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It’s been seven years since the Middle-earth film series capped off with “Battle of the Five Armies,” but J.R.R. Tolkien’s stories still make for good entertainment. At least, that’s what EA and Middle-earth Enterprises are banking on as the two companies just announced a new free-to-play mobile game set in the classic fantasy universe. The Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle-earth is still kind of ethereal in nature—something of a wraith if you will—as barely any details (and no screenshots) have been revealed so far....

The Arabic edition of NEWSWEEK is published in Kuwait by Dar Al-Watan Publishing Group, and distributed throughout the Middle East, North Africa and selected cities in Europe and the United States. Our international reporting is edited in New York, then translated into Arabic by translators and editors based in Washington and Kuwait. NEWSWEEK BIL LOGHA AL-ARABIA is the fifth foreign-language edition for us. Our others are NEWSWEEK NIHON BAN in Japanese, NEWSWEEK HANKUK PAN in Korean, ITOGI in Russian and NEWSWEEK EN ESPANOL for Latin America....

The next wave of movies will push the virtual envelope even further. None represents the breathtaking visual delights of “Jurassic.” But in “Jumanji,” opening before Christmas, all of the jungle animals are computer inventions. The lion has a mane that digital artisans worked for years to create. Human faces will always be the elusive grail, given their complexity. But hair presents a special challenge. It’s very fine, it defies the order computers like and it’s impossible to light....

I mention this by way of conceding that the odds on keeping resolutions are slim. Nobody keeps them. The record is terrible. But even so, I am going to urge that we try to make a national resolution this year. It is once and for all to stop looking at the world around us as the sum total of its governments, to stop looking at whole countries and the vast populations within them as if they were nothing more than their political leaders or even official buildings: the White House feels … the Kremlin believes … Downing Street knows … and so forth....

In Washington, officials are worried that the breakup of the Soviet Union may create an entirely new kind of global nuclear threat. “It’s terrifying what might happen,” a Pentagon analyst told NEWSWEEK. “The dimensions of this problem are beginning to sink in with us.” Both the White House and Congress appear uneasy. With Gorbachev’s advisers wondering out loud about the Soviet Union’s ability to control its own nuclear arms, Bush last week demanded that their safety be “totally guaranteed…The last thing the world needs is some kind of nuclear scare....

The publisher is prepping for the end of its 2022 fiscal year on May 10, and it’s very possible that an acquisition announcement could take place during that same meeting. A Square Enix acquisition by Sony would definitely make a lot of sense, especially considering the publisher has been supporting the PlayStation platform since the 90s. Even though the publisher has been much better with supporting multiplatform releases with some of its biggest IPs, recent years have led to additional efforts in exclusivity and timed-exclusivity with PlayStation....

Sen. Bob Kerrey has got to be a populist: his native heath is Nebraska, populism’s sacred soil. Iowa’s Sen. Tom Harkin is the real McCoy, a “prairie populist” like his pinup, George McGovern. Last week Harkin, that horny-handed son of toil and of Congress (where he has toiled much of his working life) spent a day wearing work boots and gloves and blue jeans and a hard hat, stringing wire at a Los Angeles construction site....

Their shock was premature. Last week’s BBC report was premature; in fact, no verdict had yet been handed down on Parry. And negotiations had already begun that seemed highly likely to spare the women punishments under Saudi Arabia’s version of traditional Islamic justice. Still, the case created the biggest row between the two countries for 17 years. In 1980, British television aired a dramatization of the execution of a Saudi princess convicted of adultery....

Terrestrial Radio Antennas Most cars ship from the factory with an antenna installed. This antenna is either a monopole whip antenna or a flat, window-mounted antenna. Whip antennas have been the standard for a long time, and come in several styles. Some whip antennas are rigid and stationary, others telescope out, and some retract and extend automatically when the radio is turned on and off. Satellite Radio Antennas Although terrestrial radio and satellite radio share a similar name, each requires different kinds of antennas....

My generation has a strong tradition of leadership. As young men and women we fought in World War II, and after we had won, we selflessly helped rebuild Europe and Japan. For 40 years, we held steadfast against communism and oppression. By standing for democracy and strength, by our willingness to sacrifice, we won the cold war. And when Saddam invaded Kuwait, we knew what to do, We knew that we had to stand up to aggression, and we did....

The reality is often quite different, a great national striving consisting frequently of failure. Many of the oft-told stories of the most pluralistic nation on earth are stories not of tolerance, but of bigotry. Slavery and sweatshops, the burning of crosses and the ostracism of the other. Children learn in social-studies class and in the news of the lynching of blacks, the denial of rights to women, the murders of gay men....

This week a new contender entered the Plays Pokémon realm in the form of Fish Plays Pokémon. As the succinctly named channel implies, rather than letting the chat take control over the Pokémon Trainer, this channel puts a somewhat active fish named Grayson Hopper in control. Having popped over to the channel on several occasions, I can say that, although the gimmick is funny, this is nowhere near as compelling as watching Twitch fight for Democracy over Anarchy....

When word of these experiments reached the public, the out cry was such that NIH halted all federally funded fetal research except that which directly benefited the fetus. Those rules still hold. But now that the NIH is free to fund research using aborted human tissue for transplantation, the public-no less than politicians, physicians and science researchers–still faces profound moral questions. What limits any, should be observed when experimenting with human fetuses?...

Soon after “Shock Troops,” the piece that contained this anecdote, was published in July, conservatives questioned the accuracy of the reporting–and lambasted The New Republic for the unsubstantiated “anti-war” message of its stories. Foer quotes Weekly Standardeditor Bill Kristol as saying: While criticism for The New Republic has continued over the past five months, almost equally vehement is criticism of Foer’s recent article. Bob Bateman of Media Matters highlights his belief Foer waited too long into his lengthy article to actually give his position on Beauchamp....

The other, of course, was Earl Warren, the towering chief justice who is given credit for leading the judicial revolution that bears his name. But Warren himself acknowledged Bill Brennan as the architect and strategist behind the court’s virtual remaking of the Constitution. From the expansion of First Amendment guarantees to the extension of civil rights to the increased protection afforded criminal defendants, Brennan’s intellectual gifts and personal charm won him an influence transcending his own views....

A major NIH study of health and fitness (with the ironically apt name of MRFIT), evaluating exercise, nutrition, blood-pressure control and cholesterol, consciously excluded women on the premise that men were the human norm. What is a “normal” cholesterol level? It was based on an all-male population–despite the reality that women’s cholesterol patterns are different. Only men were admitted to the study to see if the many health benefits of daily low-dose aspirin would lengthen life in healthy people....

Characterized by the tense economic and political situation as well as the spreading COVID-19 pandemic, the past few years have shown that to achieve proper geopolitical security, Ukraine needs to strengthen energy security by diversifying energy sources and supply routes. While the rest of the developed world is calling for action toward minimizing CO2 emissions, Ukraine must do both—develop new energy supply routes and additional clean alternatives. A strong U....

Latinos are soon expected to become the largest minority in the country; they also attend the most segregated schools. In the 1996-97 academic year 74.8 percent of Latinos were in schools that were more than 50 percent minority, compared with 64.3 percent in 1968-69. More than a third were in schools where the minority population is more than 90 percent. Whites, too, are racially isolated. In 1996- 97, the average white student was in a school that was 81 percent white....

Nobody expects Le Pen to win against incumbent Jacques Chirac in the May 5 vote. The left and center-right are now united against him. Yet whatever Le Pen’s final count, the bluff, brawling 73-year-old paratrooper turned politician has brought xenophobia and race hatred into the mainstream of French and European political life to an extent not seen since the defeat of fascism in World War II. “People in Bondy are scared,” says Levy, a secretary for the municipal sports association....