Latest news with #Rapture
Press and Journal
28-05-2025
- Business
- Press and Journal
Colourful mural celebrating Orkney to be included outside new Kirkwall nightclub Rapture
An eye-catching mural is to be added to Kirkwall's high street at the soon-to-open Garden Square development. The art will be a decorative addition to the multi-purpose development on Bridge Street. Designed by Fife-based artist Lauren Morsley it depicts many recognizable elements of Orkney's culture and scenery. This includes the Stoor Worm, a Trow, an orca, and the standing stones – all in the distinctive style of the artist. The mural will not face directly onto the street. Instead, it will run along the south-facing wall on the boundary of the development on the wall of the Anchor Buildings. It will be painted on a timber layer that will be attached to the wall. This area next to the wall will become an alleyway, which will be the entrance to what will become Rapture nightclub. The Garden Square development is due to open this summer and is being developed by local businessman Neil Stevenson. It will feature the aforementioned nightclub, a bowling alley, food kiosks, and an arcade. While the plans for the mural were brought to the planning committee today, there were no objections or representations from members of the public nor from statutory consultees. Notably, with the development in the conservation area, there was also no objection from the Orkney Heritage Society. The mural was also recommended for approval by the council's planning department. However, the plans appeared at the committee as it was judged 'appropriate' for the elected members to 'take a view on it', according to the council's planning manager Jamie Macvie. Mr Macvie said it was 'fair to say it is a different style and scale of mural elsewhere in the town.' However, he also said the 'visibility was more limited' on the proposed mural, comparing it to the nearby mural on the side of the Highland Park shop further up the high street. The councillors on the committee were broadly supportive and the plans were approved unanimously. However, councillor John Ross Scott said it would be 'interesting to see how people react' to the design. Mr Scott also said: 'When I first saw this I did question the nature of it in the conservation area. 'But I think what you've done is a good thing. 'I have come to love it. It will brighten up the town and brighten up our lives.' The mural was not the only planning application Mr Stevenson had at the committee today. They also viewed another application for the Garden Square development itself. This dealt with some minor changes to the plans that have been made since the original planning application went to the committee back in February last year. This included installing heat pumps, adding a shed and fire escape, and changing the sizes of the food kiosks, among other things. As with the mural application, there were no objections or representations. The councillors ultimately decided to approve this other application. However, they did have some questions. This included asking Mr Stevenson why some elements of the application are 'temporary for 10 years.' The developer indicated he's already looking to the future changes at the site. Mr Stevenson said: 'It's my intention to change the use of the site after that time. 'Anchor Buildings is part of the next phase of the development. 'I didn't see the long-term use of the site remaining as it currently is. 'There's the option that I could sell it on but with the scale of what we've done, that's unlikely.' He added: 'The whole area: Bridge Street, Anchor Buildings, the oil depot and the wider site, could form a much more ambitious site.' Mr Stevenson has previously said he hopes to have nightclub and wider Garden Square development open in time for the Island Games in Orkney in July.
Metro
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
BioShock remake might be happening as insider teases announcement
A source has claimed a BioShock announcement is set to drop this summer, and most signs point to a potential remake. While we know several projects are underway in the BioShock franchise, news around the series has been relatively light over the past few years. The next mainline instalment, provisionally titled BioShock 4, was announced way back in 2019 from developer Cloud Chamber. We've heard little about the game since, outside of a job listing which suggested development was ramping up last year. We know a Netflix film adaptation is also in the works, while rumours of a BioShock remake have floated around following a LinkedIn post from a 2K employee. We've heard little about these projects either, but an insider has claimed news related to the franchise is on the near horizon. According to leaker Kurakasis (via Mp1st), who accurately outed the existence of a Metro VR game last year, publisher 2K is preparing to make an announcement related to the BioShock franchise, which will 'likely' happen before the end of the summer. The actual contents of the announcement are unknown, but the leaker claims Rapture, the underwater city setting from the first two games, will play a 'significant role'. As such, they speculate it could be connected to the rumoured remake of the first title. However, the report throws up some other possibilities. While rumours suggested BioShock 4 would be set in the Antarctic, it's possible it could feature Rapture in some capacity. The announcement could also be tied to the Netflix movie, which will presumably adapt the events of the first game. More Trending While it hasn't been announced, a remake of BioShock makes a lot of sense as a way to drum up excitement for the next instalment – especially as the latter might still be a few years away. Considering how vague the details are though, it's possible this announcement could be related to something else entirely within the BioShock franchise. So let's just hope it isn't a mobile spin-off. As for when this announcement could happen, the obvious contender is Summer Game Fest on Friday, June 6. It could also pop at Microsoft's Xbox showcase on June 8, or the rumoured State Of Play from Sony. Email gamecentral@ leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. MORE: Monster Train 2 review – off the rails Slay The Spire MORE: Assassin's Creed Shadows co-op mode coming in 2026 after DLC claims report MORE: Nintendo Switch 2 UK pre-orders are back in stock – here's where to buy it
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump's attacks on your access to news are all part of Project 2025
Ignorance is Donald Trump's best friend, which would explain why he is not a fan of a free press that strives to provide fair and balanced reporting of the facts. Fair and balanced media just doesn't work for what this particular president and his team of government wrecking balls seem to have in mind, because it doesn't provide the steady, rage-inducing diet of misinformation required by his base. Or maybe I should say, required to keep his base in line and on script. Just for one example, Trump claimed last month that the price of eggs had come down 'like 93%, 94% since we took office.' That's not just misinformation, that's a lie. The truth is that the price of eggs hit a record high in March. If the only information American voters had access to was provided by a fair and balanced media, I suspect Donald Trump might never have been elected. But instead, we are deluged daily with a firehose of misinformation and disinformation mixed in with actual truthful information that is misleadingly presented as "choice." This mainline infusion of lies and more lies has gained traction in MAGA circles as 'alternative facts,' thanks in large part to Kellyanne Conway, former counsel to President Trump, who used the phrase in a Meet The Press interview in January of 2017. Between that, and Trump's fondness for referring to news he doesn't like as 'fake news,' too many folks these days seem to believe there is no such thing as actual truth, just what you choose to believe. If we continue down the road that says the truth is optional, then Trump is just the beginning of our woes, not the end. I'm not saying I know precisely how to do it, but I do know that we've got to figure this out. Maybe it starts with understanding that Trump's attacks on media are part of a coordinated plan, laid out in, what else, Project 2025. More from Freep Opinion: Project 2025 is bad. Its successor, Project Esther, plans for the Rapture. According to a rather lengthy but highly informative piece written last year about what Project 2025 could mean for the media, the Brookings Institute reminded its readers of the following: 'Congress enacted the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act because they believed an educated and informed citizenry was in the public, local, and national interest.' Now compare that to Project 2025's views of public media: 'To stop public funding (of public broadcasting) is good policy and good politics. The reason is simple: President Lyndon Johnson may have pledged in 1967 that public broadcasting would become 'a vital public resource to enrich our homes, educate our families and to provide assistance to our classrooms,' but public broadcasting immediately became a liberal forum for public affairs and journalism.' In 1974, not even a decade after the passage of the Public Broadcasting Act, President Richard Nixon was forced to resign from office in disgrace after two young Washington Post reporters discovered that the president was trying to steal an election. But it wasn't just their steady stream of increasingly damaging scoops that resulted in Nixon's impeachment, followed by his resignation; it was the fact that the vast majority of Americans who followed these stories did not think to dismiss them as "fake news," and no one had ever heard of "alternative facts." The nation was largely incensed by what Nixon had tried to do, and the subsequent televised Watergate hearings became the primary relied-upon source of information for tens of thousands of Americans about the details of the coverup that nearly wrecked their country. Those were the days. More from Freep Opinion: How much of Project 2025 has been implemented? Enough to break us beyond repair. Today, Trump refers to the media as the "enemy of the people," and is now seeking to defund the Public Broadcasting System, among others. Trump's budget, released earlier this month, eliminates funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds PBS and National Public Radio. This is part of a broader plan, laid out by Project 2025, to at least severely cripple, if not dismantle, any and all media outlets deemed not friendly enough to the Trump administration. To quote the document itself: 'The 47th President can just tell the Congress — through the budget he proposes and through personal contact — that he will not sign an appropriations spending bill that contains a penny for the CPB. The President may have to use the bully pulpit, as NPR and PBS have teams of lobbyists who have convinced enough Members of Congress to save their bacon every time their taxpayer subsidies have been at risk since the Nixon era. ... Stripping public funding would, of course, mean that NPR, PBS, Pacifica Radio, and the other leftist broadcasters would be shorn of the presumption that they act in the public interest and receive the privileges that often accompany so acting. They should no longer, for example, be qualified as noncommercial education stations (NCE stations), which they clearly no longer are.' Without noncommerical status, PBS and NPR stations would have to pay for their licenses, and pay taxes, all while losing federal funds. But, naturally, Trump swore throughout his campaign that he didn't know anything about Project 2025, despite the fact that several key authors of that plan served in his administration. In March of this year, acting in lockstep with the blueprint he says he never heard of, Trump banned the Associated Press from White House grounds because they refused to start calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. The AP took the Trump administration to court and won a decision to once again be allowed to be a member of the White House press pool. But Trump, being Trump, has defied that court order, and still won't allow AP reporters on White House grounds. Trump has also filed lawsuits against the New York Times; the Des Moines Register (a member of the USA Today Network, of which the Detroit Free Press is part), dismissed in February; ABC, settled last year for $15 million; Simon and Schuster; CBS; and a $475 million defamation lawsuit against CNN that was dismissed in 2023. It's true that Trump hasn't quite yet figured out how to completely shut down all media outlets he doesn't like, which is quite a few media outlets, and it's worth noting that plenty of publications do continue to publish the news, even if not all Americans care to consume it. Many college newspapers, however, have been experiencing incidents of students desperately requesting that possibly offensive articles be removed or retracted out of fear of what might happen to them for criticizing the Trump administration. The headline of a recent AP story, 'College journalists wrestle with transparency as students fear deportation for speaking out' pretty much spells it out: 'Many young editors are beginning to reconsider long-standing journalistic practices around transparency to protect the people who appear in their reports. It's happening amid a climate of fear on campuses that is causing certain students to be reluctant to speak out publicly. "These dramatic shifts in student media escalated after Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University student from Turkey, was threatened with deportation and detained in March over what her lawyers say is apparent retaliation for an op-ed piece she co-wrote in the student newspaper.' Remember that Trump is the same guy who is now gleefully deporting legal immigrants without due process, and has expressed a burning desire to similarly export born-in-the USA Americans who he deems as unworthy. And if that sweep manages to "accidentally" sweep up some non-guilty folk, then, oh well. Collateral damage and all that. It was Martin Luther King Jr. who realized early the power of televised news coverage to make the case for civil and human rights to be granted to Black people in America. During the civil rights movement, it was television that turned the tide in our favor when white people across America saw for the first time images of how ugly this country could be, with fire hoses and vicious dogs being turned on peaceful protesters. Not to mention the horrifying photo published on the cover of Jet magazine of a brutally disfigured Emmett Till in an open coffin, because his mother, Mamie Till, wanted America to see what white racism had done to her son. Because what if none of those incidents had ever been recorded or televised? Where would we be now? Or perhaps a more pertinent question might be, how different the reaction might have been to the disfigured image of Emmett Till in modern-day America? Today, social media and other "alternative" news outlets like Fox News have contributed to a total re-write of history for thousands of Americans who rely on them for "truth"; saying that the Jan. 6 insurrection was really just a tourist jaunt and that those arrested for being patriotic tourists were victimized political prisoners. Until Trump set them free. In such a climate, anyone who wanted to believe Emmett Till's murder was fabricated could easily find a "news" source to support whatever alternative facts they preferred to believe. As summer approaches, a remarkable number of anti-Trump protests have been organized around the country, including ridiculously large crowds in heavily Republican red states like Idaho and Utah. Trump has already tried to lie about the actual size of these crowds, which have been in the tens of thousands, but news coverage and cell phone cameras have made the truth plain to see. Many of us take this ability to tell the truth in the face of repression for granted. Don't. Free Press contributing columnist Keith A. Owens is a local writer and co-founder of Detroit Stories Quarterly and the We Are Speaking Substack newsletter and podcast. Submit a letter to the editor at and we may publish it online and in print. Like what you're reading? Please consider supporting local journalism and getting unlimited digital access with a Detroit Free Press subscription. We depend on readers like you. This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Trump attacks on information access are part of Project 2025 | Opinion
The Age
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Sex, drugs and a place in the queue: Waiting in line at the Sean ‘Diddy' Combs trial
Some news organisations had paid $US500 ($775) for a professional line-sitter. This is a miniature industry in New York; you can pay people to wait in line outside court, or at hotspot restaurants such as Lucali in Brooklyn. Then there are the supporters, the court-watchers and the clingers-on. Some appear to have little interest in the case itself, but are drawn to the cameras and the crowds – they rant about Jesus or the Rapture, or hope to be paid to go away. The ones who line up, get through security and go into the court or overflow room are more likely to be supporters of the accused or a victim. One woman, who said she had attended court every day since jury selection began last week, caused a scene in the overflow room by audibly reacting to testimony from Combs' ex-girlfriend Casandra Ventura. She complained that prosecutors should not have brought the case while Ventura was heavily pregnant, and said they would be responsible if any complications arose. Outside the courthouse, the same woman yelled at paparazzi and reporters as they waited for Combs' family. 'Give them their f---ing dignity, pardon my French,' she shouted at the scrum. 'Don't be up in their six feet unless you wanna start.' The Combs case has also attracted a throng of social media influencers. One regularly attending court is Stephanie Soo, a YouTuber and podcaster with 5.6 million followers on TikTok. In a recent video, she compared Combs' appearance to a koala. 'You know koalas, when they get fuzzy – like if it's really humid and they have, like, very fuzzy greyish-white hair,' Soo said. 'He is reminiscent to that.' Other people stopped by the courthouse to catch a glimpse of the commotion. Four young men in T-shirts and shorts, who didn't want to give their names, said Combs was a major music figure when they grew up, even if he had become more of a business mogul than a performer. 'It's super-surprising that something like that would happen,' one man said of the case. 'You never think that somebody that big could be capable of doing stuff like that.' Such is the essence of the celebrity trial, and this one is more salacious than most. We have heard awkward, intimate details about Combs' sexual fantasies, and graphic accounts of how he would realise them. We have glimpsed a world most of us will never access: luxe hotels and boat parties and escorts being flown across the country, and a seemingly endless supply of sex, drugs and money. Loading And we have seen the star witness, Ventura, provide two days of painful, personal evidence while pregnant. Now, she is to be cross-examined by the defence. It is a reminder that justice rarely comes easily.
Sydney Morning Herald
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Sex, drugs and a place in the queue: Waiting in line at the Sean ‘Diddy' Combs trial
Some news organisations had paid $US500 ($775) for a professional line-sitter. This is a miniature industry in New York; you can pay people to wait in line outside court, or at hotspot restaurants such as Lucali in Brooklyn. Then there are the supporters, the court-watchers and the clingers-on. Some appear to have little interest in the case itself, but are drawn to the cameras and the crowds – they rant about Jesus or the Rapture, or hope to be paid to go away. The ones who line up, get through security and go into the court or overflow room are more likely to be supporters of the accused or a victim. One woman, who said she had attended court every day since jury selection began last week, caused a scene in the overflow room by audibly reacting to testimony from Combs' ex-girlfriend Casandra Ventura. She complained that prosecutors should not have brought the case while Ventura was heavily pregnant, and said they would be responsible if any complications arose. Outside the courthouse, the same woman yelled at paparazzi and reporters as they waited for Combs' family. 'Give them their f---ing dignity, pardon my French,' she shouted at the scrum. 'Don't be up in their six feet unless you wanna start.' The Combs case has also attracted a throng of social media influencers. One regularly attending court is Stephanie Soo, a YouTuber and podcaster with 5.6 million followers on TikTok. In a recent video, she compared Combs' appearance to a koala. 'You know koalas, when they get fuzzy – like if it's really humid and they have, like, very fuzzy greyish-white hair,' Soo said. 'He is reminiscent to that.' Other people stopped by the courthouse to catch a glimpse of the commotion. Four young men in T-shirts and shorts, who didn't want to give their names, said Combs was a major music figure when they grew up, even if he had become more of a business mogul than a performer. 'It's super-surprising that something like that would happen,' one man said of the case. 'You never think that somebody that big could be capable of doing stuff like that.' Such is the essence of the celebrity trial, and this one is more salacious than most. We have heard awkward, intimate details about Combs' sexual fantasies, and graphic accounts of how he would realise them. We have glimpsed a world most of us will never access: luxe hotels and boat parties and escorts being flown across the country, and a seemingly endless supply of sex, drugs and money. Loading And we have seen the star witness, Ventura, provide two days of painful, personal evidence while pregnant. Now, she is to be cross-examined by the defence. It is a reminder that justice rarely comes easily.
