1. App Stores Ban Fortnite in Antitrust Battle Royale
Yesterday, Epic Games, creator of Fortnite, declared its financial independence from app stores by implementing an in-game payment system encouraging players to bypass paying via Apple and Android, which take a 30 percent cut. In response, the app was kicked out of the Apple and Google Play app stores — and now Epic has sued both tech giants, saying Apple has a “100 percent monopoly” and Google is using its size to “do evil upon competitors.” Meanwhile, iPhone owners can continue playing without new content, and Android users can download Fortnite via either Epic or Samsung stores.
Don’t bet the farm on a second term. While three million farmers voted for President Trump in 2016, his China policy has choked agricultural markets and the pandemic has spread to rural enclaves, exposing cracks in the healthcare system. That’s likely to reap $20 billion in farm losses this year, OZY reports — which may be why Vice President Mike Pence rushed yesterday to storm-ravaged Iowa, where half a million lost power during a massive storm that damaged 10 million acres of cropland. Trump won Iowa by nine points in 2016 — but it now looks like a swing state.
It was written in the stars all along. Late last year, sky-watchers noticed that red supergiant star Betelgeuse was dimming, eventually enough that it could be noticed without a telescope. Many wondered if that meant the (relatively) nearby neighbor was about to supernova, but new data from the Hubble telescope indicates it was actually a blast of hot material ejected from the star, which turned into a dust cloud in the atmosphere and blocked some of Betelgeuse’s light. Still, the star is expected to blow sometime in the next 100,000 years, and began to dim again this summer, so NASA will be doing closer observations later this month.
Patrons in Mexico’s capital are allowed to return to movie theaters, though cinemas can only operate at 30 percent capacity and no more than two people are allowed to sit together. Still, studios are holding back their blockbuster release dates as the pandemic continues to rage, so older films like Interstellar or classics like Rebel Without a Cause are screening in the globe’s fourth-largest movie market. Meanwhile, world’s biggest cinema chain AMC says it’ll reopen more than 100 theaters stateside on August 20, charging only 15 cents for tickets as it did when it first opened a century ago.
5. Sports Fans Overwhelmingly Support Athlete Activism
A change is already here. A new survey of sports fans over 18 found that 71 percent of them supported athletes speaking their minds about social and racial justice, and that almost half are more likely to support a mindful team than they were last year. The ESPN-commissioned poll also found that 64 percent supported NASCAR banning the Confederate flag and more than half said the NFL should apologize to Colin Kaepernick. Not everyone agrees: Fans at a Texas MLS match on Wednesday booed players taking a knee during the national anthem.
EPA. Pie de foto, Zelensky y Biden en un encuentro en la Casa Blanca en septiembre pasado. Article information Author, Redacción Role, BBC News Mundo...
AP. Pie de foto, Esta imagen, captada el 16 de octubre pasado en la aldea de Dhayra, muestra la típica nube de humo con forma de pulpo que ocasionan...
