Obsidian Entertainment, a subsidiary of Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox, has canceled multiple projects and will begin working on a new game in the popular Fallout franchise as part of the division’s broader restructuring, according to people familiar with the matter.
The video-game studio, based in Irvine, California, also laid off around a quarter of its workforce, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the press.
As part of the shake-up, Obsidian has canceled a planned sequel to the 2025 roleplaying game Avowed along with other unannounced projects.
Under the new plan, studio design director Josh Sawyer will lead a new title in the Fallout universe — a series of roleplaying games that take place in an alternate history in which the U.S. has been ravaged by nuclear war. The emerging strategy is still in flux, the people said, and could still change.
Previously, Sawyer had been directing a roleplaying game that was similar structurally and thematically to Fallout but was not part of the franchise.
An Xbox spokesperson declined to comment.
The shifts take place as Xbox Chief Executive Officer Asha Sharma executes what she has called a “reset” of the organization. On Monday, Sharma announced plans to cut 3,200 jobs and divest five studios. She’s said she’ll invest more in the company’s biggest franchises, including Fallout, which has sold tens of millions of copies and led to a hit show from Amazon.com Inc. that is currently filming its third season.
Despite its critical and commercial success, the Fallout video-game series has not seen a new entry since 2018’s online title Fallout 76 because its primary developer, Xbox’s Bethesda Game Studios, has been focused on other projects. Bethesda has also regularly updated and created new content for Fallout 76, which has reached more than 23 million players.
The only Fallout game in the last two decades to not come from Bethesda was 2010’s Fallout: New Vegas, developed by Obsidian and directed by Sawyer. Although New Vegas has become a fan favorite, Bethesda has maintained control over the franchise. The Rockville, Maryland-based studio will work with Obsidian on the new project, the people said.
Obsidian released three games last year, two of which did not meet sales expectations, including Avowed, the company told Bloomberg Businessweek. The studio had been hoping to build on Avowed by developing a sequel in a shorter timeframe using the world and technology that it had already created.
Progress on the sequel was going well, and it was on track to be announced within the next year. But in the end, it did not fit into Sharma’s overall strategy, according to people familiar with the game’s development.
Some Obsidian employees will continue working on the Avowed sequel as they wait for new projects such as Fallout to be ready, perhaps in hope of one day reviving the game, the people said.
Obsidian will also continue to develop downloadable content for last year’s The Outer Worlds 2, the people said, and will also still work on its live-service multiplayer survival game, Grounded 2.
China’s President Xi Jinping (C), North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un (R) and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin (L) arrive for a reception in the Great Hall of the People, following a military parade marking the 80th anniversary of victory over Japan and the end of World War II, in Beijing, China, on Wednesday, September 3, 2025. File. Photo by Kremlin Press Office/UPI | License Photo
July 6 (Asia Today) — North Korea is using tacit support from China and Russia to harden its status as a nuclear-armed state, raising pressure on South Korea to rebuild the kind of international sanctions coordination that brought Pyongyang back to negotiations in 2018 and 2019, analysts said Monday.
North Korea has repeatedly stressed the “constant expansion and strengthening” of its nuclear forces and the “thorough exercise” of its status as a nuclear-armed state, signaling that it has no intention of returning to talks premised on denuclearization.
Diplomatic observers in Seoul say North Korea is taking advantage of a turbulent international environment to consolidate its nuclear status.
Russia, which has become a close partner of North Korea since the war in Ukraine, vetoed the renewal of the U.N. panel monitoring sanctions on North Korea in March 2024. At the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference in May, Russia also opposed including language on North Korea’s nuclear program in a consensus document, according to the report.
China, which has long maintained a formal position supporting denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, did not mention the issue during a North Korea-China summit in June.
The North Korean nuclear issue has become even more difficult to resolve as U.S. attention remains focused on the Middle East and the U.N. Security Council has become increasingly ineffective, analysts said.
Experts say South Korea should pursue denuclearization by maintaining sanctions on North Korea, strengthening its military capabilities in response to Pyongyang’s nuclear buildup and securing diplomatic means to apply pressure through China and Russia.
Kim Tae-woo, former president of the Korea Institute for National Unification, said South Korea must acquire capabilities that can offset North Korea’s growing nuclear threat.
“As North Korea’s nuclear threat grows, South Korea must secure corresponding capabilities to neutralize that threat,” Kim said. “Only when North Korea recognizes that an intensifying arms race will be harmful to both Koreas can nuclear arms control negotiations begin.”
Kim said South Korea should quickly move forward with security consultations under the Korea-U.S. joint fact sheet. He said Seoul should pursue the construction of nuclear-powered submarines, secure what he called “nuclear latent capability” and push for stronger U.S. extended deterrence.
Analysts also said Seoul should wage a more active diplomatic campaign toward China and Russia, which retain significant influence over North Korea.
They said South Korea should work to recreate the diplomatic environment of 2016 and 2017, when the U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted a series of strong sanctions resolutions in response to North Korea’s nuclear tests and intercontinental ballistic missile launches.
Experts say those sanctions were the key factor that pushed North Korea into inter-Korean and U.S.-North Korea denuclearization talks in 2018 and 2019.
A former senior South Korean diplomat, who requested anonymity, said sanctions remain one of the few long-term sources of leverage over North Korea.
“Every area of North Korea except its nuclear program remains backward because of sanctions,” the former official said. “As long as sanctions are not abandoned in the long term, I believe there is still hope for North Korea’s denuclearization.”
A steep NAV drop and a federal probe trigger a high-level departure at BlackRock.
The private credit market’s roughest stretch in years has claimed its first senior leader at a major asset manager.
BlackRock’s Phil Tseng is in the process of leaving his post as CEO of the firm’s publicly traded business development company, according to Bloomberg News.
The move comes amid a brutal year for BlackRock TCP Capital Corp. The firm marked down its net asset value twice in 2026 — by 19% in January and another 5% in May. Meanwhile, federal prosecutors in Manhattan have been reportedly probing the fund and questioning executives as part of the inquiry.
Tseng, an acqui-hire from BlackRock’s 2018 acquisition of Tennenbaum Capital Partners, remains employed for now with no set departure timeline.
Tseng’s exit echoes a pattern that emerged last fall when two auto-related borrowers collapsed and rattled private lenders. Cleveland-based First Brands filed for Chapter 11 in September after off-balance-sheet financing obscured leverage levels beyond what lenders had underwritten. Founder and CEO Patrick James resigned as the bankruptcy unfolded.
That same month, subprime auto lender Tricolor Holdings began liquidating. Federal prosecutors later indicted founder and CEO Daniel Chu and chief operating officer David Goodgame, alleging the pair systematically misled lenders to keep credit lines open. Goodgame pleaded guilty in June to six counts, including bank fraud and conspiracy, and is now cooperating with prosecutors — a deal that could put him on the stand against Chu, who has pleaded not guilty. Chu had also abruptly resigned from Origin Bancorp’s board days before Tricolor’s implosion.
Industry executives have largely characterized the two collapses as isolated fraud cases rather than evidence of systemic rot. Blue Owl co-president Craig Packer told CNBC in October that the failures “weren’t private credit stories” at all.
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink struck a similarly confident tone. On an April earnings call, he told analysts that institutional demand for private credit was “accelerating.” Still, headlines around the sector aren’t reflecting what the firm’s own client and portfolio data showed.
Redemptions from business development companies, key lenders in the private credit market, are surging. Investors requested $20.8 billion in redemptions in the first quarter alone. In some cases, those redemptions exceeded the 5% cap set by BlackRock and its rivals: Apollo Global Management, Ares Management, Blackstone, Blue Owl Capital, and KKR.
Not all private credit funds appear troubled. Goldman Sachs’ private credit fund, for example, honored all redemption requests in Q2 because it reported relatively modest private credit fund redemption requests (3.2%). The same goes for Nuveen Churchill and Oaktree with withdrawals of 3.1% to 4.5%, respectively.
But with so many of the sector’s players posting losses, Tseng’s departure suggests the reckoning is reaching up the org chart.
Toronto, Canada – When Diana Gallego listened to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s widely touted speech at the World Economic Forum at the start of this year, she couldn’t help but feel a disconnect.
Carney had made an impassioned plea to the world’s “middle powers” to break with a United States-led international order that he said was no longer working, and his words found receptive audiences around the world.
Recommended Stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
But for Gallego, co-executive director of FCJ Refugee Centre, an organisation that supports refugees and asylum seekers in Canada’s largest city, the prime minister’s statements rang hollow amid his government’s hardening approach to immigration.
“We saw the [prime] minister going to Davos [with] this beautiful discourse, saying we should not copy our neighbours … But internally, the policies are telling us another story,” Gallego told Al Jazeera. “Canada is closing the doors now.”
Gallego is among more than a dozen experts – from lawyers to professors, rights advocates and former government officials – who told Al Jazeera that Canada is at a “troubling” crossroads in its policies towards migrants and refugees.
As Canadians have grappled with rising economic and social pressures in recent years, a decades-old consensus on the benefits of immigration has frayed.
Hostile rhetoric blaming newcomers for Canada’s ills has intensified, and Carney’s government has slashed temporary visas and restricted access to asylum. Experts say a “generational shift” is under way.
“The general rhetoric is, ‘We don’t want you here’,” said Gallego.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal Party won the 2025 elections [File: Christoffer Andersen/EPA]
Influx in temporary migration
A settler-colonial state, Canada has encouraged successive waves of immigration throughout its history, from largely European settlement in the early to mid-1900s to specialised programmes that brought refugees and high- and low-skilled workers to Canadian shores.
For decades, that influx of newcomers was widely viewed as a positive thing: immigration was fuelling the country’s economy, staffing key job sectors and counteracting a rapidly ageing population.
But over the past few years, Canada has seen one of the most dramatic shifts in how the public views immigration – and the government has tapped into increasingly negative sentiment to cut programmes and pass new, restrictive laws.
The policy changes began under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose Liberal Party government had dramatically increased temporary immigration during the COVID-19 pandemic to fill labour market gaps.
The figures shot up rapidly and, by October 2024, there were nearly 3.15 million non-permanent residents in Canada, accounting for roughly 8 percent of the population, according to official figures.
At the same time, systemic issues – from a shortage of affordable housing to high grocery costs and long hospital wait times – were putting the squeeze on many Canadian households.
Public attitudes quickly hardened, and a 2024 poll (PDF) found a majority of Canadians saying for the first time in decades that there was “too much immigration”.
Since then, several incidents of xenophobic violence have been reported, including in some of Canada’s largest cities, where the influx of migrants has been among the most visible.
Under pressure as angry discourse soared, the Trudeau government promised in 2024 to get immigration back to “sustainable” levels, and the cuts began, including most notably to international student visas.
“The reality is that not everyone who wants to come to Canada will be able to – just like not everyone who wants to stay in Canada will be able to,” Marc Miller, Canada’s former immigration minister, said in September that year.
A major intersection in Toronto, Canada’s largest city [Jillian Kestler-D’Amours/Al Jazeera]
‘Erroneous beliefs’
The numbers of arrivals dropped quickly as student and work visas were cancelled, forcing thousands of people to leave Canada or remain without legal status. By the start of this year, non-permanent residents totalled about 2.67 million, according to government figures, a 15 percent drop from the peak in October 2024.
“I don’t think you can blame the housing crisis in Canada on immigration, but there’s no doubt that the radically increased numbers under Justin Trudeau’s regime had a political effect,” Allan Rock, a former Canadian justice minister and Liberal lawmaker, told Al Jazeera.
The government, Rock explained, has been “reading the room and sensing that Canadians were connecting local economic and financial difficulties with migration”.
At the same time, right-wing politicians have seized on those public attitudes, with the opposition Conservative Party earlier this year pushing the governing Liberals to cut healthcare for people it described as “fake refugees”.
The Conservatives, also, have echoed US President Donald Trump in advocating for changes to “birthright citizenship”, claiming that the “outdated rule” that grants citizenship to anyone born in Canada “presents yet another strain on our immigration system that Canada can’t handle”.
“With over 7 per cent of Canada’s population here on temporary status – and arrivals massively outpacing the capacity of our housing, healthcare and jobs markets – something needs to change,” the party said.
Rights advocates have denounced that rhetoric while accusing policymakers of falsely linking migrants and refugees to social problems to absolve themselves of responsibility for a years-long failure to properly fund healthcare, education and other services.
On the housing issue, for instance, experts have found (PDF) that, while immigration increases demand for housing stock, its effect on prices is far less important than public discourse would have people believe.
“Leadership means not simply caving into public opinion when it’s based on erroneous beliefs,” Rock told Al Jazeera. “We’re buying into, and we’re supporting, a growing international trend to tighten borders and build walls and validate erroneous beliefs about refugees and migrants.”
“It’s a betrayal of values that this country has always stood for, and I find it troubling.”
Carney doubles down
Yet, since taking office in April 2025, Carney – the prime minister – has continued where his predecessor Trudeau left off on immigration.
In late March, Carney’s Liberal government passed a sweeping new law that grants Ottawa the power to cancel visas en masse, including for permanent residents, if it deems it in the “public interest” to do so.
The law, known as Bill C-12, also restricts access to Canada’s refugee status determination system in ways that lawyers told Al Jazeera are “arbitrary” and likely run counter to the country’s constitution, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The government has justified the measure – which is expected to face a constitutional challenge in court – as part of an effort to streamline a backlogged asylum system and prevent “fraud”.
At the end of last year, nearly 300,000 cases were pending at the independent tribunal that adjudicates refugee claims in the country, known as the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB).
A spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), the federal immigration department, told Al Jazeera that it had introduced Bill C-12 “as global migration pressures intensify”.
The law introduces “measures to address challenges such as sudden increases in asylum claims and situations where existing processes may be used to circumvent regular immigration pathways”, the spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
“This means we can provide faster protection for those in need,” they said, adding that Bill C-12 also respects Canada’s obligations under the United Nations Refugee Convention as well as the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
But experts say the law will do little to address the backlog at the IRB. They have also accused lawmakers of failing to dispel – and even of playing into – xenophobic rhetoric rather than addressing the real concerns of Canadians or structural problems in the asylum system.
The government is “creating this sense in the public that people are scamming us, they’re taking advantage of the system [and] there’s something broken that needs to be fixed”, said Julia Sande, a lawyer at Amnesty International Canada.
“People’s struggles are real. People are facing a housing crisis, inflation and unemployment, wage stagnation and widening inequality,” she told Al Jazeera.
“Then, instead of taking responsibility or making the changes needed to address these things, governments look for a group to blame – and who’s better to blame than people who don’t have the right to vote and can’t vote you out?”
Healthcare workers protest against cuts to a refugee health programme in Toronto, Canada, in April 2026 [Jillian Kestler-D’Amours/Al Jazeera]
Carney’s ‘honeymoon’ phase
Despite such concerns raised by rights advocates, Canada’s changing immigration policies do not appear to have drawn much attention – or pushback – from the wider public.
A wide-reaching effort by civil society groups earlier this year to get the government to make amendments to Bill C-12 failed to secure any meaningful changes.
In addition to that law, the Carney government also has rolled back a healthcare programme for refugees, extended a freeze on refugee resettlement applications, and announced significant funding cuts to several ministries, including the immigration department.
Planned cuts at the IRB – the board that adjudicates refugee claims – have also been reported, fuelling concerns that delays may get worse.
“The fact that there is no real plan in place to deal with this backlog [at the IRB] then contributes to negative opinion by the public about refugees,” said Maureen Silcoff, a refugee lawyer who previously served as a member of the tribunal.
“I think the government has a responsibility to proactively undo some of the myths that are circulating,” Silcoff told Al Jazeera. “This is especially important in times where we see in other countries that there’s a surge of anti-immigrant and anti-refugee rhetoric.”
Nevertheless, Carney continues to enjoy high approval ratings as he has justified government policies during his first year in office as part of an “elbows up” response to pressure from the Trump administration.
“The Carney government still seems to be [enjoying] a honeymoon of sorts,” said John Carlaw, an assistant professor at Toronto Metropolitan University who specialises in Canadian politics and immigration.
“We’re seeing a major withdrawal of social spending and then an investment in militarism and border enforcement,” Carlaw told Al Jazeera, describing it as a “troubling period” in Canada.
“I think C-12 really showed the government is not interested in hearing from communities that work with migrants and immigrants to make policies that are consistent with a human rights framework. They just don’t want to listen to dissent.”
Luisa Ortiz-Garza, a migrant rights organiser at Parkdale Community Legal Services, speaks during an event in support of migrants and refugees in Toronto in late April [Jillian Kestler-D’Amours/Al Jazeera]
‘Not immune’ to backsliding on human rights
Despite that, rights advocates say they will continue to push back against the direction Canada is heading on immigration.
“We can’t stop fighting,” Luisa Ortiz-Garza, a migrant rights organiser at Parkdale Community Legal Services, told a packed gymnasium at Trinity-St Paul’s United Church in downtown Toronto in late April.
Several dozen people joined the event, dubbed “No More Divide and Rule”, to denounce xenophobia and urge the government to grant legal immigration status for all migrants and refugees in Canada.
“What [the government is] doing is actually just putting people against each other,” Ortiz-Garza told Al Jazeera in an interview at her organisation’s office a few days before the gathering.
“It’s citizens against migrants [and] migrants against migrants because there is this idea that some migrants did things right and other migrants just jumped the queue or abused the system,” she said.
“We’re trying to have these conversations and bring people together: allies, citizens, migrants … so that we can actually talk about this and remind people about unity.”
That was echoed by Sande at Amnesty International, who warned that Canada is “not immune” to a backsliding on human rights. “Things will just continue to get worse until governments feel they’re held to account,” she said. “Yes, scapegoating may start with migrants, but it never ends there.”
BEIJING — A conciliatory President Trump on Friday hailed success in his state visit to China, claiming a tonal reset with Xi Jinping despite departing Beijing with few concrete achievements.
The visual spectacle around Trump’s visit was itself considered a breakthrough by the two sides, who expressed an eagerness entering the talks to move on from a yearslong stretch of deteriorating relations.
But Trump’s homage and deference to Xi were a striking display of an often commanding president adapting to a new power dynamic, understanding China’s rise and its emerging role in the world.
Trump deployed a charm offensive throughout his stay here, confident in the impact of his personal touch on world leaders, often seen patting Xi on the back and repeatedly calling him his friend.
Yet in private, tensions gripped negotiations that touched nearly every major issue on Trump’s agenda, from trade relations to the U.S. war in Iran.
“He’s all business,” Trump said from Beijing in an interview with Fox.
China agreed to buy 200 Boeing jets and spend billions on American agricultural products, U.S. officials said — modest deals that fall short of restoring Chinese investment levels to their pre–2025 highs, before Trump launched a trade war that aggressively targeted Beijing.
Nevertheless, Trump referred to the trade agreements as “fantastic,” and said Xi had also pledged to purchase U.S. energy going forward. Beijing did not confirm any such agreement.
Nor did the Chinese Foreign Ministry comment on any commitment to help the United States reopen the Strait of Hormuz, effectively shuttered by Iran since the Trump administration launched a war against the Islamic Republic earlier this year.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Trump participate in a friendship walk through Zhongnanhai Garden Fridah in Beijing.
(Evan Vucci / Pool / Reuters via Associated Press)
“We feel very similar on Iran, we want that to end,” Trump said Friday. “We don’t want them to have a nuclear weapon. We want the straits opened, and we want them to get it ended, because it’s a crazy thing — they’re a little bit crazy.”
At the beginning of the summit, Xi warned the Trump administration that the longstanding U.S. position of strategic ambiguity on Taiwan had set the two nations on a collision course, Chinese state media reported. But departing Beijing, Marco Rubio, the president’s national security advisor and secretary of state, said that Washington’s position on Taiwan remained “unchanged.”
Their second day of meetings was held at Zhongnanhai, an imperial garden and lake district that has served as the secretive seat of power for the Chinese Communist Party since the revolution of 1949.
The two men strolled quiet pathways dotted with Chinese roses and ornamental archways before taking tea and lunch in Xi’s private quarters. Trump was offered rose seeds to bring home for the White House Rose Garden, the Chinese said.
“This has been an incredible visit,” Trump told reporters at the compound. “A lot of good has come of it.”
It was not the first time that Xi has hosted a president at the historic compound. In 2014, the Chinese leader, still relatively new to the presidency, hosted President Obama overnight at Zhongnanhai, where the two met in private over dinner.
President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping tour Zhongnanhai Garden.
(Evan Vucci / Pool / Getty Images)
It was another smoggy day for Trump in the Chinese capital, although cooler than Thursday, when Xi greeted Trump at the footsteps of Tiananmen Square with a lavish state welcome. There, Xi hosted Trump and his delegation at the Great Hall of the People for a day of meetings and a banquet dinner of Peking duck and pan-fried pork buns.
The two men will have future opportunities to meet, with Trump inviting Xi to Washington for a state visit at the White House in September.
“We’ve been so used to thinking about politics in terms of left and right, yet what Reform are able to do is to win in areas that have always been Conservative, but equally, we’re proving in a big way that we could win in areas that Labour has dominated since the end of World War I.”
