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For Honor, Ubisoft's weapon-based combat game, has the makings of a brutal power fantasy. Its bleak, war-torn medieval world is populated by three of history's most iconic warrior classes: Knights, Vikings, and Samurai. Due to the focus on multiplayer, my time playing so far has been brief. The servers have only gone live recently, which has given me little chance to dive into everything For Honor has to offer. Fortunately, I've managed to complete the first of the game's three story mode chapters (in just under three hours). While there's still a lot more to play, what I've experienced so far has me excited to dive deeper into the subtle nuances of For Honor's distinct take on melee-action.

Rather than feel like a full-on single-player experience, For Honor's story mode comes across more like a tutorial for multiplayer. Each scenario acts as a means of introducing you to the game's various mechanics. For example, one stage presents the rules of the "capture the point"-inspired Dominion multiplayer match, while another acts as a tutorial to familiarize you with a faction's specific hero class. The function of story mode has made it an enriching undertaking so far, despite the hollow characterization of the ongoing storytelling that attempts to link each of the scenarios together.

While For Honor's story mode is straightforward, there is a multitude of engaging one-on-one battles to be had, even against AI. The ruthless combat system is by and large its standout feature, managing to be both elegant and simple, while displaying a level of nuance in the restraint it demands. Quick reflexes are needed to win, but victory also requires steady, deliberate movements and well-timed attacks. Button mashing drains your character's stamina, leaving you vulnerable to attacks. For Honor punishes recklessness, forcing you instead to follow its more measured pace.

The slow speed of combat can easily breed impatience at first, as it demands you to unpack years worth of habits that faster-paced melee-action games might have instilled in you. Coming out on top in a fight is more about patience and your ability to read a foe than the execution of brute force or button mashing. Even against an AI-controlled warrior, this level of patience and skill is paramount. I can only imagine how this all feels when put into practice against a human opponent, who also fully understands these tenets.

One-on-one battles are fun and challenging for the way they punish you for thoughtless play. But this heavily contrasts with fighting For Honor's AI minions, which frequently feel mundane; defeating them simply requires mindless swinging rather than the calculated execution of one-on-one combat. Fighting these "opponents" also proves middling due to the inability to lock onto them directly. More often than not you'll find yourself swinging your weapon wildly at the air rather than hitting them.

Despite these evident shortcomings, For Honor already has the workings of a well-made multiplayer fighting game. However, I still have a lot to learn about the strengths and weaknesses of each class, and how to exploit them in the heat of battle. So, for the next few days, I'll be fighting my way through the rest of its single-player campaign, and facing off against other combatants online once the servers are populated with more players.

Stay tuned for our full review in the near future, and in the meantime, check out our For Honor footage and features below.

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For Honor Review In Progress - GameSpot

Theres more than one way to kill a fascist. My favorite method in Sniper Elite 4 is pretty vanillaa bullet through the helmet from very far awaybut I also enjoy using the occasional explosive barrel or net full of cargo (dropped on a head). Once I filled a neighborhood with mines, fired my rifle into the air three times, and ran away. Any fascists who werent turned into mist walked into my scope. This is easily the best game in the Sniper Elite series.

Theres no voice in your ear telling you what to do: Youre on your own against a map full of AI soldiers.

I havent been able to try Sniper Elite 4s multiplayer yet, so Im not committing to a final review right now, but I suspect the co-op and competitive modes will only make me like it more. I have played most of the campaign as of now, and its really good. The WW2 story about Allied subterfuge in fascist Italy is routine war game stuffthough I do like that I get to team up with Italian partisans and the mobbut the yappy cutscenes dont intrude on hours of skulking through complex maps with a Springfield rifle and a pocket full of tripwire.

Each mission drops you into a large mapthink Battlefield size or a bit largerwith tons of enemy soldiers, multiple primary objectives, and several secondary objectives. Your main tools are: A) a set of binoculars to tag enemies with, B) a sniper rifle, C) an SMG and pistol, and D) medkits, mines, and as many satchel bombs as you need.

Theres no voice in your ear telling you what to do: Youre on your own against a map full of AI soldiers, who are thankfully an improvement over Sniper Elite 3s buggy Nazis. I havent encountered a single noticeable bug in SE4 yet, even in the pre-release review build I was provided.

It's a game with gruesome slow-mo x-ray shots of organs exploding, including brains and balls, so I wouldnt expect to find sleep darts.

The enemies are still simple-minded, though. Take a shot and theyll hear it and take cover. Take another shot or two from the same location and its on: they know where you are and theyll open fire. But they dont have great eyesight. Run away without being respotted (a red ghost image of yourself shows you where they think you are) and hide for a minute and theyll feebly search for you and eventually return to their routines. Classic videogame enemies: they witness you shoot the spleens out of a hundred of their friends and then go back to strolling around and mumbling.

If you wait for sound coverplanes overhead, artillery fire, or malfunctioning generatorsyou can ghost snipe. I once plopped down in a bush and spent 20 minutes killing soldiers on a bridge, using the explosions from a railway gun to mask my shots. I enjoy camping, though opportunities to have a nice lie down are rare. Sniper Elite 4 would rather you pack up and relocate often, but it does give you more opportunities to snipe quietly than Sniper Elite 3 did thanks to small supplies of suppressed ammo you can carry.

You can also sneak into objective sites and use melee takedowns and suppressed pistol kills, but stealth in SE4 isnt quite as fun and playful as it is in similar games, namely Metal Gear Solid 5. Sneaking is slow and the gadgets are straightforward: rocks to toss, a whistle, and explosives. The complexity maxes out at luring enemies to a spotwith a corpse, or an explosion, or a tossed rockand blowing them up or shooting them when they get there. There are no cardboard boxes or nonlethal options. Granted, it is a game with gruesome slow-mo x-ray shots of organs exploding, including brains and balls, so I wouldnt expect to find sleep darts.

I can't help but think of the Crypt Keeper whenever this happens.

I started having more fun after I stopped striving for stealth perfection. Instead of how can I sneak in here and take out my target silently, the game has become how can I kill every fascist on this map?

One tactic Im fond of is to take a shot to make some noise, then circle around the alerted soldiers and embarrass them, shooting the backs of their heads while they look the wrong way. Or Ill fully play it as an action game. On one big, green section of the Italian countryside, for example, I decided that a certain hill was mine, and disregarded stealth altogether. I ran to one side, then the other, and then back again for I-dont-know-how-long, killing every soldier who tried to climb the hill and root me out. After that, I strolled up to formerly locked down objectives, satisfied by the knowledge that everyone who used to be guarding them was in a heap at the bottom of a hill.

Sniping is as simple or difficult as you want it to be. You can remove ballistics all togetherbullets always go where the crosshairs meetor include gravity and wind in the equation. Even with those influences turned on, letting out your breath slows time and produces a big red box that shows you where your bullet will go, so its still not hard to hit an eyeball. Bump up the difficulty to Hardcore, however, and its up to you to judge distance and wind.

Using the guide removes most of the challenge to aiming (its probably different using a controller) while having no guide requires intimate familiarity with a rifles bullet velocity, and is something Id only attempt on a second playthrough. It does feel markedly better to sink a shot without such direct help, though, so I wish there were a middle ground. Maybe the red box fades away after a moment? Its a tough thing to solve. I also wish the custom difficulty settings were more granular. I haven't found a way to remove the guide without playing in Hardcore mode, which removes a bunch of other HUD elements, such as the minimap and ammo counter. It's possible I'm missing something, so I'll keep trying different settings, but it isn't obvious.

Getting good enough to play without any UI help takes practice.

Another minor annoyance: Sniper Elite 4 tends to autosave in the middle of fights rather than during safe moments, and I've ended up reloading into near-death situations. Thankfully its possible to manually save whenever you want, which becomes a necessary discipline. The weapon progression isnt great either. So far Ive had no incentive to try guns other than my starting Springfield, which has better stats than any of the other rifles I could unlock thanks to upgrades Ive earned by using it. And before the games even out, there are multiple greyed out rifles marked DLC, which is disheartening.

Sniper Elite 4 runs great, though. The big levels take seconds to load on my SSD, it supports ultrawide resolutions, and outside of tiny graphical glitches Ive noticed during cut scenes, it looks sharp. The animations and environments lack much in the way of charactermost of it is best described as World War 2 videogame artbut the Italian hills and villas are pretty, and on my old Nvidia GTX Titan it runs at a comfortable 60-80 fps at 2560x1080.

Theres still a lot for me to play withthe entire campaign can be played in co-op, plus theres a co-op survival mode and competitive multiplayer modesbut Id be happy with Sniper Elite 4 if it were just the solo campaign. It's out on Tuesday, and I'll have a full review after I've done some sniping with friends.

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Sniper Elite 4 review in progress - PC Gamer

At California's Oroville Dam, Progress Made, but Threat Lingers Wall Street Journal A day after nearly 200,000 residents around the Lake Oroville dam fled after officials feared a devastating flood, officials said they were making progress lowering water levels in the lake, and making repairs to a spillway crucial for safely diverting ... and more »

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At California's Oroville Dam, Progress Made, but Threat Lingers - Wall Street Journal

GREENSBORO Guilford County Schools has made measurable progress on many different fronts over the last three years but not much when it comes to increasing the overall percentage of students scoring proficient or advanced on end-of-grade or course tests.

On Monday, the administration released its annual report on the progress made toward strategic goals. Officials have been working toward the 2016 goals since 2013.

Among the highlights, the district:

The district is also hovering within striking distance of its 2016 goal of 90 percent of students graduating from high school in four years. The graduation rate is 89.4 percent a district record up from 86.2 in 2012-13.

However, the report showed the district made what it called good progress on only one of its 12 End of Course or End of Grade proficiency goals. Specifically, the percentage of students scoring at college- and career-ready levels on end-of-grade tests in fifth- and eighth-grade science.

Since 2013-14 thats increased from nearly 50 percent of students scoring at advanced levels to nearly 58 percent still short of the 61.6 percent goal the district wanted.

On another goal, the district came up short. Grade-level proficiency in third through eighth grade reading has stayed right around 52 percent for the last three years despite a goal of 66.5 percent.

Today, our schools fall on a spectrum, with some excelling beyond state and national standards and others still struggling, Contreras, the districts new leader, wrote in her introduction to the report.

Interestingly, district leaders did point to progress on end-of-year tests but by a different measure. Proficiency which the state stresses measures the percentage of students scoring at grade level or at college and career levels on end-of-grade tests. But tests can also measure how much schools increase individual students knowledge and capabilities in a given year.

Thats known as growth and theres currently a raging battle in education circles about the relative merits of proficiency versus growth.

By using growth as a measurement, though, the district is succeeding. According to the report, almost 83 percent of all schools met or exceeded their expected growth in 2016. Thats up from about 80 percent of schools in 2015. Its also above the state average of 73.6 percent.

Reached by phone Monday, Contreras said the state emphasizes proficiency over student growth in how it evaluates schools and districts. Thats not her preference. She thinks measuring how much progress schools make in educating each student is a fairer method.

However, 80 percent of a schools letter grade from the state comes from proficiency and 20 percent from student growth.

I disagree with that, she said.

Asked whether the district is likely to keep the same goals for EOC and EOG tests given that they werent met Contreras said its premature for her to say. Shell make decisions about the next round of goals in cooperation with the countys board of education.

She said she and other district leaders are proud of where progress has been made. In addition to academic measures like the number of students taking or passing a college course, she pointed to a major increase in the number of students earning a service-learning certificate for the work theyve done in high school.

The district also blew away a goal for decreasing out-of-school suspensions. The goal was to decrease suspensions by 10 percent from the 2011-12 school year to 2015-2016. Instead, the number decreased by about 22 percent.

Contact Jessie Pounds at (336) 373-7002 and follow @JessiePounds on Twitter.

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Guilford Schools annual report shows mixed results on progress - Greensboro News & Record (blog)

Set aside Adele splitting her Grammy like Solomon; forget, for a moment, all the pre-ceremony analysis about the awards fraught history with race and taste and tradition. Based solely on the performances last night, viewers would need to be arguing about Adele vs. Beyoncits hard to think of a more meaningful distinction in popular music than the one between them.

Adele performed twice on darkened stages where the focus could be on nothing other than her singing. For her George Michael tribute, she flubbed some notes and started again, because otherwise what would the point have been? Beyonc meanwhile offered a floral golden swirl of performance art and video wizardry and spoken word, with holographic and real bodies evoking da Vincis Last Supper. Some people will worship it, and some people will mock it; either way, sans sound, Beyonces performance could survive as gifs and memes and mashup videos. Adeles meanwhile could be ripped to MP3 and lose nothing for lack of images.

The Biggest Moments From the 2017 Grammys

Adeles song-no-dance routine, while often impressive, creates less entertaining TV and less daring art than Beyoncs audiovisual spectacles do. But the Grammys have made clear which it considers the better approach to music. Adele won all five Grammys for which she was nominated, including the three big awards where she competed with Beyonc: Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year. This extends a sweep of every category in which shes been nominated since 2011, resulting in a total of 15 Grammys.

If Adeles dominance seems unseemly to you, Adele sympathizes. Accepting Album of the Year with her team of producers and co-writers, she tearfully offered thanks and then pivoted: I cant possibly accept this award My artist of my life is Beyonc. Addressing Beyonc in the audience directly, Adele said that Lemonade was so monumental and so well thought-out and so beautiful, and that the way you make me and my friends feel, the way you make my black friends feel, is empowering. At the end, she broke her Grammy statue in twopresumably to split it with her idol.

Debates will now unfold about the optics of the moment, Adeles manners, the awkwardness of mentioning her black friends, and the parallels with Macklemores apology after beating Kendrick Lamar at the Grammys. But Adeles sincerity burns brightlyjust try to be cynical about her backstage testimony of being a Beyonc stan since she was 11 years old and now wondering what the fuck does [Beyonc] have to do to win Album of the Year?

Good question. A follow-up to the megaton musical engine 21, Adeles comparatively restrained 25 was a strong display of ability from a powerful singer; it sold well but got mixed reviews. As an artistic statement, Lemonade smokes it. Its not just that Beyoncs album had a fully realized video component; its not just that it played with juicy tabloid rumors; its that it told a story as it alchemized disparate sounds for seriously entertaining songs that no one but Beyonce could have made. It said something about its creator and its world, and it pushed at the boundaries of pop. It was progress.

But the Grammys arent, in the end, interested in progress. Adele could have pulled off last nights performances basically in any decade of the Grammys existence. Last years Album of the Year winner, Taylor Swifts 1989, was explicitly retro; Beck beat Beyonc in 2015 with a collection of folk rock that needed no timestamp; the only black artists to have won the Album of the Year prize in the last 14 years were septuagenarians performing covers.

Beyoncs display at last nights Grammys, by contrast, needed the now. Thats not only in a technological sense (I wasnt sure what was real and what was fakewere you?) but also an aesthetic and political one. Her forthright celebration of black sisterhood and maternity, her references to contemporary art, and, yes, her musicthe synth tapestry of Love Drought especiallyall reflect the moment. So does the notion of a singer who does more than sing, who disregards traditional notions of musical respectabilitythe ideal of a woman in a gown standing alone and beltingfor a broader sense of the mediums potential.

Black artists from Prince to Michael Jackson to Kanye West have been on the forefront of this sort of expansion of what pop music means. Maybe that fact has something to do with why they have mostly fared poorly in the Grammys general categories over the years even as they have served up exactly the kind of performances that make the Grammys worth watching at all. Or maybe its just a deeper sort of bias: With only three black women ever winning Album of the Year (Lauryn Hill, Natalie Cole, Whitney Houston), little in Grammys history suggests a non-white Adele would have the success of this white one. Beyoncs one televised win last night was for Best Urban Contemporary Albumfounded in 2013 surely to include more artists of color, but with the effect of highlighting how they are sidelined in the general categories.

The awards success of traditionalists like Adele, ultimately, comes across as a rejection of the forward thinkers, a rejection that stings especially when it fits a clear pattern of excluding black visionaries. Its not as if old-fashioned singers need the Grammys to defend them: 25 has moved more than 10 million copies, while Lemonade sales and streams figured out to 2.1 million units in 2016. Surely change is necessary when even the avatar of tradition, Adele, knows somethings amiss. By saluting Beyonc on stage, she joins a trend with Frank Ocean, Kanye West, and other influential stars pointing out how strange it is that the Grammys judgement of the best in music, year after year, looks about the same.

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Adele, Beyonc, and the Grammys' Fear of Progress - The Atlantic

Ionis Pharmaceuticals will receive a $75 development milestone payment from Bayer, relating to the continued clinical development of the antisense drug IONIS-FXIRx and the start of a clinical program for a second antisense candidate, IONIS-FXI-LRx. Ionis says it plans to start a Phase IIb study with IONIS-FXIRX in patients with end-stage renal disease who are on hemodialysis. "We recently completed a Phase II study in patients with end-stage renal disease on hemodialysis, in which IONIS-FXIRxdemonstrated robust reductions in Factor XI activity and no treatment-related major bleeding, " stated B. Lynne Parshall, COO at Ionis Pharmaceuticals. The firm will also take IONIS-FXI-LRx through Phase I development. Under terms of the agreement with Bayer, once these studies have been carried out, and if Bayer decides to progress the programs, the German drugs giant will take over responsibility for all global development, regulatory, and commercialization activities for both drugs. Ionis will be eligible for development milestones, plus tiered royalties up to the high 20% range, on gross margins of both drugs combined.

IONIS-FXIRx and IONIS-FXI-LRx are antisense drugs designed to reduce the production of Factor XI. IONIS-FXI-LRx has been developed using Ioniss Ligand Conjugated Antisense (LICA) platform. We are pleased that Bayer has decided to expand our collaboration and initiate development of a LICA antisense drug targeting Factor XI," Parshall added. "Our LICA technology enables flexible, low, and infrequent doses and dose regimens, which may be preferred for a drug targeting broad indications."

Earlier this month Ionis earned a $5 million milestone payment from partner Biogen following the validation of a neurological disease target. Biogen and Ionis have a broad drug development collaboration in the field of neurological disorders. In December 2016, the FDA approved the firms' antisense drug SpinrazaTM for the treatment of spinal muscular atrophy in pediatric and adult patients. During January of this year, Novartis agreed to a potentially $1B global option and collaboration agreement to develop the Ionis subsidiary Akcea Therapeutics's cardiovascular disease candidates AKCEA-APO(a)-LRx and AKCEA-APOCIII-LRx.

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Ionis Earns $75M Milestone from Bayer for Progress of Antisense Drug Program - Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (press release)

New York Times

North Korea Claims Progress on Long-Range Goal With Missile Test New York Times SEOUL, South Korea North Korea said on Monday that it had successfully tested a new nuclear-capable intermediate-range ballistic missile, claiming important progress in being able to strike its enemies with long-range missiles tipped with nuclear ... North Korea trumpets missile tech progressNikkei Asian Review all 1,339 news articles »

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North Korea Claims Progress on Long-Range Goal With Missile Test - New York Times

Forbes

How Travel Bans Can Impede America's Progress Forbes As a practicing emergency medicine physician, I work on the front lines, the proverbial front door of access for the majority of patients who need emergent medical care. Yet, while I am trained to take the pulse of a patient, I also have awareness of ... and more »

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How Travel Bans Can Impede America's Progress - Forbes

RICHMOND, Va. (NEWSPLEX) -- Last week's "Crossover Day" marked the halfway point for this year's Virginia General Assembly, and lawmakers say they are making great progress despite the shorter session.

Several pieces of legislation on mental health passed in both chambers before the crossover, which has been a big forefront for Del. Rob Bell (D, 58th), and Sen. Creigh Deeds (D, 25th).

A proposed amendment by Del. Steve Landes (R, 25th) that would have ended the revenue sharing agreement between the City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County, as well as similar localities across the commonwealth was pulled just a few days later.

Del. Bell also got his "Tebow" bill passed through the House of Delegates again, which would allow home-schooled children to participate in public schools sports.

The bill also passed the Senate last year, but was later vetoed by Gov. Terry McAuliffe.

Lawmakers say patience makes all of the difference in shorter sessions like these.

"You don't get everything you want every time you want it," said Sen. Deeds. "It's kind of an education process [because] not everyone knows the same thing as everyone else, or feels the same way so you have to be patient and plan your work and work your plan."

Lawmakers still face the challenge of bridge the $1.5 billion budget shortfall, where they will talking about the possibilities of big cuts.

This year's session is set to close on Feb. 25.

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Virginia lawmakers making big progress despite shorter session - The Charlottesville Newsplex

For all the talk and disclosures regarding inclusion and diversity, a new report shows that tech companies are making little headway in building racially balanced workforces.

Open MIC, a nonprofit that focuses on issues of diversity, released a study this month that showsAfrican-Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans remain dramatically underrepresented in the tech economycompared to their overall presence in the U.S. workforce. The organization is hoping to get investors to pressure tech companies to be more aggressive with their diversity efforts by making the case that this is a big loss in terms of productivity and profitability, both for the companies and the broader economy.

In a country with a population growing more diverse each day, the U.S. tech community remains a bastion of white, male privilege that has largely excluded people of color, said Michael Connor, executive director of Open MIC, in a statement. Given the growing social, political and economic influence of tech companies, the lack of diversity in the sector has implications that extend far beyond the industry itself.

According to the report called Breaking the Mold: Investing in Racial Diversity in Tech African-Americans and Latinos each represent about 5.3 percent of the tech workforce, at least 16 percentage points below their overall numbers in the general workforce.

Making this challenge even steeper: People of color working in tech report feeling isolated and discriminated against, which results in their leaving the tech workforce at a rate 3.5 times greater than that of white men.

The paper cites another study by Intel that found over the past five years, various tech companies and organizations have pledged to spend $1.2 billion on diversity programs.

Despite that spending, the Open MIC report found that over the past 15 years, racial and ethnic minorities have only seen their numbers increase by less than 2 percent in the tech sector. And in the upper ranks, the study found that only 2 percent of executives are African-American and 3 percent are Latino.

The organization called on investors to play a more active role in pressuring companies to change, citing several studies that indicate more racially diverse companies on average reported better revenue gains and profitability.

There is substantial evidence that diversity leads to stronger economic gains for companies, no matter the industry, the report says. Given the digital worlds burgeoning social and economic influence, the current lack of racial diversity in the tech industry poses serious risks for investors, the tech sector and society at large.

Finally, the report included a table of workforce diversity numbers and top tech companies, based on their own public disclosures and data from theU.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission:

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Tech industry shows little progress on racial diversity - VentureBeat