Though romance stories have long powered the microdrama industry, a host of creatives is trying to popularize bite-sized stories in other genres — from true crime to anime to thrillers to, now, faith and family.
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Lighthouse Verticals, a new microdramas platform with a focus on faith-based entertainment, will launch in November with original projects from Studio316 and Snow Story Productions, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. Studio316 was founded by former NFL pro Tim Tebow’s company The Tebow Group to produce faith-based entertainment. Snow Story Productions has produced several verticals for the DramaShorts app and commercials for the likes of Sonic, HP and Bud Light.
Lighthouse Verticals, which will focus on “uplifting, values-driven entertainment” per a press release, is co-founded by filmmaker Brent Ryan Green (an executive producer of The Chosen and co-producer of The Unbreakable Boy), Jesse Liddell (former evp of LD Entertainment), Justin Levy (executive producer of Black Rabbit and Treadstone) and Scott Holroyd (producer of Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery).
Liddell, who will serve as CEO of Lighthouse Verticals, described the company’s audience as one that “wants to engage with the culture without compromise.” He added of viewers looking for faith and family content, “They want entertainment with real emotion, real momentum and values they can trust, but they have largely been overlooked by the fastest-growing platforms in the space. Lighthouse Verticals was built for them.”
Heisman Trophy winner Tebow, who has long been vocal about his evangelical Christian faith, will executive produce projects for Lighthouse Verticals after recently serving in that role on the animated musical David, which was distributed in the U.S. by Angel in 2025. His Studio316 is set to work on 30-plus projects with Snow Story Productions for the platform.
“I believe stories have the power to change how people see themselves, see others, and ultimately see Jesus,” Tebow said in a statement. “We’re committed to telling stories with excellence and our hope is that, ultimately, we can glorify God in the process.”
Like other companies in the microdrama space, Lighthouse Verticals will debut its own app, which is currently in beta, to monetize its shortform storytelling. In a more original twist, the app will feature “community hubs” and the ability for viewers to discuss stories live. In other words, the app is being designed to allow community groups to watch and talk about series together, though the company wouldn’t share many specific details on those features at present.
Lighthouse Verticals is developing stories that span romance, comedy, drama and family themes, with titles set to be announced at a later date. It’s also targeting multiple age groups with its fare.
“Studio 316 was created from a shared belief that faith-based entertainment has long been underserved by emerging digital formats, despite the enormous size and passion of the audience,” said Snow Story Productions executive producer and Studio 316 co-founder Edward Tommasi in a statement. “By combining Tim’s passion for faith-centered storytelling, The Tebow Group’s mission-driven vision, Snow Story’s production expertise and Lighthouse’s innovative distribution platform, we’re building something that can meaningfully expand the reach of faith-and-family entertainment.” %!s()
Members of the Mexican Red Cross provide humanitarian aid to people affected by floods in Poza Rica, Veracruz, on October 17, 2025. (Photo by Gerardo Vieyra/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
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NurPhoto via Getty Images
Disaster relief is often measured by what arrives: meals, water, blankets, medical supplies and equipment. But another test begins after the trucks unload and eventually leave.
Did responders deliver what the community actually needed? Did the operation strengthen local businesses or compete with them? Was useful equipment left behind, or did donated goods become part of an already overwhelming waste stream?
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies describes “green response” as integrating environmental considerations throughout preparedness, assessment, program design, delivery and evaluation. Its recommendations include reducing packaging, eliminating single-use plastics, buying lower-carbon materials and promoting local procurement.
Those practices matter because relief operations can generate their own environmental costs. A New Humanitarian investigation found that transportation, procurement, energy use, packaging and waste all contribute to the aid sector’s carbon footprint. Yet the full environmental impact remains difficult to calculate because humanitarian organizations have not historically used a single, sector-wide accounting method. For Amazon and World Central Kitchen, some of the most instructive lessons have come from smaller operational decisions: adding can openers to food donations, replacing bottled water with filters, hiring local restaurants, leaving water systems behind and knowing when free meals may begin to displace recovering businesses.
Together, those examples suggest a broader definition of sustainable relief. It means solving the immediate problem without creating another burden for the community that remains.
The “Second Disaster” Of Unwanted Aid
Emergency managers sometimes describe unsolicited donations as a “second disaster.” After a major event, clothing, food and other goods can arrive faster than local organizations can sort, store or distribute them.
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Research published by the Natural Hazards Center found that donors may be motivated by generosity, a desire to feel directly connected to survivors or an opportunity to clear unwanted items from their homes. Whatever the intent, relief organizations must still transport, warehouse, inspect and dispose of goods that may not match local needs.
Abe Diaz, Amazon’s head of disaster relief, described the same operational problem in an interview about the company’s response model. “We deliver what is actually needed, not what we assume is needed,” Diaz said. “Our partners understand those needs best, so tell us the real problem you’re trying to solve, ideally before a disaster strikes, and we’ll work backwards from there to the best solution.” That discipline can reduce waste before it starts. The most sustainable shipment may be the one that is never sent.
It can also reduce pressure on communities already facing debris and damaged waste systems. As we learned from the wildfires in Hawaii, disaster debris can contain hazardous materials that complicate public health protection and delay long-term recovery. The United Nations Environment Programme warns that disaster waste can impede reconstruction, threaten public health, and cause additional environmental harm when disposal decisions are rushed. Planning for waste is therefore not only a cleanup function. It is part of disaster preparedness.
A Relief Catalog Written By Its Users
Kara Hurst, Amazon’s chief sustainability officer, said field feedback has changed what the company procures and how products are designed. “Every response to a disaster teaches us something,” Hurst said. “Our disaster relief catalog is a living document written by the people who use it.” Amazon began adding can openers to food donations after learning that displaced families often did not have them. The company added toolboxes for shelter managers because mobility devices and shower chairs arrived in flat boxes that required assembly.
It also changed products in response to waste. Food operations were generating plastic and foam, so Amazon shifted to compostable cutlery and clamshell meal containers. On islands where plastic bottles could not easily be recycled, it replaced some bottled-water donations with filtration systems.
The company also created Responder Ready Kits and Mission Support Kits after learning that first responders sometimes lacked soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste and other basic personal supplies during the first 24 hours of an operation. These adjustments are not dramatic technological breakthroughs. They are examples of design improving because someone observed how a product was used under difficult conditions.
Sustainability, in that context, includes usability. A low-carbon or recyclable product that cannot be assembled, opened, maintained or culturally accepted may still become waste.
TOPSHOT - Volunteers of the US-based food charity World Central Kitchen distribute hot meal to local residents in a residential area of Kyiv that has been left without electricity and water due to recent Russian strikes battering the energy sector on January 22, 2026, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Photo by Sergei GAPON / AFP via Getty Images)
AFP via Getty Images
Relief Should Not Crowd Out Recovery
World Central Kitchen also considers local economic recovery when deciding when and how to reduce operations.
Roth said the organization looks for signs that roads are clear, grocery stores and schools have reopened, children can again receive school meals and residents can reach local businesses. “If the restaurants are open, we don’t want to take away business from the local restaurant,” she said.
Instead of building a separate food operation, WCK may pay a restaurant to prepare meals, retain its workers, use local catering companies or equip community kitchens. In some places, it leaves equipment or water systems behind when they will help local businesses continue operating. “We don’t just cook one day and then disappear,” Roth said. This approach recognizes that an indefinite flow of free outside services can weaken the same local economy that recovery is supposed to restore. It also aligns with a broader principle that sustainable recovery works best when communities help define the solution and retain access to the economic and institutional resources created through the process.
Children Experience The Effects Long After The Emergency
Save the Children adds another dimension to sustainable disaster response: whether relief protects children’s long-term development as well as their immediate survival. The organization argues that children are often excluded from disaster planning, even though damaged schools, interrupted water and health services, displacement, and the loss of safe spaces can affect their education, protection, emotional well-being, and future resilience. It calls for anticipatory action, stronger local capacity, and disaster-risk planning that places children’s needs at the center rather than treating them as an extension of adult response systems.
That perspective is visible in Save the Children’s response with local partners following the recent earthquakes in Venezuela. The organization says its assistance includes safe water, food, health care, shelter, child protection, psychosocial support, family reunification, and safe spaces for children whose homes and schools have been damaged or disrupted.
The example reinforces a central point: sustainable relief must account for what people need to resume ordinary life. For children, that means more than receiving an emergency kit. It means restoring safety, education, family connections, health services, and places where recovery can begin.
What Remains After Response
A sustainable disaster operation does not always mean removing every asset. Nor does it always mean leaving equipment behind. World Central Kitchen may leave a water system, kitchen equipment or local operating capacity when those resources will continue serving the community. Amazon retrieves and refurbishes many of its portable technology systems so they can be updated and deployed again.
Both approaches can be forms of circularity. The relevant question is what creates the greatest continuing value with the least additional burden.
The same principle applies to data. Hurst said Amazon uses feedback from disaster partners to change future products and procurement decisions. “It’s not just: deploy a bunch of stuff,” she said during an interview at their Nashville hub. “We want to know what worked and what didn’t. Then we’ll rapidly change and adapt those kits and change how we deploy.”
The humanitarian sector still needs better ways to measure those results. Meals served, supplies delivered and systems deployed are useful outputs. They do not fully show whether local businesses survived, waste declined, community organizations gained capacity or residents had more control over recovery.
A more complete measure of sustainable relief would ask what remains after the visible response ends.
Are local kitchens functioning? Are restaurants employing workers? Can shelters use and maintain the equipment they received? Did the response reduce plastic and packaging waste? Did community leaders help determine what was needed? Did outside aid restore local capacity, or temporarily replace it?
Disaster response is not sustainable simply because a container is compostable or a generator runs on renewable energy. It is sustainable when it solves the actual problem, strengthens the systems already present and does not leave the community with another disaster after the trucks leave. %!s()
Google is introducing a new property type in Search Console called platform properties, which lets you monitor how social media and video posts perform in Google Search and Discover. This feature supports platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube and is available even to creators who don’t have their own websites.
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Moshe Samet, Product Manager Lead for Search Console, announced the feature in a Search Central blog post. Once an account is connected, a platform property shows which search terms lead people to your posts and how your audience interacts with that content.
The Reports You Get
Each platform property includes the reporting you would expect from a Search Console property, tailored to social and video content.
The Performance report displays total clicks, impressions, and other related metrics, allowing filtering and sorting to identify which posts and queries generate the most traffic. You can also export the data for further analysis in other tools.
The Insights report provides an overview of recent traffic patterns, your most successful posts, and the ways users find your account on Google.
Achievements monitor progress toward milestones, such as surpassing a new total click threshold from Search within a 28-day period.
How To Add a Platform Property
Setting one up involves following Search Console’s verification process: open Search Console, navigate to the verification page or property selector, select Add property, then choose Instagram, TikTok, X, or YouTube and follow the on-screen instructions to authorize the connection.
How This Differs From Search Profiles
Platform properties are distinct from Search profiles, which Google introduced in June as public profile pages for qualified creators and publishers. A Search profile is a shareable page that consolidates a creator’s content for followers. In contrast, a platform property focuses on analytics, showing how those posts perform in Search rather than directly exposing them to an audience. The current feature builds on a December 2025 experiment that initially integrated social-channel data into Search Console.
Why This Matters
You can now track performance across social media and video platforms, alongside your website’s Search performance. This feature allows creators who’ve never had a verified site to see how their posts gain visibility in Search.
Looking Ahead
Platform properties will be gradually available over the next few weeks, so the option might not be visible in your account immediately. Google is initially launching with four supported platforms and directs creators to its help documentation for setup guidance, along with providing a feedback link in Search Console and the Search Central Community. %!s()
The new antibiotic screening system proposed by the authors of the study proved to be sensitive to both fidaxomicin and rifampicin. These already existing drugs inhibit bacterial RNA synthesis at distinct stages of that process. Credit: Anton Izzy et al./International Journal of Molecular Sciences
Researchers from Skoltech and other science centers in Russia have developed a reporter system—a tool for screening potential new antibiotics—that enables the selection of drug compounds disrupting RNA synthesis in gram-negative bacteria. Among others, these include multidrug-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a dangerous pathogen responsible for hospital-acquired infections that has already adapted to existing antibiotics.
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Targeting RNA synthesis is considered a promising mechanism of action for new drugs, since few such agents are known and used, and therefore bacteria have not yet had a chance to adapt to them. The study was published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.
Uncontrolled antibiotic use drives the development of drug resistance in bacteria. As a result, even previously harmless microbes become dangerous. Pseudomonas aeruginosa, for instance, is common in water and soil and readily colonizes the surfaces of medical equipment.
Over the past 50 years, it has successively acquired resistance to several classes of antibiotics, making it a formidable cause of hospital-acquired infections.
Found on the skin of healthy individuals, Staphylococcus aureus can nevertheless cause pneumonia and other conditions when the immune system is weakened. This bacterium, too, has adapted to several antibiotics that used to kill it.
Why mechanism matters in screening
"One of the main ways to combat antibiotic resistance is to search for new active substances. An important step in studying new compounds is determining their molecular mechanism of action, which can subsequently help overcome bacterial resistance," explained the study's principal investigator, Assistant Professor Dmitrii Lukianov from the Center for Biomedical Technologies at Skoltech.
"The reason why it is so important to know the mechanism of action of each active compound is that we can eventually study how that compound works in detail and chemically modify it. You see, if a bacterium has evolved resistance to one compound, this does not automatically spell doom for all similar ones. Sometimes we can tweak the molecule in a way that makes it potent again."
Few bacteria have seen these drugs
Skoltech researchers have presented an improved tool for targeted screening of potential antibiotic agents against gram-negative bacteria, such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The new system is sensitive to compounds that disrupt RNA biosynthesis—a process essential to the life of bacterial cells.
The search for drugs that function in that particular way is considered promising because pathogens have not yet had much exposure to them. With relatively few such agents on the market—primarily rifampicin and fidaxomicin—the germs have not had much opportunity to adapt.
The study's lead author, biologist Anton Izzi, described what this search amounts to in practice: "Our colleagues obtain an array of candidate compounds, among which a promising antibiotic might be found, and send them to us for screening. We then test them on bacteria in the lab. Well, suppose a compound does kill the bacteria. That actually happens a lot, but it's not enough. We want to know why.
"A compound might turn out to be toxic not just to bacteria but to human cells, too. Or it may have a mechanism of action that is common, so resistance to it will be relatively widespread as well.
"This is where our reporter system comes into play: It exposes the mechanism of action. If an antibiotic targets ribosomes—as tetracycline does—the system will show that. If it disrupts DNA synthesis—as novobiocin does—we will know. Now that the toolkit has been expanded, the new system can 'see' compounds that inhibit RNA synthesis, as rifampicin does."
How the reporter strain works
The new reporter system is based on a specially engineered laboratory strain of Escherichia coli. The bacterium carries a special gene that is expressed more strongly when transcription—that is, RNA synthesis—is disrupted than when other forms of stress are experienced.
This means that the gene becomes more active: More messenger RNA is produced from it, which in turn serves as a template for building a certain protein. The messenger RNA is detected via the real-time polymerase chain reaction method, and the system developed by the researchers then signals that the compound in question inhibits RNA synthesis.
Faster triage for antibiotic candidates
Using the reporter system speeds up the screening process and therefore improves the chances of finding new drug molecules active against antibiotic-resistant strains of dangerous pathogens.
Without such a system, the compound selection stage would require researchers to examine the molecular structure of each candidate, infer potential targets from it and then verify those targets—a considerable number of additional tests.
Publication details
Anton R. Izzi et al, The Spermidine Synthase Gene as a Reporter of Transcription Inhibition in Escherichia coli, International Journal of Molecular Sciences (2026). DOI: 10.3390/ijms27114829
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New screening tool spots RNA-disrupting antibiotics for drug-resistant gram-negative bacteria (2026, July 7)
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Hitman and 007: First Light developer IO Interactive will close one of its studios and lay off an unknown number of staff, after Xbox pulled funding for an upcoming project.
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Codenamed Project Dragon, IO's under-wraps online fantasy RPG has been in development for years, partly funded by cash from Xbox. But now — with Microsoft laying off thousands of workers, offloading studios and scrapping various external partnerships — IO's game has also fallen victim to tightening purse strings.
While IO Interactive does not specifically name Xbox as its funding partner, it is widely understood that Microsoft had been partnered with IO on the project. The language used in IO's statement today is also sadly reminiscent of the similar statement released by Romero Games last year, when Xbox pulled funding for its game.
IO Interactive previously warned it would face layoffs as a result of Xbox's decision to end funding. Today, the company admitted it would be "making changes and proposed changes" that would impact "colleagues who have been a meaningful part" of its team. In addition, the company's entire Istanbul studio will be shuttered, leaving behind its Copenhagen headquarters, plus its other satellite studios in Barcelona, Brighton and Malmö.
"Dear gaming community," IO began in a statement posted to social media, reproduced below in full.
"Following the end of our external finance partnership on Project Fantasy, IOI has regained full ownership of the project and our IP. We will continue to develop and fund it independently amongst our other projects. With this context, we had to find a new balance for the long-term future of the studio, focused on the success of our main internal core titles instead of external projects and potential mobile game derivatives. This has meant making changes as well as proposed changes across our studios: the closure of our Istanbul studio and starting a process to part ways with colleagues who have been a meaningful part of what makes IOI what it is.
"Our immediate focus is on supporting those affected as best we can through this period. If you are aware of any opportunities within your network, we would be genuinely grateful for any support you can offer to any of the talented people across IOI who might be looking for new opportunities.
"These are hard, but necessary decisions," the studio concluded, "in order to retain the long-term future of IO Interactive as one of the very few fully independent AAA developer and publisher, as well as to give Project Fantasy the best possible foundation to succeed under our own passion and direction. Project Fantasy is a game, a world, and an IP that we are wholly committed to, and we cannot wait to share the love with you."
Xbox CEO Asha Sharma cut 1,600 staff from Xbox yesterday, with another 1,600 staff to go over the course of the next 12 months. Four studios have left Microsoft as part of the restructure, which Sharma called the "most significant in Xbox history", with the future of a fifth still unclear.
Explaining the cuts, Sharma admitted that Microsoft’s gaming strategy had failed, and a key part of that failure had to do with Game Pass. The Wall Street Journal said that Microsoft had expected Game Pass subscriptions to hit around 77 million this year, but it currently has only about 30 million. As revealed during the FTC vs Microsoft trial of 2023, Microsoft had hoped for 100 million subscribers by 2030, which seems very unlikely at this stage. Yesterday, Sharma announced a fresh target: for Xbox to reach a billion players every day. Currently, Xbox reaches a billion players every year.
Today's news continues a tumultuous time for IO Interactive, whose plans to develop 007: First Light sequels will have to contend with Amazon now owning the franchise's publishing rights.
