Epic Games is firing back at Apple with a parody of the company's most iconic ad after Apple yanked "Fortnite" from the App Store.  The game company on Thursday posted a short film titled "Nineteen Eighty-Fortnite," a play on Apple's "1984" Super Bowl television ad. The video was in response to Apple nixing "Fortnite" from the App Store, which the company did after Epic began offering players the option to pay Epic directly for in-game purchases rather than going through the App Store, a violation of Apple's policies.  In response, Epic filed a lawsuit seeking an injunction against Apple, claiming that Apple had engaged in monopolistic practices through its App Store. 

Brutal police crackdowns in Belarus prompted hundreds of women to protest in Minsk. France's Emmanuel Macron raised the issue of "violence" with Russia's Vladimir Putin. The UN has joined the chorus of disapproval. Hundreds of women took to the streets of Minsk on Wednesday to vent their anger at a crackdown enforced by President Alexander Lukashenko in the wake of protests in Belarus. Across the Belarusian capital, groups of women dressed in white formed human chains, chanting "Shame!" and called on authorities to stop their violent suppression of protesters. Some women came together outside a covered food market in Minsk, holding flowers in the air, while another crowd gathered outside a prison where protesters were being held

"Turkey In The Straw" has a racist history, so Good Humor asked RZA from the Wu-Tang Clan to replace it.

Israel and the United Arab Emirates have reached an agreement - brokered by the United States - to work towards a "full normalisation of relations", a deal the Palestinians called a "treacherous stab in the back".

The United States Postal Service is removing mail sorting machines from facilities around the country without any official explanation or reason given, Motherboard has learned through interviews with postal workers and union officials. In many cases, these are the same machines that would be tasked with sorting ballots, calling into question promises made by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy that the USPS has “ample capacity” to handle the predicted surge in mail-in ballots. Motherboard identified 19 mail sorting machines from five processing facilities across the U.S. that either have already been removed or are scheduled to be in the near future. But the Postal Service operates hundreds of distribution facilities around the country, so it is not clear precisely how many machines are getting removed and for what purpose. Even to local union officials, USPS has not announced any policy, explained why they are doing this, what will happen to the machines and the workers who use them. Nor has management provided a rationale for dismantling and removing the machines from the facility rather than merely not operating them when they’re not needed. “I’m not sure you’re going to find an answer for why [the machines being removed] makes sense,” said Iowa Postal Workers Union President Kimberly Karol, “because we haven’t figured that out either.”

Marianne Williamson—one-time presidential hopeful, longtime Neon Genesis Evangelion fan—has now scolded “baby” TikTok witches for hexing the moon while secret police seemingly kidnap protestors in Portland. I’d suggest closing your eyes and letting this information roll over you for a second before I explain what the hell is going on here. It’s probably best that we start with the moon, seeing as she’s always up there, hanging over our heads, ruling our thoughts and emotions, her whims influencing the ocean tides. Over the weekend, a Twitter thread went viral in which a self-identified witch rang the internet alarms about “baby witches” on TikTok who had hexed, among other things, the moon. As said Twitter user explained it, a “group of FRESH baby witches” on WitchTok, or, TikTok for witches, “decided to band together and hex the fae, and then the moon.” The fae, it appears, are a “Celtic-specific” deity who “do not abide by human morals because they are not human”—think faeries without the wings or pixie dust. The punishment for said hex could be a bloodline curse on those who cast it, general “trickery” in their every day lives, or divine cosmic judgment from the Greek pantheon, or the entire basis of modern witch’s spell work falling apart completely, due to the moon’s influence over their craft.

The “Joel Osteen Inspiration Cube,” an electronic device that plays daily affirmation, inspirations, and brief sermon clips from the senior pastor of the 40,000-member Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, has hit the market.  According to the “Joel Osteen Inspiration Cube” website, the cube is $39.99 and includes 365 daily inspirations, 52 sermons, and 31 affirmations that play with the push of a button. “Start each day with just a touch,” the website reads. 

To hear Pastor John MacArthur tell it, all Grace Community Church did was open its doors and the people came, like the animals to Noah's Ark. The megachurch in suburban Los Angeles had closed its doors in mid-March because of the coronavirus pandemic. It announced plans to re-open in May, but a federal court upheld the state's ban on indoor services. The church reopened in late July. "People started slowly coming back," MacArthur told CNN on Tuesday, "and they just kept coming until there were six or seven thousand." That's several thousand more people than California allows at indoor worship services. According to an order issued July 29, houses of worship in Los Angeles County must limit indoor gatherings to 100 people or 25% of the building's capacity, whichever is lower.

AMC Theaters has detailed its plans to reopen movie theaters throughout the US, in addition to a new deadline for its MoviePass-style A-List subscription, in an email sent to customers on Wednesday. Starting August 20th, AMC plans to have more than 100 theaters open, and it says it will continue opening locations “such that about two-thirds of our theatres across the country should be open no later than September 3.” AMC has repeatedly delayed its reopening as spread of the coronavirus has caused massive spikes in positive cases in parts of the US that have started to ease restrictions.

The Los Angeles Police Department is investigating a possible prank call Wednesday that triggered a heavily armed police response at the home of leading Black Lives Matter activist Melina Abdullah, who livestreamed the incident as her three children were inside the home. Abdullah, co-founder of Black Lives Matter LA and a professor at California State University, Los Angeles, has been at the forefront of the movement for police accountability in LA County and a leading advocate for a robust ethnic studies program at her campus. Shortly before she was scheduled to lead a press conference Wednesday regarding ethnic studies at Cal State LA, Abdullah started livestreaming on Instagram from inside her home, saying police had surrounded her home as a helicopter hovered above.

President Trump on Thursday told Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo that Democratic demands to fund mail-in voting and the U.S. Postal Service in ongoing coronavirus stimulus negotiations were a non-starter. Trump directly linked Democrats' desired $3.6 billion for mail-in voting and $25 billion for the USPS to his continued baseless claims that increased mail-in voting will lead to widespread voter fraud.

Twitter exploded overnight after Newsweek published a birtherism attack on Sen. Kamala Harris by John Eastman, chairman of the anti-LGBTQ hate group NOM. Eastman ran unsuccessfully against Harris to be California Attorney General, losing the 2010 Republican primary. An excerpt: The fact that Senator Kamala Harris has just been named the vice presidential running mate for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has some questioning her eligibility for the position. The 12th Amendment provides that “no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.” And Article II of the Constitution specifies that “[n]o person except a natural born citizen…shall be eligible to the office of President.”

Secretary of State Frank LaRose said Wednesday he is banning county boards of elections from offering more than one drop box for completed absentee ballots this November, saying it’s grown too late to make changes to how Ohio will administer this year’s presidential election. LaRose, a Republican, more than three weeks ago formally asked Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, also a Republican, for a legal opinion on whether the extra drop boxes were allowed under state law.

A campaign spokesperson for President Trump took aim at a GOP congressman on Wednesday after the lawmaker dismissed the QAnon conspiracy theory in a Twitter post. Matt Wolking, deputy communications director for Trump's reelection campaign, called on Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) to publicly reject the credibility of the dossier authored by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, which allies of the president have argued was the basis for the Russia investigation lead by former special counsel Robert Mueller.  Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz told members of Congress that the opposition research compiled by Steele did not prompt the investigation into the Trump campaign and its ties to Russia. 

ONALD Trump has promised to scrap the payroll tax if he is reelected and said it could save families up to $5,000 a year. "We will be terminating the payroll tax after I hopefully get elected," the president said on Wednesday.

The predation of livestock by carnivores, and the retaliatory killing of carnivores as a result, is a major global conservation challenge. Such human-wildlife conflicts are a key driver of large carnivore declines and the costs of coexistence are oft

Archaeologists have reconstructed a day in the life of a community of prehistoric people who lived on England's south coast half a million years ago. It's the first time anywhere in the world that modern science has succeeded in reconstructing everyday life in such a high degree of detail that deep in prehistory.

Alan and Alex Stokes, 23-year-old twin brothers known best for posting prank videos to YouTube under their channel Stokes Twins, have each been charged with a felony related to a fake bank robbery, the aftermath of which the brothers recorded and posted to YouTube last October, according to the Orange County district attorney’s office (via The Hollywood Reporter.) As part of the prank, the two brothers falsely presented themselves as criminals to an Uber driver and other random bystanders, who they then implored to give them clothes, rides, and other forms of assistance in a way that South California authorities say broke the law.

The controversial comic was the ’secret headliner’ at Dave Chappelle’s summer comedy series over the weekend.

The self-styled “archbishop” of a purported church in Florida that sells industrial bleach as a “miracle cure” for Covid-19 has been arrested with his son in Colombia and faces extradition to the US. Video footage posted to the Twitter feed of Colombia’s top prosecutor showed Mark Grenon and his son Joseph Grenon, dressed in blue jump suits and masks, being led away by armed police. The prosecutor’s office said the pair had been taken into custody on suspicion of selling a “miracle solution” that had caused the deaths of seven American citizens. The Grenons’ apprehension comes a month after the “archbishop” of the Genesis II “church”, as well as three of his sons, were charged by federal authorities in Florida with dealing in a substance that has not been approved for medical use and could be life-threatening. The substance, chlorine dioxide, is a powerful bleach used in textile manufacturing. The Grenons market it as “miracle mineral solution” or MMS which they say when drunk as a dilution can cure almost all illnesses including Covid, cancer, HIV/Aids as well as the condition autism. In April, the Guardian revealed that Grenon had written to Donald Trump in the White House encouraging the US president to embrace the product in his efforts to contain coronavirus. The letter claimed MMS “can rid the body of Covid-19”. A few days later, Trump went on national TV in his daily coronavirus briefing from the White House and raised the idea of injecting disinfectant into the body to fight Covid-19. “Is there a way we can do something, by an injection inside or almost a cleaning?” he said.