The James Logan Courier

By Heda Bayron, VOA News

Hong Kong —Thousands of people have been evacuated from their homes in northwestern Japan due to fears of mudslides and aftershocks following Monday's powerful earthquake. At least nine people were killed in the disaster.

Relief and rescue operations continued in northwestern Japan Tuesday, where thousands of people are sheltering in school buildings and community centers. The 6.8 magnitude earthquake destroyed homes and cut water, gas and power supplies.

By Billy O'Keefe
McClatchy-Tribune News Service (MCT)

"THE DARKNESS"
For: Xbox 360 and Playstation 3
From: Starbreeze Studios/2K Games
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood and gore, drug reference, intense violence, sexual themes, strong language)

Arguably no game developer is experimenting with immersion quite like Starbreeze Studios, which most recently was responsible for a movie-licensed game ("The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay") that was immeasurably more interesting than the movie that inspired it.

The concepts that surfaced in "Riddick" go into overdrive with "The Darkness," which drops you into the shoes of a 21-year-old mobster who finds himself doing battle with both his crime family and a demonic possession that gives him some seriously scary powers. Fundamentally, it's a first-person shooter, and much of the action that takes place is not unlike what might take place in any other FPS. But the devil is in "The Darkness'" details, and it's the sum of these details that set the game so far apart from its peers.

Christina Stead (17 July 1902—31 March 1983) was an Australian novelist and short-story writer noted for her satirical wit and psychological penetration. She was a committed Marxist although never a member of the Communist Party. She lived many years in England and the United States but returned to Australia after she was denied the Britannica-Australia prize on the grounds that she had "ceased to be an Australian".

Read an excerpt from “A real inferno”: the life of Christina Stead by Brooke Allen, free from New Criterion Online.