have been quick to link the attack to President Donald Trump's decision last month to withdraw all U.S. troops from Syria.
"Trump's order was reckless and driven far more by domestic political concerns than it was by facts on the ground," Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, said on Twitter Wednesday.
Trump defended the troop pullout plans on the premise that ISIS had been defeated. The decision triggered rebukes from numerous lawmakers and security experts, who warned of the extremist group's resurgence and lamented what was seen as an abandonment of local partners.
Donald J. Trump✔@realDonaldTrump
We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.
"Sometimes reality catches up quickly with wishful thinking and political spin," Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., told CNBC on Wednesday. "Historians will likely file Trump's tweets announcing the ISIS defeat and U.S. Syria pullout alongside Bush's 2003 'Mission Accomplished' speech and Obama's 2011 withdrawal from Iraq."
ISIS' return in Syria is 'inevitable'
The counter-ISIS campaign, started under the Obama administration and continued under Trump, has decimated the group's territorial hold and its numbers compared to what it controlled at its height. In January 2015, ISIS held an estimated 50,000-plus square miles in Syria and Iraq and fielded close to 100,000 fighters, according to some estimates. In December, top U.S. officials told CNBC the group only controlled 1 percent of what they once had.
But the Manbij attack, and continued low-level kidnappings and attacks elsewhere in Syria and Iraq, are a reminder that its sleeper cells exist and its ideology has yet to be defeated.
"The attack in Manbij demonstrates clearly that ISIS still has an extensive network of operatives throughout the areas it used to control in Syria, and that it wants the world to know that," said Nick Heras, a Middle East security fellow at the Center for a New American Security and former research associate at the National Defense University. "ISIS likely timed the attack to send the message to Trump that he hasn't beat it yet, and to the world that the Americans will lose the long war against it."
However, it's important to note that this type of attack, carried out against U.S. personnel in a civilian area, "is a low hanging fruit operation" that ISIS could execute with or without Trump's announcement of the Syria drawdown, Heras added. The group's predecessors in Iraq carried out similar attacks frequently, and we should expect more of them in Syria moving forward, he said.
"ISIS has an incentive to demonstrate to everyone that it is not dead, that it has agents and capabilities everywhere, and that its return in Syria is inevitable."
The White House has not commented on how the attack may impact U.S. plans to withdraw troops from the country, though the process has already begun, according to the Pentagon. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders expressed condolences to the families of those lost in a statement Wednesday.
Just hours before the attack, Vice President Mike Pence told a group of U.S. ambassadors gathered in Washington that "The caliphate has crumbled, and ISIS has been defeated."
While Wednesday's attack appears to prove that assertion wrong, terrorism analysts point out that "defeat" of a jihadist group may no longer even be relevant as a term if used in the sense of conventional warfare. ISIS, like many of its counterparts, can survive as an ideology without commanding a physical territory or army, they say, meaning that regardless of a territorial defeat, individuals and cells acting independently can theoretically carry out the group's mission forever.
Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass drove this point home.
"The apparent ISIS attack in Syria a costly reminder that there is no such thing as victory in any traditional sense vs terrorists," he said on Twitter. "This is one reason why 'war' is not a good term in this context as classic wars have an end but struggles vs terrorists are unavoidably open ended."
#4 Saudi Arabia • Qatar • AFC Asian Cup share LIVE: AFC Asian Cup 2019 – Saudi Arabia vs Qatar – Live Stream
Saudi Arabia v Qatar: Top spot on the line in Group E
Both teams have won their opening two matches to secure progression to the knockout stages, with Qatar leading the way thanks to their 6-0 thrashing of North Korea last time out.
They have never finished top in the group stage, though, providing fresh motivation for Felix Sanchez's men against one as Asia's heavyweights.
Qatar have an excellent record against the three-time winners with three wins, four draws and one defeat from their previous eight meetings.
The form of Almoez Ali has been a particular highlight for the 2022 World Cup hosts, but goalkeeper Saad Al Sheeb says the unity within Qatar's squad is what is driving them forward this year.
"Our strength, as I said, lies in our team spirit. The coach has prepared us well, whether in attack or defence," he said.
"Almoez and Akram [Afif] are very good players and with the help of the other players, have helped Qatar progress. We are one team - whether the 11 players who start, those on the bench and the coaching staff.
"Our spirit is high as we really want to do well in the Asian Cup. We have worked very hard and will continue doing so as we want to progress as far as we can in the competition.
"When we came here, it was with the plan of taking it one game at a time. After two wins, our confidence has been boosted. We will prepare well for the match and our aim is to get the three points."
After two comfortable group games, Saudi Arabia will provide a sterner test in the battle for top spot, and the Green Falcons' boss Juan Antonio Pizzi says his side are determined to climb above their final opponents.
"We will try to do our utmost to win," the Argentine told a media conference. "We will play with all our strength and whatever opponent we face [in the knockouts] we are ready for them.
"What matters is tournaments is good results, and that is what happened in our first two games against Lebanon and North Korea."
Forward Fahad Al Muwallad added: "Our qualification does not mean that we underestimate the importance of the game. We promise to play every game with maximum strength."
PLAYERS TO WATCH
SAUDI ARABIA – Abdulaziz Al Bishi
If Saudi Arabia are to claim a third victory over the group, then the creativity of midfielder Abdulaziz Al Bishi will be vital. The 24-year-old already has two assists to his name, something Pizzi will be hoping to see more of against group leaders Qatar.
QATAR – Almoez Ali
History beckons for top goalscorer Almoez Ali in Thursday's encounter, the 22-year-old striker having already scored five goals in the competition so far. His four against North Korea secured Qatar's progression, and should he net again in Abu Dhabi he would be the first player to score six goals in the group stage since 2000.
KEY OPTA FACTS
- All three previous Asian Cup encounters between Saudi Arabia and Qatar have ended in a draw – they all took place in the group stages (1984, 1992, 2000). The Saudis have never led at any point in those three games.
- Saudi Arabia have won three of their last four Asian Cup games (L1), keeping back-to-back clean sheets – they last went longer without conceding in the competition on the way to winning the 1988 tournament (three consecutive clean sheets).
- Qatar's 6-0 win against North Korea in their last match was their biggest-ever win in an Asian Cup match.
- Almoez Ali has scored five goals in his two appearances at this year's Asian Cup – he could become the first player to score six goals in a single Asian Cup tournament since South Korea's Lee Dong-Gook in 2000.
- Mohammed Al Owais is yet to concede a single goal at this year's tournament making him the first Saudi Arabia goalkeeper to keep two clean sheets during the group stages of a single Asian Cup since Mohammed Al-Deayea in 2000.
Qatar-based BeIN Sports steps up piracy fight against Saudi Arabian rival channel
- BeIN Sports has accused a rival broadcaster of brazenly stealing its sports content.
- The Qatari company says a Saudi Arabian firm is even rebranding and selling set-top boxes.
CNBC.com
Qatari-based sports broadcaster beIN Media Group published what it called a "dossier of evidence," which it says "publicly exposes the industrial scale theft of world sports and entertainment."
It claims these acts have been carried out by Saudi Arabia's pirate operation beoutQ and Arabsat — the Riyadh-headquartered satellite provider — over the past 18 months.
BeIN Sports has accused the rival broadcaster of brazenly stealing its output from a variety of top sports leagues from around the world and rebranding it as its own, even to the extent of selling beoutQ set-top boxes.
"We have a very simple message on behalf of the whole sports and entertainment industry: We will not cease our fight against this unprecedented piracy operation until it is eradicated," said beIN Media Group Chief Executive Yousef Al-Obaidly in a statement on Wednesday.
The timing of beIN's latest claims is particularly poignant as it coincides with the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah hosting two of European soccer's most successful clubs. The Supercoppa put reigning Serie A champion Juventus up against seven-time European Cup winner AC Milan on Wednesday in a game that was already causing controversy.
A deal was struck last June for around 20 million euros ($22 million) to stage the Supercoppa in Saudi Arabia for three of the next five seasons.
However, following the killing of U.S.-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October, several major sporting eventsplanned for the country have come under scrutiny.
Saudi Arabia has been attempting to project a more moderate image to the world in recent months. However, the Khashoggi controversy and laws outlawing women from even attending soccer matches led to Italy's Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, himself a fan of AC Milan, to say he won't be watching the match out of principle.
It's the sixth time in 10 years that the Supercoppa has been decided outside Europe. Far from home locations have included Libya, the United States, Qatar on two occasions and four times in China.
Eleven Sports Network, who own the digital rights to Italian football coverage in several territories, has also voiced its concern about the piracy issues surrounding beoutQ and also the suitability of Saudi Arabia to host the Supercoppa.
"The staging of this match in Saudi Arabia serves only to reward a country that has done nothing to combat the continued presence and operation of the beoutQ service from within its borders," Andrea Cerroni, Eleven Sports Group General Counsel, said in a letter to Serie A back in December.
"This decision will drastically damage the ongoing efforts of the entire sports industry to combat and end this hugely disruptive, illegal and damaging piracy. We strongly urge you to reconsider the decision to stage this match in Saudi Arabia," he went on to say.
Eleven Sports failed to receive a reply its letter, which was sent directly to the Chief Executive Marco Brunelli, but in October Serie A did defend the decision to stage the match in Jeddah, not least as Saudi Arabia is Italy's biggest trading partner in the Middle East.
Last month the World Trade Organization in Geneva approved a request for the establishment of a WTO panel to adjudicate on the beoutQ case brought against Saudi Arabia for violating intellectual property rights.
In October, beIN commenced an international investment arbitration claiming over $1 billion in damages against Saudi Arabia on the basis of beoutQ. Last summer, world soccer's governing body FIFA, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and other sports rights holders have disclosed that they will be launching legal action in Saudi Arabia.
Last year, also saw for the first time in more than a decade, the U.S. government place Saudi Arabia on its 2018 Special 301 Watch List, noting concerns over the deteriorating environment for the protection of intellectual property.
To add to the political and sporting rivalry that's developed between the two Arab nations, Qatar's soccer team faces its Saudi Arabian rivals in a group match at the Asian Cup on Thursday.
CNBC has attempted to contact boutQ and approached Arabsat for comment, but has so far failed to receive a response.
#5 Colombia • Bogotá • Car bomb Colombia bogota blast
Eight dead in car bomb at Colombian police academy
BOGOTA (Reuters) - A car bomb exploded at a police academy in Colombia’s capital Bogota on Thursday, killing at least eight people and wounding 10 in what the authorities condemned as terrorism.
The bomb at the General Santander School in the south of the capital shattered windows of apartments in the vicinity. The vehicle rammed into the academy grounds before the explosion, witnesses told reporters.
President Ivan Duque called the bomb a “miserable terrorist act...against our police” and said he was returning to the capital from the west of the country, where he had been attending a meeting on security.
He said he had ordered security forces to find the perpetrators and bring them to justice. It was not immediately clear whether the attacker or attackers managed to escape, or died at the scene.
The Defense Ministry said in a statement that eight people were killed and 10 wounded, but did not say if the casualties were police or civilians.
A police helicopter hovered over the area and family members of cadets at the academy were gathered, many crying as they sought information. Ambulances were still leaving the scene.
Images on social media showed the remains of a vehicle in flames in the parking area of the police school, and emergency responders at the scene.
“It was a car bomb that unfortunately broke through the security checkpoints,” Vice President Marta Lucia Ramirez told reporters.
Car bombs were frequent during decades of civil war between the state and various leftist rebel groups, as well as in the violence involving the Medellin drug cartel led by dead drug lord Pablo Escobar.
The worst of the war, which left some 260,000 dead and millions displaced, ended when the government reached a peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in 2016.
The last major attack was in January 2018 when the largest active rebel group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), detonated a bomb in the northern port city of Barranquilla, killing five police officers and injuring dozens.
The ELN, made up of some 2,000 fighters and considered a terrorist organization by the United States, have been in talks with the government since February 2017 to end the conflict.
Duque, who took office in August, has conditioned peace talks on the ELN suspending hostilities and releasing all hostages.
On Wednesday, the ELN said in a statement it had kidnapped three crewmen of a civil helicopter it “neutralized” last week. In response, Colombia’s High Peace Commissioner, Miguel Ceballos, said the ELN “was moving further and further away from the possibility of dialogue.”
There was no indication the ELN was behind the attack in Bogota or that the kidnapping was linked.
Reporting by Nelson Bocanegra and Luis Jaime Acosta; Writing by Frances Kerry and Angus Berwick; Editing by Alistair Bell
At least 8 dead in Bogotá, Colombia car bombing at police academy
Flames rise from a deadly car bombing at a police academy on Jan. 17, 2019, in Bogota, Colombia.Military Forces of Colombia / via AP
At least eight people were killed and another 10 injured in a car bombing at a police academy in Colombia's capital on Thursday, authorities said.
The scene outside the General Santander police academy in southern Bogotá was chaotic in the immediate aftermath of the explosion, with ambulances and helicopters rushing to the normally tightly controlled facility.
Witnesses said they heard a loud blast that destroyed windows in adjacent apartment buildings. Pictures on social media showed a charred vehicle surrounded by debris on the academy's leafy campus.
Bogotá Mayor Enrique Peñalosa said at least 5 people were killed and 10 injured.
President Iván Duque said he and his top military commanders were rushing back to the capital from a visit to a western state to oversee police investigation into what he called a "miserable" attack.
"All of us Colombians reject terrorism and are united in confronting it," Duque said in a tweet. "We won't bend in the face of violence."
For decades, residents of Bogotá lived in fear of being caught in a bombing by leftist rebels or Pablo Escobar's Medellín drug cartel. But as Colombia's conflict has wound down, security has improved and attacks have become less frequent.
The group known as the ELN was long considered a lesser military threat than the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, whose 7,000 guerrilla fighters disarmed as part of a 2016 peace accord. But in the wake of the peace deal the Cuban-inspired insurgency has been gaining strength, especially along the eastern border with Venezuela, where it has carried out a number of kidnappings and bombings of oil pipelines that have hardened Duque's resolve in refusing to resume peace talks stalled since he took office last August.
Thursday's bombing was the deadliest in the capital since an explosion at the upmarket Andino shopping mall in June 2017 killed three people, including a French woman, and injured another 11. Police later arrested several suspected members of a far-left urban guerrilla group called the People Revolutionary's Movement for the bombing.
#6 Slack – Home
It will no longer use the colorful hashtag that it used when it launched in 2013 and has instead designed a four-color logo using lozenge and speech bubble shapes.
While the company says it liked elements of its original logo, its 11 colors made it very easy to get wrong, the firm said in a blog post Wednesday.
"If placed on any color other than white, or at the wrong angle (instead of the precisely prescribed 18-degree rotation), or with the colors tweaked wrong, it looked terrible. It pained us … Simply awful," the post, authored by Slack Team, stated.
The post included versions of the old logo against different backgrounds, and said it had to develop three different ones, including a black-and-white version and a square checked option.
The new version uses fewer colors but isn't a million miles from the original, Slack said. It worked with design agency Pentagram on the project, led by partner Michael Bierut, and considered using emojis, dots and different versions of the hashtag (or "octogram") when creating the new logo according to a post on Pentagram's website.
Logos are used by companies aiming to make their business instantly recognizable — and changing them can cause a backlash. In 2010, Gap changed its logo typeface to a simple black lettering with a blue square superimposed over the "P" but within days returned to its original long font with the brand name written in upper case letters after people called it "tacky" and "cheap." In 2014, Airbnb updated its logo from a blue italic design to a red "Belo," which the company said is a symbol of belonging. Some people weren't happy, saying it looked like different body parts, but the company stuck by it.
Top companies in the tech sector have similar-looking logos, using a lot of blue because it's a symbol of "trustworthiness and security" according to an August 2018 study by freelance marketplace 99designs. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Intel and IBM use shades of blue for their entire logos, while Microsoft and Google incorporate it into theirs. Slack's new logo includes some blue, with green, pink and yellow against a purple or white background.
Slack said the logo would run on its smartphone, tablet and PC apps to start with, followed by its website and in advertising, but it did not confirm exact dates. The company is expected to go public this year with a direct listing because it has about $900 million of cash on its balance sheet, according to a report on The Information website.
Slack’s product chief is out ahead of direct listing
Slack is losing its chief product officer April Underwood ahead of a direct listing expected in 2019. Tamar Yehoshua, a long-time Google vice president, has been tapped to fill Underwood’s shoes as Slack’s new product chief.
Underwood joined Slack, the provider of workplace communication tools, in 2015 as its head of platform after a five-year stint as Twitter’s director of product. She was promoted to the chief product role about 10 months ago. Underwood is also a founding partner of #Angels, an investment collective that pushes to get more women on startup cap tables.
In a Medium post announcing her departure from Slack, Underwood said she planned to focus on investing full time.
“One common story you hear when you talk to founders is that their idea ran as a background process for many years until it moved into the foreground and became a calling too loud to ignore,” Underwood wrote. “And now, I can truly empathize with founders — because that’s happened for me. Investing, which started as a side hustle for me and my #Angels partners, has emerged as the pursuit too inspiring and energizing to be relegated to my spare time.”
During her tenure, Underwood had a hand in crafting Slack’s investment fund — a pool of capital supported by Accel, Index Ventures, KPCB, Social Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and Spark Capital that has invested in 49 projects building on top of Slack to date.
Slack, led by founder and chief executive officer Stewart Butterfield, is said to be preparing for a direct listing, meaning it will go public without listing any new shares, with no lockup period and no intermediary bankers. Valued at roughly $7 billion, Slack has raised more than $1 billion to date from GV, IVP, T. Rowe Price, SoftBank, Kleiner Perkins, Accel and others.
#7 John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum Official Trailer
#8 City Girls Break Down The Meaning Of “I’ll Take Your Man”
Cardi B Dropped Two Must-See Videos On The Same Day
#9 Mortal Kombat 11 – Official Gameplay Reveal Trailer
Mortal Kombat 11's first gameplay footage: new fatalities, characters revealed
Mortal Kombat 11 is pairing its familiar ultraviolence with more character customization.
NetherRealm Studios/Screenshot by CNET
We got our first taste of Mortal Kombat 11 gameplay as footage teasing the game's new characters, fatalities and story was revealed at a live event Thursday.
Developer NetherRealm Studios also showed off the story prologue and some delightfully violent fatalities -- including a variant on Sub Zero's klassic head-and-spine rip.
In terms of the characters, we saw Baraka, Sonya Blade (now played by WWE champion Ronda Rousey), Scorpion, Sub Zero, Raiden (who's gone a little dark), Skarlet and new fighter Geras -- seven of the 25 slots on the selection screen.
There are different variations of characters like Mortal Kombat X, but now you can create your own. You can customize costumes -- like Scorpion's mask, spear and swords -- so there's potential for infinite aesthetic variety when you play online.
The gameplay mechanics are a little different now too -- your souped attack and defense options are determined by horizontal and vertical meters respectively, while a perfectly timed Flawless Block gives you an opening to counterattack.
NetherRealm Studios/Screenshot by CNET
Story-wise, this game picks up directly after Mortal Kombat X, with the opening cinematic revealing the moment Raiden beheaded the defeated Shinnok. Series creator Ed Boon hinted that the Thunder God will suffer some consequences for his actions in this game, and we'll see some time travel elements (Raiden first tinkered with the timeline in 2011's Mortal Kombat).
NetherRealm revealed Chronica, the series' first female boss, in another behind-the scenes video and teased us with the prospect of versions of klassic characters from different points in the timeline going head-to-head. It's likely that old school Liu Kang and Kitana will run into their undead counterparts.
For the superfans, there's also a $99 Kollector's Edition with a steelbook case and Scorpion cowl-and-mask bust.
Mortal Kombat 11 was announced with a violent reveal trailer at The Game Awards 2018 back in December, and its cover art was revealed last week.
It hits PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC and Nintendo Switch on April 23, and preordering a copy will unlock series archvillain Shao Kahn as a playable character.
Those who preorder on PS4 and Xbox One will get access to a prelaunch beta sometime in March, our sister site GameSpot noted. They also have a little speculation on characters we might see joining the roster.
Check out the full gameplay trailer and story prologue below:
First published at 9:24 a.m. PT.
Updated at 12:13 p.m. PT: Adds details from reveal.
Updated at 1:20 p.m. PT: Added additional details from Netherrealm.
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