Microsoft announced on Jan. 18, 2022, its intention to purchase video game giant Activision Blizzard. The company, publisher of top-selling video games Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Candy Crush, has been the subject of a series of sexual discrimination and harassment complaints.
Shutterstock/Zivica KerkezCOVID drastically changed shopping habits.
Grand Park, a multi-use sporting facility in Westfield, Ind., was built to lure youth sports competitions and tourists to the region. AP Photo/Michael ConroyThe Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.
The big idea
baranq / ShutterstockA person’s COVID-19 vaccination status is increasingly determining which events they can attend, where they can travel and where they can work. Vaccines influence the jobs that people can do (some companies require a vaccine to work), as well as when workers are required to take sick leave and the support that they receive during that time.
New York City's vaccine mandates are unaffected by the court ruling. AP Photo/Mary AltafferThe U.S. Supreme Court on Jan.
Tennis star Novak Djokovic is out of the Australian Open after the country’s immigration minister, Alex Hawke, cancelled his visa “on the basis that it was in the public interest to do so”. This follows an earlier quashing of the original decision by Border Force officials to cancel the Serbian player’s visa when he arrived in Australia because he didn’t have a COVID vaccination.
It remains to be seen whether the omicron variant will shift Sars-CoV-2 towards becoming manageably endemic. But as and when this happens, there will still be “long COVID” to contend with.
According to the boss of the UK’s biggest energy supplier, Centrica, high gas and electricity prices could last for two years.
In the metaverse, your avatar, the clothes it wears and the things it carries belong to you thanks to blockchain. Duncan Rawlinson - Duncan.co/Flickr, CC BY-NCYou may think the metaverse will be a bunch of interconnected virtual spaces – the world wide web but accessed through virtual reality.
Avigator Fortuner/ShutterstockIn the run-up to Christmas, there was considerable anxiety about shortages of festive food and gifts.
