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After receiving countless requests from friends asking him to teach them gaming skills, Wang Jin, an executive of a Chinese tech start-up near Shanghai, smelled a business opportunity.

Wangs company, Hangzhou-based Yocaihua, rolled out an unusual service: anyone who wants to improve their performance in the multiplayer online battle arena Honour of Kings can hire a senior player to teach them, at a minimum fee of 20 yuan (US$3) per hour.

Why Chinas Honour of Kings is so popular: its all about communication

The demand for our coaching service has been growing since its debut in May, Wang said. In the beginning, we had less than 100 orders per day; now, the figure climbs to several hundred.

Most of his clients are Chinese businessmen and white collar workers who are too busy to figure out how to play the game on their own yet are keen to become good at it, Wang said.

For tens of millions of daily users in China, Honour of Kings is an online realm thats so engaging they really cant escape, even if they wanted to, as it blurs the line between social networking and online gaming.

Getting proficient at Honour of Kings takes time or money. And if only due to a fear of missing out, many busy Chinese are more than willing to pay to keep pace.

Honour of Kings is so popular in China. If you cant play it well, others laugh at you, Wang said.

While it remains largely unknown outside China, Honour of Kings, made by Chinese internet group Tencent, is a fantasy realm in itself. Its popularity is so vast, and seemingly addictive, critics have likened it to a drug. By some estimates, one in seven Chinese citizens plays Honour of Kings. At a forum in Hong Kong last month, Yao Xiaoguang, vice-president of Tencent, told participants that Honour of Kings is not only a game for Chinese smartphone users, but also a new way of socialising.

For Cai Jian, a designer in Shenzhen, the social aspect of the game is its main draw.

There are so many people in China playing Honour of Kings. If you dont play it, you cant join their conversation, he explained. Whenever Cai meets colleagues in his office, instead of saying Hello, they now greet each other with the same question: When shall we play Honour of Kings together?

A strong emphasis on socialising is deep in the DNA of Honour of Kings. After all, Tencent, the games developer, has transformed itself from an unknown start-up on the border with Hong Kong into one of Asias most valuable companies, in part thanks to the creation of two popular social networking tools, QQ and WeChat.

QQ is an online chatting tool, and WeChat is an instant messaging app similar to WhatsApp, with 938 million monthly active users.

Honour of Kings players have to log in via QQ or WeChat. Once logged in by WeChat, the system shows them if any of their friends are online. They can then team up to battle rival players in a fantasy landscape while talking to each other via live chat. Tencent rates players by their gaming skills and a players ranking is visible to their WeChat friends creating a kind of peer pressure that makes players such as Zhao Lei, a government clerk in Xian ( ), keep playing.

Since your ranking is visible to your friends, it has created a sense of competition, said Zhao. You dont want to make others feel that you are not as good as them. To catch up, Zhao often ends up playing the game until midnight.

When players encounter each other in the game, the system also shows their relative distance from each other in the real world, spreading the honour of being a top player into daily life.

Zhao, who admits he is shy, says women at his place of work now come up to him to ask for game-playing advice, and this further motivates him to improve his skills.

Some gamers want to play their way to success in the workplace. On the question-and-answer website Zhihu, Chinas version of Quora, one person asks: How can I impress my boss in Honour of Kings without making him lose face?

At schools, Chinese pupils play Honour of Kings for social acceptance. In a place where 60 or 70 per cent of students play Honour of Kings, how can you make friends without playing? wrote Zhihu user Xuan Xiaoye, who described herself as a high-school student.

As Chinese increasingly turn to Honour of Kings as a way to make friends and influence people, some now question whether Tencent is playing too hard on their gamers psychology, with real-world adverse effects.

Last week a 13-year-old boy in Hangzhou ( ) broke his legs jumping from a fourth-floor window after his parents stopped him from playing the game, Hangzhou Daily reported. In April, a 17-year-old boy in Guangzhou suffered a stroke after playing Honour of Kings non-stop for 40 hours, according to the Yangcheng Evening News.

Following these incidents, Peoples Daily, the Chinese governments mouthpiece, opened fire at Tencent on Tuesday, calling its Honour of Kings game poison and a drug that was harming teenagers.

Heres why Tencents Honour of Kings has 200 million players

In an economy where policymakers have a big say on which businesses should flourish and which ones shouldnt, Tencent shares plunged as much as 5.1 per cent on the Hong Kong exchange, wiping out nearly US$17.5 billion in market value in a matter of hours.

The game developer quickly responded by imposing what it called the most serious anti-addiction measures in history. According to a post on Tencents social media account on Tuesday, gamers under the age of 12 are now limited to an hour of Honour of Kings a day, and cant play after 9pm. Those between 12 and 18 are limited to two hours a day.

Data from Chinese research firm Jiguang show that one-quarter of Honour of Kings players are younger than 19.

Its too early to know how the new restrictions will affect Tencents business. Roughly half of the companys revenue comes from online gaming.

In the first quarter of 2017, Honour of Kings contributed revenue of 6 billion yuan (US$876 million), according to industry estimates.

But some gamers welcome the new limits. Its hard even for adults to resist Honour of Kings, let alone children, Zhao, the player in Xian, said. While he enjoys being a good gamer, he said he hates it, too, as playing the game has wasted much of his time.

The 32-year-old has tried to quit, but all his attempts have failed, since his WeChat friends keep luring him back in. When everybody around you is playing the game, you have no choice but continue to play, Zhao said. In that sense, the social element of Honour of Kings is really a bad thing.

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How Tencent blurred the lines of gaming, social networking in ... - South China Morning Post

MADISON (AP) Wisconsin homeowners don't have to let assessors inside as a condition for challenging their property taxes, the state Supreme Court ruled Friday.

The court said in a 5-2 decision that such visits amount to unreasonable searches and that assessors need to get warrants if they can't obtain the homeowners' consent.

The ruling involves Vincent Milewski and Morganne MacDonald, who own a home in the Town of Dover in Racine County.

According to court documents, they tried to challenge their 2013 property tax assessment in front of a town review board.

The board refused to hear the challenge because Milewski and MacDonald wouldn't let an assessor inside their home. Under state law, people who refuse an assessor's request to view their property can't contest the assessment to local review boards.

Milewski and MacDonald sued. A judge dismissed the lawsuit and a state appellate court upheld his decision. The state Supreme Court reversed that ruling.

Writing for the majority, Justice Dan Kelly said Milewski and MacDonald were faced with a difficult decision: relinquish their constitutional right to be free of unreasonable searches so they could challenge the assessment or exercise their rights and forfeit their ability to contest the assessment.

Kelly said an assessors' visit without consent is a search as defined in the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment, which protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures. The town failed to show how assessing taxes is such a special need that the Fourth Amendment doesn't apply, which means assessors must obtain search warrants to enter without consent, he wrote.

Assessors can use other means to gather information about the property, he said. Milewski and MacDonald can challenge the assessment without an interior inspection, he concluded.

He said the law isn't unconstitutional on its face. But it can't be read to require a property viewing that violates the Fourth Amendment in order to allow a challenge, he wrote.

The town's attorney, Jason Gehring, didn't immediately respond to a voicemail seeking comment.

The court's conservative-leaning majority handed down the decision.

Shirley Abrahamson and Ann Walsh Bradley, the only two liberal-leaning justices, dissented.

Abrahamson wrote in a joint dissent with Bradley that such choices are common in the law and are seen as constitutionally valid. She also complained the majority opinion is overly complex and intricate even though her dissent goes on for 47 pages compared with Kelly's 53 pages and doesn't say what should happen next.

The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, a conservative law firm that represents Milewski and MacDonald, issued a statement calling the decision "a victory for private property rights."

The Wisconsin Realtors Association, the state Department of Justice and the Institute of Justice, a law firm specializing in constitutional protections, all filed friend-of-the-court briefs urging the Supreme Court to strike down the law.

Excerpt from:
Homeowners don't have to let assessors in to challenge tax - The ... - hngnews.com

By: Express News Service | New Delhi | Published:July 10, 2017 2:49 am Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya. (File Photo)

Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister and BJP state president Keshav Prasad Maurya on Sunday said that the administration is preparing to invoke the National Security Act (NSA) against those accused of killing five men in Unchahar area of Rae Bareli district on June 26.

Confirming this, the officiating Rae Bareli SP Shashi Shekhar Singh said preparations are on to invoke the NSA.

Since the killings, the BJP administration had reached out to the victims kin, who were all from the Brahmin community. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had announced a Rs 5 lakh compensation to each of the victims kin, and several Brahmin leaders of the party had issued statements giving assurance of strict action against the culprits.

A day earlier, however, state Labour Minister Swami Prasad Maurya seemed to question the partys response calling the victims goons, mafia and criminals who had come to kill the son of the village pradhan.

Meanwhile, Akhil Bharatiya Brahmin Vichar Manch, an organisation supported by Manoj Pandey, Samajwadi Party MLA from Unchahar, protested in Lucknow on Sunday.

They demanded invoking of the NSA against the accused, increasing the compensation for victims to Rs 20 lakh and providing a government job to one of the victims dependents. Police had to briefly detain the protesters to maintain order and released them after shifting them to the Reserve Police Line, an officer said.

For all the latest India News, download Indian Express App

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Rae Bareli killings: NSA to be invoked against accused - The Indian Express

A Black, off-duty St. Louis policeman was shot by a white colleague when he went to assist officers with an arrest. The Black officer had, according to reports, showed up on the scene and was ordered to get on the ground until he was identified, at which point he was told stand up and walk toward them. At that point, a white officer who had not originally been on scene showed up and allegedly shot the off-duty Black officer. He claimed he was scared.

Whether it is a matter of the so-called Stand Your Ground laws, police shootings of unarmed African-Americans or, as in the now-notorious case of the police killing of Philando Castilein Minnesota who possessed a LEGAL firearm, we are being bombarded with the rhetoric of supposedly scared white people who, regardless of the circumstances, believe that their lives are in mortal danger because we happen to be in the vicinity.

The Castile case was remarkable on so many levels, not the least of which was that he informed the officer who killed him that he possessed a legal weapon. What was even more striking was the thunderous silence of the National Rifle Association, which consistently and vehemently defends the rights of gun owners, in the aftermath! Would they have been as silent had Castile been white?

This issue of white fear is over the top. Frankly, and specifically, I am sick and tired of hearing white police discuss their fear. What did they think was going to happen when they entered law enforcement? Did they think they would be protecting Mayberry, N.C., the fictitious town in The Andy Griffith Show? Should the actions of unarmed or legally armed African-Americans automatically evoke fear in white people?

Another way of looking at this situation is to understand that the cry of fear is the rhetoric of racial suppression. It is a fear that has been generated in the hearts of whites since the time of slavery and the Indian Wars amid their ever-present concern that the slaves might rise up in revolt or the Indians might leave the reservations. Our mere presence induces fear. We do not have to do anything other than exist in order for whites to quake in fear at the thought of us exploding in righteous anger.

The National Rifle Association could not respond to the killing of Castile because doing so would call into question the implicit message that the NRA has propagated for years, i.e., increase weapon ownership is for protection from Blacks. It has nothing to do with the 2nd Amendment but is instead based on the notion that gun ownership is actually the prerogative of whites only, a right rooted in the era of the genocide of Native Americans and that of slavery when only free white men could possess weapons.

This is the discussion that must be held. It is not about firearms safety or, for that matter, gun control. And, to be truthful, it is not, mainly, about police accountability. What is at issue is the extent to which U.S. society continues to keep a bulls eye on the forehead of African-Americans because of the fear that we generate, a fear rooted in their deep guilt and anxiety about the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow and genocide.

Bill Fletcher, Jr. is the former president of Trans Africa Forum. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and at http://www.billfletcherjr.com.

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Are White Gun Owners Protecting the Second Amendment or Their Racial Interest? - Atlanta Black Star

If you had to identify a nadir for the European Union, it would probably be the late summer of 2015. In those heady days, vast flows of people some refugees, some migrants streamed across Anatolia and the Mediterranean for the continent, intent on reaching the prosperous economies of its north and west, bolstered by Angela Merkels throwing open the doors to all who would come.

For Europes leaders, priding themselves on European values primary among them the prevention of atrocity within their territory it was more than an embarrassing affair: It cut at the heart of the European project itself. For the first time since the breakup of Yugoslavia, Europe found itself forced to grapple with a humanitarian crisis rudely intruding on its territory. In the international media, images circulated of refugees and migrants occupying train stations in the Balkans or, finding their way stymied, marching to Vienna on foot. With the populace alarmed by this vast influx, Europes vaunted system of passport-free internal travel collapsed, as countries began to impose passport checks at their borders to stop the flow. Hungary built a wall on its southern border. Austria, Slovenia, Denmark, and even Germany reestablished border controls. Countries were unable, or unwilling, to cooperate: Each sought to place the burden on its neighbors, with the result that the crisis festered for months. For a time it looked as if the European Union might not survive in its current form, its manifest inadequacy to address the crisis having become all too clear.

The aftermath of the refugee crisis played itself out in the great dramas of 2016 Britains shocking vote to leave the EU in June; the palpable rise of euroskepticism and populism throughout the year; and in November, the election as president of the United States of Donald Trump, a candidate who had in many ways run more against Angela Merkel than against his actual opponent. In 2017, however, the last remnants of Europes collective refugee-related paroxysm finally seemed to fade away, as Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen both turned in disappointing performances in their respective national elections.

Now Europe is back, symbolized by the resolutely regal Emmanuel Macron, whose victory over Le Pen provided the final impetus for European rejuvenation.

Or is it?

The migration crisis was, to a very large extent, the source of Europes recent ills, providing a lightning rod for all on left and right alike who sought to impugn the existing order. Only with its superficial dispelling partly through a deal with Turkey, partly through a natural ebb in the flow of people could Europe recover, though with the root causes of the problem left largely unresolved. Were it to return, the situation would revert to the dire state of two years ago.

And return it has. The focus of migration has shifted from the Aegean and Balkans to the Mediterranean but the situation is much the same. Migrant flows across the Mediterranean, from Libya to southern Italy, have seen a sharp uptick in recent months. Consider that 85,000 people have landed in Italy this year, with 12,000 coming in a 48-hour period in late June.

The Italians are understandably worried, especially in the light of upcoming national elections early next year. In a country that already boasts a potent populist party Beppe Grillos Five Star Movement, which now controls the mayoralties of Turin and Rome the image of migrant-induced chaos could be enough to cause great disturbances in the current system.

So too in Austria, which will hold elections in October. The far Right nearly won that countrys presidency late last year, and the migrant question still carries politically charged connotations. The Austrian defense minister announced earlier this week his intention of sending troops and tanks to the Tyrol, on the Italian border, for the purposes of blocking the entry of migrants into his country. Already maintaining border checks with Hungary and Slovenia, Austria may soon institute them with Italy as well. The announcement seems sure to provoke tensions with Italy, demonstrating a palpable lack of intra-European cooperation at the time when Europe needs it most, and suggesting that the resolution to the 2015 crisis was little more than facial.

The ball is thus in Europes court. We have heard much about the vaunted European recovery, but that talk means little without concrete action. The problem that vexed Europe in 2015 was an abject lack of cooperation between the EUs member states, which would rather pass the buck to Brussels or to other countries than address the issue themselves. That tendency in European affairs has not gone away; it has simply been permitted to dissipate along with the refugee flows from the east. Italy has recently proposed that European ports be opened to some migrant-carrying vessels, thus ameliorating to a degree the burden on Italian ports. Germany vetoed the proposal, while various Eurocrats argued that the responsibility should be shared with the north African countries from which the migrants come. The stage is set for a second round of European inaction. A sense of real leadership is required, but little seems to be on offer.

Perhaps that leadership could come from Emmanuel Macron, for whom this ongoing crisis represents a first testing of the waters. Much has been made of the newly minted French presidents professed desire to reign over his country as Jupiter did over the Roman pantheon, to fill the patriarchal void with which the French have grappled ever since the execution of Louis XVI in 1793. Macron stands as a benevolent authoritarian, but a youthful, charismatic one, enamored with the idea of Europe and intent on defending the Continent and his country against the populist menace. Now is the time to see whether he is worth all the talk, or whether his audacious imperial stylings are just posturing. If France and Germany really are to stand astride the new Europe, fitfully dragging it into the future, this is the first test. Can Merkel and Macron, the experienced old hand and the ambitious neophyte, forge intra-European cooperation out of what little of it has existed? Will their partnership be able to work with the smaller, less powerful European countries to fashion an equitable solution, or will they simply reach yet another impasse?

This initial hurdle comes at a less than ideal time for Macron. He has expressed his hope that the first months of his presidency will be spent overhauling Frances sclerotic labor laws, over the vociferous opposition of the powerful trade unions. For the sake of political expediency, he intended to do this as soon as possible: preferably this summer by executive decree, during the vacation months, when the unions will find organizing large-scale protests a logistical challenge. When the protests begin after the rentre in September, the reforms will be a fait accompli. But this is no simple task: It would require enormous time and energy. That time will now have to be devoted to devising a European solution to the renewed migrant crisis as well. With domestic imperative balanced against continental crisis, Macron will soon have to determine where his true priorities lie and whether he commands the political capacity to address two crucial issues simultaneously.

If Europe is back, its spirit renewed, its political will reinvigorated, now is the time to prove it. The ongoing migrant crisis in the Mediterranean provides the venue. Without a satisfactory resolution, Europe may well find itself sliding back into September 2015, with all the malignant political consequences that followed. The honeymoon is over.

READ MORE: Listen to Eastern Europe: Muslim Migration Waves Are a Pressing Problem Viktor Orban on Hungary and the Crisis of Europe Terrorism Is Not Random: We Must Look at Muslim Immigration with Clear Eyes

Noah Daponte-Smith is an intern at National Review and a student of modern history and politics at Yale University.

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The Second European Migrant Crisis Begins - National Review