This video shows anti-war protesters yesterday as they marched with police escort to the Franklin Mills Mall in Philadelphia where they delivered a symbolic “criminal complaint” to U.S. Army recruiters and the mall’s management company.

The demonstrators were protesting the Army’s use of a high-tech, video game-equipped recruitment center located in the mall.

There was a significant police presence as the protesters arrived. They were permitted to enter the mall and stage their rally at the entrance to the Army Experience Center.

As the rally ended, seven protesters, mostly in white masks, were arrested, presumably for refusing to disperse. The arrests were peaceful and appeared to be scripted by the protesters as a symbolic gesture.

via GamePolitics.

As the creators, Molleindustria says: “Faith Fighter is the ultimate fighting game for these dark times. Choose your belief and kick the shit out of your enemies. Give vent to your intolerance! Religious hate has never been so much fun.”

Representatives from the three companies said that the game — which was conceived with input from Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison — will aim to feature the entire Beatles catalog and will offer an “experiential journey” off the band. This is the first time the Beatles music has been presented in an interactive, video game format. “This game will take you on a journey from the Beatles first album Please Please Me until the last album at Abbey Road,” said Apple Corps CEO Jeff Jones. “It will span samples of the whole catalogue all the way through.” The three companies would not clarify whether Beatles content would be available for Rock Band or whether the game would feature avatars of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. “The project is a fun idea which broadens the appeal of the Beatles and their music,” McCartney said in a statement. “I like people having the opportunity to get to know the music from the inside out.” The acquisition of the video game rights to the Beatles catalog is a major, scale-tipping coup for Harmonix and MTV Games as they fight for music video game dominance over the like-minded Guitar Hero.

via RollingStone

Barack Obama, flush with cash and ramping up his advertising in the final weeks before the November 4 election, is making U.S. political history by placing the first presidential campaign ads in online video games.

The Democratic Illinois senator is using the Internet ads, featured in 18 games through Microsoft Corp’s Xbox Live service, to promote his online voter registration and early balloting drive in 10 battleground states, a campaign spokesman said on Wednesday.

Via Reuters.

Google Inc on Wednesday launched technology to insert advertisements into online video games and boost revenue from the booming gaming sector.

The software, called AdSense for Games, is in beta testing and allows video, image or text advertisements to placed at the start, end or change of level in an online game.

The advertisers are charged on a cost-per-impression or cost-per-click basis with revenue being split between Google and game developers or publishers, it said in a statement.

Google is working with game makers including Konami Corp and Demand Media, run by former MySpace Chairman Richard Rosenblatt, as well as advertisers like Sprint Nextel Corp and Sony Corp’s Sony Pictures.

via Reuters.

The Graveyard is a very short computer game designed by Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn. You play an old lady who visits a graveyard. You walk around, sit on a bench and listen to a song. It’s more like an explorable painting than an actual game. An experiment with realtime poetry, with storytelling without words.

tale-of-tales.com/TheGraveyard

CREDITS
DATA DIRECTOR: Auriea Harvey
PROCESS DIRECTOR: Michaël Samyn
ANIMATIONS: Laura Raines Smith
MUSIC: Gerry De Mol
SOUND EFFECTS: Kris Force

a Postmortem “making of” of The Graveyard can be read here:
tale-of-tales.com/blog/the-graveyard-post-mortem/

Humans have 23 years to go
Global Extinction Awareness System starts the countdown for Homo sapiens.

PALO ALTO, CA — Based on the results of a year-long supercomputer simulation, the Global Extinction Awareness System (GEAS) has reset the “survival horizon” for Homo sapiens – the human race – from “indefinite” to 23 years.

“The survival horizon identifies the point in time after which a threatened population is expected to experience a catastrophic collapse,” GEAS president Audrey Chen said. “It is the point from which a species is unlikely to recover. By identifying a survival horizon of 2042, GEAS has given human civilization a definite deadline for making substantive changes to planet and practices.”

According to Chen, the latest GEAS simulation harnessed over 70 petabytes of environmental, economic, and demographic data, and was cross-validated by ten different probabilistic models. The GEAS models revealed a potentially terminal combination of five so-called “super-threats”, which represent a collision of environmental, economic, and social risks. “Each super-threat on its own poses a serious challenge to the world’s adaptive capacity,” said GEAS research director Hernandez Garcia. “Acting together, the five super-threats may irreversibly overwhelm our species’ ability to survive.”Garcia said, “Previous GEAS simulations with significantly less data and cross-validation correctly forecasted the most surprising species collapses of the past decade: Sciurus carolinenis and Sciurus vulgaris, for example, and Anatidae chen. So we have very good reason to believe that these simulation results, while shocking, do accurately represent the rapidly growing threats to the viability of the human species.”

GEAS notified the United Nations prior to making a public announcement. The spokesperson for United Nations Secretary General Vaira Vike-Freiberga released the following statement: “We are grateful for GEAS’ work, and we treat their latest forecast with seriousness and profound gravity.”

GEAS urges concerned citizens, families, corporations, institutions, and governments to talk to each other and begin making plans to deal with the super-threats.

An official quote from AFP:

BEIJING (XFN-ASIA) – China claimed success in its pre-Olympic battle against Beijing’s pollution, as strong winds helped

clear the thick smog that has hung over the Chinese capital this month.

Pollution levels have fallen by at least 20 pct since the first of a raft of short-term measures began at the beginning of July, Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau deputy director Du Shaozhong told reporters.

Despite visible signs of heavy smog that had pervaded Beijing in recent weeks and some branches of China’s state-run press highlighting the pollution problems, Du insisted there had been 25 days of “clean air” in July.

“We have seen comprehensive measures implemented already and we have seen that they have had comprehensive results,” he said.

Nevertheless, Du confirmed that further emergency measures were being planned if pollution was a concern during the Games, which start on Aug 8.

and a declaration by Australian Olympic Committe:

Australian Olympic officials have told athletes they can withdraw from events in Beijing with no repercussions if they are concerned about pollution levels, it was reported Tuesday.

Australia’s deputy head of mission Peter Montgomery said athletes would not be forced to compete, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Montgomery emphasised that he expected the country’s 433 team members would choose to compete but any decision not to would be respected.

“It is extremely unlikely an athlete will not compete, most athletes train for 10 years for this moment,” Montgomery said.

“For us, the athletes’ attitude to the event is paramount. If they don’t want to compete, that is fine. They will be under absolutely no pressure to compete if they feel uneasy or don’t want to compete.”

Nevertheless, Du confirmed that further emergency measures were being planned if pollution was a concern during the Games, which start on August 8.

“If we still don’t have ideal air quality for the Games, we will take more measures, and they will be measures that are similar to what has already been taken but to a higher degree.”

and here a report and a video by Wall Street Journal about pollution in China.