Wherever you’ve fallen in your Pokémon journey in the month since Pokémon Scarlet and Violet were released—either sticking to the grind or protesting some of the year’s most flagrant bugs—you’re still under the shadow of a 24-year-old refrain: gotta catch ‘em all. Though Scarlet and Violet marketing has featured legendaries Koraidon and Miraidon most prominently (likely by virtue of both these serpentine creatures turning into Harley-Davidson bikes upon request), the games actually have six total legendary Pokémon combined. I’ll tell you how to catch ‘em all, every last one of ‘em.
Koraidon
Scarlet players will receive Koraidon naturally as they progress through the game’s core story, and the legendary will be able to start providing transportation at the end of the tutorial. But to unleash Koraidon’s full potential—different types of movement like dashing and gliding—you’ll have to progress through Scarlet’s Path of Legends storyline and defeat the five Titans. Finishing the complete main story allows you to battle Koraidon, too.
But you can also pick up another Koraidon upon completing the game by heading down to Zero Gate and entering the Great Crater of Paldea. Koraidon will be standing on an iridescent cliff outside of Lab Zero, waiting to be caught.
Miraidon
Everything about Koraidon applies to Miraidon, but for Violet players instead. Violet and Scarlet players can also trade exclusive legendaries if they want both in one game, which might incentivize finishing the game and grabbing that double.
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Chi-Yu
Dark/Fire-type guppy Chi-Yu is one of the “Ruinous Quartet,” a group of legendary Paldea Pokémon that represent hatred, fear, and envy. They are cute though, despite their malevolence.
Chi-Yu is floating around North Province (Area Two), in a cave locked behind a glowing blue shrine, or the Firescourge Shrine. Your history teacher Ms. Raifort will mark this shrine and the other three on your map if you talk to her.
You can open Firescourge by plucking all eight blue Ominous Stakes from the ground, which immediately crumble when you interact with them. You’ll hear the legendary cry out once you crush the final stake, the chains on their prison unleashed.
Once you get rid of the blue stakes and reach Chi-Yu, you can fight for it. The legendary will be at level 60, as will be the rest of the Ruinous Quartet, and you should look out for its Beads of Ruin ability, which decreases your fighting Pokémons’ Special Defense by 25 percent.
Chien-Pao
Ruinous sabertooth Chien-Pao is locked in the yellow-lit Icerend Shrine, in West Province (Area One). You can release the frowning Dark/Ice-type by removing all yellow Ominous Stakes. Chien-Pao can use Sword of Ruin, an ability that decreases Defense by 25 percent.
Ting-Lu
Red-eyed Ting-Lu is a stony Dark/Ground-type, sealed behind the green Groundblight Shrine on the Socarrat Trail. You know the drill—get rid of the green Ominous Stakes to get to this Ruinous Pokémon. It can perform Vessel of Ruin, which decreases your Pokémons’ Special Attack by 25%.
Wo-Chien
Closing out the Quartet is Cousin Itt’s nephew Wo-Chien, a Dark/Grass-type obscured by browning leaves. It’s bolted behind the purple Grasswither Shrine in South Province, which you can open by destroying all purple Ominous Stakes. It’s able to use Tablets of Ruin, draining your Pokémons’ Attack by 25%.
The Biden administration said Tuesday it will grant full, automatic forgiveness of $3.9 billion in education debt held by former students of the defunct for-profit chain ITT Technical Institute.
The action covers 208,000 people who were enrolled at ITT Tech from Jan. 1, 2005, to its closure in September 2016. Former students are not required to submit an application and will receive a letter from the Education Department informing them of the pending discharge.
“The evidence shows that for years, ITT’s leaders intentionally misled students about the quality of their programs in order to profit off federal student loan programs, with no regard for the hardship this would cause,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said on a call with reporters Tuesday.
Biden administration delivers debt relief to some former ITT Tech students
Since taking office, the Biden administration has whittled away at debt-relief claims filed by ITT Tech students who say they were defrauded by the chain. It has approved $1.9 billion in discharges for 130,000 ITT Tech students in the past year based on evidence of widespread misrepresentations by the school.
State and federal authorities, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, found ITT Tech hadroutinely misled students about the ability to transfer their credits to other schools. They also discovered the for-profit chain lied to students about employment and earnings prospects after graduation.
“Many ITT Tech students were misled, coerced or victimized by other illegal misconduct,” said Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh (D), who helped secure a $330 million settlement against ITT Tech over private student loans. “We are pleased that the Department of Education heeded our recommendation to forgive the federal loans owed by defrauded students.”
Before closing in 2016, ITT Tech was being investigated by more than a dozen state attorneys general and two federal agencies for alleged fraud, deceptive marketing or steering students into predatory loans.
An accrediting body threatened to end its relationship with the chain, and the Education Department curtailed ITT’s access to federal student aid. The company filed for bankruptcy protection to liquidate its business.
At the time of its closure, ITT had 35,000 students and 8,000 employees across 137 campuses.
Since then, former students such as Tasha Berkhalter have been fighting for debt relief.
Berkhalter enrolled at ITT Tech in 2006 after leaving the Army to pursue a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice. Before she graduated, she had used all of her G.I. Bill education funds and needed to borrow nearly $100,000 in federal student loans. Employers, she said, deemed the degree worthless, making it almost impossible to find work to repay what she owed.
“Whenever I told employers where I attended college, I was shown the door,” Berkhalter, a mother of five, told reporters Tuesday. “The cloud [of debt] has been removed from over my head.”
Tuesday’s announcement marks the second-largest group discharge of federal student loans to date, following the Education Department’s cancellation of $5.6 billion in debt held by Corinthian College students in June.
It also arrived with a series of other actions the administration is taking to hold colleges accountable and ease the burden of debt on students.
The department said it has formally notified DeVry University that it is liable for nearly $24 million in federal loans the department has discharged through the debt-relief program known as borrower defense to repayment. In February, the department identified about 1,800 DeVry students who were eligible for $71.7 million in debt relief.
DeVry, once one of the largest publicly traded for-profit colleges, changed ownership and became a private entity in 2018, when Adtalem Global Education sold it to Cogswell Education. The university can appeal the department’s decision or request a hearing at the agency.
University spokeswoman Hessy Fernandez said that the department’s fraudallegations predate the current leadership but that the school disagrees with the agency’s position.
“We continue to believe the Department mischaracterizes DeVry’s calculation and disclosure of graduate outcomes in certain advertising, and we do not agree with the conclusions they have reached,” Fernandez said in a statement Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the department also said it will approve the cancellation of debt held by roughly 100 people who attended Kaplan Career Institute in Massachusetts from July 2011 to February 2012.
Those students were identified by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey in 2016 after an investigation found the now-defunct school had inflated job-placement rates and used aggressive sales tactics to get people to enroll in its medical billing and medical assistant programs. The allegations were the center of a 2015 investigation by the attorney general that resulted in a $1.3 million settlement with Kaplan Higher Education, the parent company, which denied the charges.
Kaplan, a subsidiary of Graham Holdings Co., which once owned The Washington Post, sold or closed dozens of Kaplan Career Institute locations around the time of the settlement.
Healy filed an application for a group discharge that languished at the EducationDepartment for six years. Students involved in the application filed a class-action lawsuit this year, accusing the agency of dragging its feet on a decision. Tuesday’s announcement could resolve that case.
With the announcement, the Biden administration has now approved nearly $32 billion in loan forgiveness to 1.6 million borrowers.
Still, activists and liberal lawmakers are clamoring for the president to fulfill a campaign promise to grant some form of widespread forgiveness to the 45 million people with a combined $1.6 trillion in federal student loans. Biden has promised to deliver a decision before the end of the month.
Global companies have racked up more than $59 billion in losses from their Russian operations, with more financial pain to come as sanctions hit the economy and sales and shutdowns continue, according to a review of public statements and securities filings.
Almost 1,000 Western businesses have pledged to exit or cut back operations in Russia, following its invasion of Ukraine, according to Yale researchers.
Many are reassessing the reported value of those Russian businesses, as a weakening local economy and a lack of willing buyers render once-valuable assets worthless. Companies under U.S. and international reporting standards have to take impairment charges, or write-downs, when the value of an asset declines.
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The write-downs to date span a range of industries, from banks and brewers to manufacturers, retailers, restaurants and shipping companies—even a wind-turbine maker and a forestry firm. The fast-food giant
McDonald’s Corp.
expects to record an accounting charge of $1.2 billion to $1.4 billion after agreeing to sell its Russian restaurants to a local licensee;
Exxon Mobil Corp.
took a $3.4 billion charge after halting operations at an oil and gas project in Russia’s Far East; Budweiser brewer
Anheuser-Busch InBev SA
took a $1.1 billion charge after deciding to sell its stake in a Russian joint venture.
“This round of impairments is not the end of it,” said Carla Nunes, a managing director at the risk-consulting firm Kroll LLC. “As the crisis continues, we could see more financial fallout, including indirect impact from the conflict.”
The financial fallout of the conflict isn’t significant for most multinationals, in part because of the relatively small size of the Russian economy. Fewer than 50 companies account for most of the $59 billion tally. Even for those, the Russian losses are typically a relatively small part of their overall finances. McDonald’s, for example, said its Russia and Ukraine businesses represented less than 3% of its operating income last year.
Some companies are writing off assets stranded in Russia. The Irish aircraft leasing company
AerCap Holdings
NV last month took an accounting charge of $2.7 billion, which included writing off the value of more than 100 of its planes that are stuck in the country. The aircraft were leased to Russian airlines. Other leasing companies are taking similar hits.
Other businesses are assuming that they will realize no money from their Russian operations, even before they have finalized exit plans. The British oil major
BP
PLC’s $25.5 billion accounting charge on its Russian holdings last month included writing off $13.5 billion of shares in the oil producer
Rosneft.
The company hasn’t said how or when it plans to divest its Russian assets.
BP’s $25.5 billion accounting charge on its Russian holdings include writing off $13.5 billion of shares in oil producer Rosneft.
Photo:
Yuri Kochetkov/EPA/Shutterstock
Even some companies that are retaining a presence in Russia are writing down assets. The French energy giant
TotalEnergies
SE took a $4.1 billion charge in April on the value of its natural-gas reserves, citing the impact of Western sanctions targeting Russia.
The Securities and Exchange Commission last month told companies that they have to disclose Russian-related losses clearly, and that they shouldn’t adjust revenue to add back the estimated income that has been lost because of Russia.
Bank of New York Mellon Corp.
, which in March said it had stopped new banking business in Russia, appeared to breach this guidance when it reported its results for the first three months of this year. The New York custody bank in April reported $4 billion in revenue under one measure that included $88 million added to reflect income lost because of Russia.
A BNY Mellon spokesman declined to comment.
Investors appear to have mixed reactions to the write-downs, partly because most multinationals have relatively small Russian exposure, academic research suggests.
Financial markets are “rewarding companies for leaving Russia,” a recent study by Yale School of Management found. The share-price gains for companies pulling out have “far surpassed the cost of one-time impairments for companies that have written down the value of their Russian assets,” the researchers concluded.
Bank of New York Mellon said earlier this year that it had stopped new banking business in Russia.
Photo:
Gabriela Bhaskar/Bloomberg News
Research using a different methodology found a more subtle investor reaction. Analysis by Indiana University professor Vivek Astvansh and his co-authors of the short-term market impact of more than 200 corporate announcements revealed a marked trans-Atlantic divide. Investors punished U.S. companies for pulling out of Russia, and non-American companies for not withdrawing, the analysis found.
More write-downs and other Russia-related accounting charges are expected in the coming months, as companies complete their planned departures from the country.
British American Tobacco
PLC, whose brands include Rothmans and Lucky Strike, said on March 11 it had “initiated the process to rapidly transfer our Russian business.” That transfer is still ongoing, according to a BAT spokeswoman. BAT hasn’t taken an impairment in relation to the business.
Accounting specialist
Jack Ciesielski
said companies might hold off announcing a write-down until they have a good handle on how big the loss will be.
“You don’t want to put a number out there until you’re confident that it’s not likely to change,” said Mr. Ciesielski, owner of investment research firm R.G. Associates Inc.
The ruble’s recovery is helping Russia prop up its economy and continue its Ukraine war effort. WSJ’s Dion Rabouin explains how Russia boosted its ailing currency and how it is affecting the global economy. Illustration: Ryan Trefes
Many companies are giving investors rough estimates about what to expect on Russia-related losses.
The manufacturer
ITT Inc.,
which has suspended its operations in Russia, said last month it expects a $60 million to $85 million hit to revenue this year because of a “significant reduction in sales” in the country. That is a small slice of the $2.8 billion in total revenue for the maker of specialty components for the auto, aerospace and energy industries.
As sanctions weaken the Russian economy, businesses still operating there are reassessing their future earnings and booking losses. Ride-sharing giant
Uber Technologies Inc.
in May took a $182 million impairment on the value of its stake in a Russian taxi joint-venture because of forecasts of a protracted recession in the Russian economy. Uber said in February it was looking for opportunities to accelerate its planned sale of the stake.
—Thomas Gryta and Nick Kostov contributed to this article.
