The Northern Mariana Islands the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, is an insular area and commonwealth of the United States consisting of 14 islands in the northwestern Pacific Ocean. The CNMI includes the 14 northernmost islands in the Mariana Archipelago except the southernmost island of the chain, a separate U. S. territory. The CNMI and Guam are the westernmost territories of the United States; the United States Department of the Interior cites a landmass of 183.5 square miles. According to the 2010 United States Census, 53,883 people were living in the CNMI at that time; the vast majority of the population resides on Saipan and Rota. The other islands of the Northern Marianas are sparsely inhabited; the administrative center is a village in northwestern Saipan. However, most publications consider Saipan to be the capital because the island is governed as a single municipality; the first people to reach the Mariana Islands arrived at some point between 4000 BC and 2000 BC from Southeast Asia.

After first contact with Spaniards, they became known as the Chamorros, a Spanish word similar to Chamori, the name of the indigenous caste system's higher division. The ancient people of the Marianas raised colonnades of megalithic capped pillars called latte stones upon which they built their homes; the Spanish reported that by the time of their arrival, the largest of these were in ruins, that the Chamorros believed the ancestors who had erected the pillars lived in an era when people possessed supernatural abilities. In 2013 archaeologists posited that the first people to settle in the Marianas may have made what was at that point the longest uninterrupted ocean-crossing voyage in human history. Archeological evidence indicates; the Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan, sailing under the Spanish flag, arrived in 1521. He and his crew were the first Europeans to arrive in the Mariana Islands, he landed on Guam, the southernmost island of the Marianas, claimed the archipelago for Spain. The Spanish ships were met offshore by the native Chamorros, who delivered refreshments and helped themselves to a small boat belonging to Magellan's fleet.

This led to a cultural clash: in Chamorro tradition, little property was private and taking something one needed, such as a boat for fishing, did not count as stealing. The Spanish did not understand this custom, fought the Chamorros until the boat was recovered. Three days after he had been welcomed on his arrival, Magellan fled the archipelago. Spain regarded the islands as annexed and made them part of the Spanish East Indies in 1565. In 1734, the Spanish built a royal palace, the Plaza de España, in Guam for the governor of the islands. Although the palace was destroyed during World War II portions of it remain. Guam operated as an important stopover between Manila and Mexico for galleons carrying gold between the Philippines and Spain. In 1668, Father Diego Luis de San Vitores renamed the islands Las Marianas in honor of his patroness the Spanish regent Mariana of Austria, widow of Felipe IV. Most of the islands' native population died from European diseases carried by the Spaniards or married non-Chamorro settlers under Spanish rule.

New settlers from the Philippines and the Caroline Islands, were brought to repopulate the islands. The Chamorro population recovered, Chamorro and Refaluwasch languages and other ethnic differences remain in the Marianas. During the 17th century, Spanish colonists forcibly moved the Chamorros to Guam, to encourage assimilation and conversion to Roman Catholicism. By the time they were allowed to return to the Northern Marianas, many Carolinians from present-day eastern Yap State and western Chuuk State had settled in the Marianas. Both languages, as well as English, are now official in the commonwealth; the Northern Marianas experienced an influx of immigration from the Carolines during the 19th century. Both this Carolinian subethnicity and Carolinians in the Carolines archipelago refer to themselves as the Refaluwasch; the indigenous Chamoru word for the same group of people is gu'palao. They are referred to as "Carolinians", though unlike the other two monikers, this can mean those who live in the Carolines and who may have no affiliation with the Marianas.

The conquering Spanish did not focus attempts at cultural suppression against Carolinian immigrants, whose immigration they allowed during a period when the indigenous Chamoru majority was being subjugated with land alienation, forced relocations and internment. Carolinians in the Marianas continue to be fluent in the Carolinian language, have maintained many of the cultural distinctions and traditions of their ethnicity's land of ancestral origin. Following its loss during the Spanish–American War of 1898, Spain ceded Guam to the United States and sold the remainder of the Marianas, along with the Caroline Islands, to Germany under the German–Spanish Treaty of 1899. Germany administered the islands as part of its colony of German New Guinea and did little in terms of development. Early in World War I, Japan invaded the Northern Marianas. In 1919, the League of Nations awarded all of Germany's i

Joyce Reason was a British author of missionary biographies and historical fiction for young readers. Joyce Reason was born in London, her father, Will Reason, was a Congregational minister who campaigned and wrote around themes of social justice and poverty. Both her parents were university graduates, she was educated at Milton Mount College For Girls in Gravesend, an educational institution for the daughters of congregational ministers, although other pupils could attend. She was a prolific author of popular missionary biographies and accounts of the work of the London Missionary Society, she wrote fiction and plays for young people. Reason wrote missionary biographies of Mary Aldersey of China, James Chalmers of Papua, Albert Cook of Uganda, William Kendall Gale of Madagascar, Wilfred Grenfell of Labrador, James Hannington of Uganda, Griffith John of China, David Jones of Madagascar, Liang Fa of China, Henry Nott of the South Seas, Ruatoka of Papua, Bishop Selwyn of New Zealand, Howard Somervell of India, others.

She wrote popular biographies of John Bunyan, Robert Browne, Henry Barrowe, William Penn, Isobel Kuhn and Sadhu Sundar Singh of India. In September 1951, Joyce Reason joined the headquarters staff of the Leprosy Mission as Editorial Secretary for a five-year term, she visited Uganda and Tanganyika to write an account of the Mission's work in East Africa, visited the Church of Scotland's leprosy settlement at Chogoria in Kenya. Joyce Reason was a noted advocate of Christian books and in 1950 was a featured speaker at the Christianity in Books Exhibition at Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street, together with the Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, she believed. In response to a letter by a Professor Crew about life-termination by the individual, she suggested that the professor had not investigated evidence from ESP and psychology for regarding our lives as a part of something "much larger and more enduring", she was a keen hiker and her article'A Lone Woman's Hike from Glastonbury to Winchester' appeared in the first issue of the Hiker and Camper.

She was considered an authority on the Kibbo Kift movement. Joyce Reason was noted as an author of historical fiction for young people. Reviewers praised her books for their well-researched historical backgrounds, strong stories and colourful personalities, her novel The Mad Miller of Wareham is set in King John's time in Dorset and concerns a plot to put Arthur of Brittany on the throne. The towns, villages and priories of Dorset, where the tale is set, are creditably brought to light and more than one of the characters is drawn in the round and exists as a person; the novel To Capture the King, concerns a Jacobite plot and smuggling on the Sussex coast, with incidental glimpses of Samuel Johnson and Horace Walpole. The texture of history is less woven in this but the story is exciting. Bran the Bronze-Smith: A Tale of the Bronze Age in the British Isles is a story a boy in prehistoric Britain who becomes a travelling smith and a master smith. Swords of Iron is set in Pre-Roman Britain; the Secret Fortress deals in traditional style with the last age of Viking rule in Cumberland.

The Queen's Champions is a story of a plot against Queen Elizabeth I and how a young boy plays an important part in averting disaster. Red Pennons Flying is a tale set during the Hundred Years' War, she wrote Dwifa's Curse: A Tale of the Stone Age under the nom-de-plume "Blue Wolf". It is set in Stone Age Britain, just at the time the earlier Neolithic people are coming into contact with Stone Age people armed with the bow and more advanced in civilisation, she produced a number of works for the Sunday School "rewards" market which are still reprinted. The copyrights of these and many of her other works are now held by Lutterworth Press. For the last 20 years of her life at least, Joyce Reason, a Congregationalist by denomination, lived at 102 Addison Rd, Guildford, she was not married and for much of her life lived with her younger sister, the chemist and teacher Hazel Alden Reason, unmarried. A number of her books have been translated into French and Swedish. Bran the Bronze-Smith. Illustrated by the author.

Prentices and Clubs! A Tudor Tale; the Secret Fortress. Swords of Iron; the Mad Miller of Wareham. Illustrated by S. Van Abbé; the Queen's Champions. Illustrated by Trevor Stubley. To Capture the King: The Story of a Jacobite Plot. WorldCat Identities: Joyce Reason

A team of 1,000 people developed Grand Theft Auto V, an action-adventure video game, over several years. Rockstar Games released the game in September 2013 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, in November 2014 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, in April 2015 for Microsoft Windows, as the fifteenth entry in the Grand Theft Auto series. Development began soon after Grand Theft Auto IV's release and was led by Rockstar North's core 360-person team, who collaborated with several other international Rockstar Games studios; the team considered the game a spiritual successor to many of their previous projects like Red Dead Redemption and Max Payne 3. After its unexpected announcement in 2011, the game was fervently promoted with press showings, cinematic trailers, viral marketing strategies and special editions, its release date, though subject to several delays, was anticipated. The game's open world setting was modelled on other areas of Southern California. Much of the development work constituted the open world's creation, the proprietary Rockstar Advanced Game Engine was overhauled to increase its draw distance rendering capabilities.

Key team members conducted field trips around Southern California to gather research and footage, Google Maps projections of Los Angeles were used to help design the city's road networks. For the first time in the series, players control three protagonists throughout the single-player mode; the team found the multiple protagonist design a fundamental change to the gameplay and narrative devices. They tightened the narrative's pacing and scope; the actors selected to portray the protagonists invested much time and research into character development. Motion capture was used to record the characters' facial and body movements. Like its predecessors, the game features an in-game radio that plays a selection of licensed music tracks; the game is the first in its series to feature an original score, composed over several years by a team of five music producers. They worked in close collaboration and incorporating different influences into each other's ideas; the game's re-release added first-person view option along with the traditional third-person view.

To accommodate first-person, the game received a major visual and technical upgrade, as well as new gameplay features like a replay editor that lets players create gameplay videos. Preliminary work on Grand Theft Auto V began after Grand Theft Auto IV's release in April 2008. Rockstar North's core 360-person team co-opted studios around the world owned by parent company Rockstar Games to facilitate development between a full team of over 1,000; these included Rockstar's Leeds, Lincoln, New England, San Diego and Toronto studios. Technical director Adam Fowler said that while development was shared between studios in different countries, the process involved close collaboration between the core team and others; this was necessary to avoid difficulties if studios did not communicate with each other as many game mechanics work in tandem. Game development ceased by 25 August 2013. Media analyst Arvind Bhatia estimated the game's development budget exceeded US$137 million, The Scotsman reporter Marty McLaughlin estimated that the combined development and marketing efforts exceeded GB£170 million, making it the most expensive video game made at its time.

The proprietary Rockstar Advanced Game Engine was overhauled for the game to improve its draw distance rendering capabilities, the Euphoria and Bullet engines handle further animation and environment rendering tasks. The team found they could render the game world with greater detail than in Grand Theft Auto IV because they had become familiar with the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360's hardware. Art director Aaron Garbut said that while the consoles' ageing hardware were tiring to work with, the team could still render detailed lighting and shadows and "maintain a consistent look". Vice president Dan Houser agreed and felt that working on Grand Theft Auto IV with new hardware was a challenge, but added "now we know what the hardware's capable of, so it's become a lot easier to move things along and a lot more fun, too"; the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions fit onto one Blu-Ray Disc. The team asserted that any differences between the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions would be negligible.

Initial work on Grand Theft Auto V constituted the open world creation, where preliminary models were constructed in-engine during pre-production. The game's setting is the fictional US state of San Andreas and city of Los Santos, based on Southern California and Los Angeles respectively. San Andreas was first used as Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas' setting, which featured three cities separated by open countryside; the team thought that the ambition of including three cities in San Andreas was too high, as it did not emulate the cities as well as they had hoped. Houser felt that "to do a proper version of L. A.... The game has to give you a sense of that sprawl—if not replicate it", that dividing the budget and workforce between multiple cities would have detracted from capturing "what L. A. is". Garbut said that PlayStation 2 era technology lacked the technical capabilities to capture Los Angeles adequately, such that San Andreas' rendition of Los Santos looked like a "backdrop or a game level with pedestrians randomly milling about".

The team disregarded San Andreas as a departure point for Grand Theft Auto V because they had moved on