 This week on DTNS, it's experiment week. That's because DTNS staff has taken a little break during the August lull and bringing you experimental versions of shows. Now, you've enjoyed a couple already this week. Today's is a bit of a departure. I am hosting a concept and think of it as a concept called news, sports, and weather. This is a crazy idea. It doesn't even really have to do with technology news. What I've done is taken the process that I use for selecting the tech news every day for either Daily Tech Headlines or Daily Tech News Show and applied it to wider sources. So I used Google News, not just Google Tech News, but Google News, the BBC World Service, the Associated Press, and my own news feeds that I've curated to select some of the biggest stories of the day. Now, unlike tech news, I don't bring a lot of experience to this. So the concept is a little different than I'm reporting the news. It's more, I'm reading the news with you. So that is the concept behind news, sports, and weather. Enjoy. Welcome to News, Sports, and Weather. I'm Tom Merritt. This is the show where I peruse the news along with use and see what kinds of things are happening in the world today. Now, I am not setting myself up as the expert on news. This is like you and I are reading the morning paper together. And so I'm just gonna go over what news is out there and talk about my perspective on it, what I'm reading from my sources, and we can engage in a dialogue in other places maybe about it. The idea, though, is to give you a wider perspective on news than just the cycle of like, we need to grab your attention with something crazy and awful, because I'm using the process that I use for selecting tech news to say, hey, these are the things I think are important to understand the world. Top story across multiple sources that I look at are the Ukraine grain ships leaving Odessa. So if you have been following this story, I've been sort of distantly following it. Russia and Ukraine had an agreement that Russia would not attack its grain ships in order to allow grain to get to the rest of the world from Ukraine. Supplies a large amount of grain to the world. And that agreement expired and Russia decided not to sign back up for it. Turkey had brokered the first agreement. They're still trying to broker a new agreement. But in the meantime, grain leaving Russia and Odessa is the major port since Crimea is under Russian occupation. Odessa is the major port that Ukraine would export its grain out of. Now you may wonder, why don't they just send it out over land, right? They could send it out through Poland over train. And they do, you just can't send as much. It's like saying, well, why not use dial-up instead of broadband? You can send a lot more grain through the ports than you can through the trains. So a merchant ship, according to the BBC, has left the Ukrainian port of Odessa despite concerns that Russia could target the vehicle or the vessel. It is Hong Kong flagged. So it is not flying a Ukrainian flag or a Russian flag. It has been in the port since February 2022. Kiev announced a humanitarian corridor in the Black Sea after the deal collapsed last month. So Kiev, basically, Ukraine, from what I'm reading here says, we won't hinder this route. And we expect everyone else to respect it as well, whether there's a deal or not. Russia has not said whether or respect the corridor. The ship left as Ukraine said, Russian airstrikes had damaged grain storage facilities in a river port about 260 kilometers southwest of Odessa. Ports continuing operations. Russia did not comment on the grain silo attack. Fired warning shots at a ship traveling towards Ukraine earlier in the week. Hmm. So this is important because if I am interpreting this, and this is just my lay person's opinion, what Russia wants to do is put pressure on Ukraine, of course, sell its own grain because it does also produce grain, not in as large of amounts. Ukraine was the breadbasket of the Soviet Union, but Russia would like to sell its own grain first. So it would like to create a market with African countries particularly. It's been on a charm offensive with African countries. And so if it could put pressure on Ukraine and get its grain prices up and be seen as the one saying, oh, you can't get grain from the rest of the world, but Russia will help you out. That could win at some allies. This ties in to other stories I've been following. We'll get to a related one in a minute here. But multiple African countries have been changing governments to dictatorships that are switching from European and US alignment to Russia adjacent alignment, usually involving the Wagner Group. So Russia really is trying to create a block of African countries that it can market to and be allied with. Yeah, so that seems to be the top story. Is that that grain ship? If that ship can get out safely, then probably more ships will be able to get out safely and grain supplies will loosen up and that will weaken Russia's ability to use that as a diplomatic offensive. It will also keep food prices down in large parts of the world. And we also got this Washington Post story about this. I don't know that it's gonna say much different than the BBC, just by threats by Russia. Alexander Kuberakov said the container ship flying left the plane. Yeah, this looks like it's pretty much the same story. Now adjacent to this, I did notice the CNBC story that NATO official admits comments on Ukraine giving up territory to gain membership were a mistake. And from what I know of this, Ukraine and Russia's possibility for peace hinges on what territory they would be willing to allow to stay in each other's hands. Russia's purported claim seems to be that Crimea for sure, and parts of the Donbas, which are the eastern part of Ukraine, are really part of Russia, a historically part of Russia. They make all kinds of arguments. And they are occupying them. They're also occupying the southern coast around Crimea of Ukraine as well. So Ukraine is saying you have to give everything back, including Crimea. Now, why is Crimea different? Crimea historically has not really been always part of Ukraine or Russia. It was part of Russia prior to the Soviet Union, if I remember correctly. And then Khrushchev gave Crimea to Ukraine in the 60s, transferred it from the Russian Soviet Federated Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Federated Republic, which really didn't matter, because it was all part of the Soviet Union, because Ukraine said, well, historically before, like way back, Crimea is part of Ukraine and it is attached to Ukraine, not attached to Russia. And then in 2014, Russia liberated Crimea is how they put it. They came in and Crimea has a large Russian speaking population, which that gets weird because Ukrainians speak a lot of Russian too anyway. They came in and took Crimea and said it's part of Russia again. So that happened in 2014. The Donbas partially happened in 2014 as well, but that didn't go as well as Crimea and that was still being disputed. And that wasn't Russia invading on the Eastern side. That was Russia saying they weren't backing rebels in the Eastern side that have seized to create their own republic, which since Russia invaded in 2022, Russia now says it's part of Russia. Anyway, that's all a long way of saying, Crimea and the Donbas were already disputed before 2022. So there's some diplomatic minds out there that say, well, Russia should definitely give up what it took after 2014 in 2022. And maybe there's some compromise to be made about the Donbas in the Eastern side of the country, but Crimea, I mean, that one's a little tougher. And so it sounds like a NATO official, John Jensen had made comments about Ukraine ceding land. Now I'm trying to look through this story and see what the comments actually were because Ukraine has been basically saying, no, we will never give up anything and we won't like it if anyone else does. Anyway, the whole reason I even noted this is that if someone accidentally says the quiet part out loud, it usually means it's being considered. They just don't want it to be out there in the public. Still, my statement about this was a part of a larger discussion about possible future scenarios. And I should have said it that way. I think that a solution could be for Ukraine to give up territory. So he didn't say which parts, but that's gonna happen. And my bet is Crimea would be the easier part for Ukraine to live with, giving up maybe if they were given a port on Crimea or something like that. All right, this one's no fun at all. Mobs attacking Christian churches in eastern Pakistan, accusations of desecrating the Koran. This is a story that I don't feel qualified to comment on. I do not follow this as closely, but it is big news. And I don't know if it's being reported on the US side as much, but people in eastern Pakistan alleging a Christian man had desecrated the Koran, demolished the man's house, burnt churches, damaged several homes, the attacks in the district of Faisalabad in Punjab province. I think, I don't know. I don't know what to make of this. It seems to me that it shows that there are tensions, certainly. And I'm more familiar with tensions between the BJP and Muslims in India and other non-Buddhist groups in India. So I don't know if this is kind of a similar situation where the government has been fostering this, but, or if it's just, you know, I have a general theory that people after COVID are real stressed and we're seeing a lot of fault lines that would normally not erupt. AP says eastern Pakistan, same kind of facts. Government employed additional police forces and sent the army in to help restore order. That's something that wasn't as high up in that yahoo story. Mob gathered, police intervene, firing into the air, wielding batons. They are launching raids to find the perpetrators. Dozens of riders arrested. There you go. So. Right, then of course, the fires, the fire on Maui, well fires that are continuing on Maui, but that devastated Lahaina. This one particularly is, I mean, I've, all I'll say is I've been to Lahaina many times. It's a wonderful place. And I am the least affected, of course, but incredibly sad to see just how much devastation and how many things that I, who've only been there a couple of times love that are gone. Devastation here is incredible. But they have started releasing names of people killed because it's been difficult to identify victims. So far, 106 people have been identified as dead and two people have been named. Three others were identified, but their names were withheld until families were notified. So that's kind of the latest in the aftermath of Lahaina. And I know there's a lot of stories about whether people are getting proper recovery efforts and how that's going and doesn't sound like it's going as well as it should go. Jason Momoa, of course, telling people if you have a vacation, schedule to Maui cancel it because as much as they will eventually need your tourist dollars, they don't need your strain on the system right now. Yeah, that's just leaves me a little speechless. Nigerians call for mass recruitment of volunteers as the junta faces possible regional invasion. Okay, so remember when I mentioned that Russia and particularly the Wagner group are teaming up with in Maui, M-A-L-I. Niger just had a coup and the rest of Africa that isn't Mali and the other recently coup or dictator-oriented countries, a lot of ECOWAS, which is Africa's regional bloc, have said, you need to restore the duly elected president, Mohammed Bazoum, or we will come in and restore him. They're basically drawn a line. They're like, yeah, no, not you, Niger. And Niger, an ally of the U.S. and the French particularly. So in preparation for a possible invasion by ECOWAS troops which would probably mostly be Nigerian from what I know, residents in the capital, Ningameh are calling for the mass recruitment of volunteers to assist the army in resisting an invasion. A lot of people have wondered whether ECOWAS was really gonna follow through on this. So Niger calling up volunteers to say, you need to protect us against invasion indicates that the coup leaders do believe that this could happen or at least they're taking it seriously enough that they wanna dissuade ECOWAS from happening. All right, let's get to some lighter stories. Germany's cabinet has approved a plan to liberalize rules on cannabis possession and sale. So this is not legalizing. It doesn't look like setting the scene for decriminalization. So we're not even close to legalization but decriminalized possession of limited amounts allow members of a cannabis club to buy the substance for recreational use. Well, that's pretty close to legalization. Legislation bill is the first step in a two-part plan. Still needs approval by parliament. So this is the cabinet drawing up the bill. It hasn't been passed. Government's approval is a stride forward for the reform project hopes to get it through parliament and have it take effect at the end of this year legalized possession of up to 25 grams. So it would be like straight on legalization, I guess for recreational purposes and allow individuals to grow up to three plants on their own. German residents who are 18 and older would be allowed to join nonprofit cannabis clubs with a maximum of 500 members each. And the clubs would be allowed to grow cannabis for members' personal consumption. All right, so there you go. Coming to Germany. This is one dear to the DTNS folks hearts. LK99, the superconducting material does not appear to be a superconductor. This is an article in nature. This is not a journal article. Nature has journals that appear reviewed. This is a news article at nature.com but it does seem that the conclusion of multiple researchers is that the LK99 compound is not a room temperature superconductor. Studies show that impurities in the material in particular copper sulfide were responsible for the drops in electrical resistivity and partial levitation over a magnet which looked similar to properties exhibited by superconductors. I think they are pretty decisively settled at this point, says Ina Vishak, a condensed matter experimentalist at the University of California, Davis. So when I said that this reminded me of cold fusion back in the 90s, really, really reminds me of cold fusion back in the 90s, which was, hey, promising demonstration could be real. Let's see if you can reproduce it, replicate it and then they couldn't. So yep, does not look like we got ourselves a superconductor. But I would say before you call the original researchers scheisters, this is something that needs to happen in science more often. People need to not be punished for publishing results and saying, hey, can somebody else replicate this? This is how science should work. Like, I think I found something. Am I missing something? And then other scientists look at it and go, yeah, you were missing something. It's producing some effects, but it's impurities that are doing it. And it's not a room temperature superconductor. Good try, go back to the table. I know it's tempting to look at all of these as attempts at fraud, but if this was an attempt at fraud, it would have never gone through the scientific process. So it did. And it's not. And that's good. That's fine. This is the process working. The problem with scientific publications from what I can see is that you have pressure to only produce results that are good. You have a pressure to publish. And so nobody ever produces the negative results. Nobody ever produces a result that ends up not being true. And you need those to learn from. So that's a good question, Cliff Singer. Why not just make the whole thing out of the impurities? I imagine that if I read this whole story, I'd be able to answer that. But you probably, it's probably not a consistent result and the impurities on their own wouldn't do it, is my guess. But you can go look at this nature.com article if you want to have a look at it. But also I think the other thing is the impurities aren't superconducting. They are producing effects similar to superconducting. So even if you made it out of the whole impurities from the little I've read here, it wouldn't do superconducting the way you want it to. This one caught my eye on the Associated Press. DNA from Etsy the Iceman. Did you all hear about Etsy the Iceman? A well-preserved body from thousands of years ago in the Italian Alps. They have been studying it. Looks like Etsy lived more than 5,000 years ago, was killed by an arrow to the knee. No, no, an arrow to the back. Preserved as a natural mummy when hikers found Etsy in 1991. And after some DNA research, they determined that Etsy was descended from farmers who live present day in Turkey. His head was balder and skin darker than what was initially thought according to the study published Wednesday. So there you go. Etsy's people may or may not have been in the Italian Alps back when Etsy was walking through. Who knows, maybe he was just off on his own. But the people most closely related to him today, I'll live in Turkey. That's interesting, look at Etsy. All right, I called it New Sports and Weather, so we gotta have some sports. England reached the Women's World Cup Final for the first time. We're gonna have a new Women's World Cup Soccer Champion. It's gonna be England versus Spain. And apologies, Australians, if this is a painful story, I understand. But England defeated Australia 3-1. Elitun gave England the lead in the first half with a superb first time strike. And they never looked back. So look at you, England World Cup Final for the women. Well done. And that's a look at sports. And then weather, I don't know if we'd always have weather if I turned this into a regular show, but Typhoon Land hitting Western Japan. So it's Typhoon season. And Typhoons are no joke. 237,000 people evacuated. 11 prefectures. Typhoon made landfall near Shionomasaki in Japan's Wakayama prefecture around 5 a.m. Tuesday. Category two hurricane, 26 people injured. And that. Well, there you go, folks. That's a look at New Sports and Weather with me. I hope you enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. I imagine this concept would need some refining. It is fun for me to be able to say, well, I do know this and that from what I've been following, but not feel like I have to have an answer for everything. When I do tech news, I feel like the expectation is like, hey, I'm coming to you for the tech news, for understanding. So you better know what you're talking about. This is more, let's all have a look at the news and share our perspectives on it led by me. So let me know what you think. Feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com is the place to do that. This is Experiment Week after all. So this is just me experimenting and like that room temperature superconductor, the experiments may not always work, but maybe you'll learn something in a concept that doesn't work. So let me know what you think. That's a look at New Sports and Weather. Thanks everybody for hanging out with me and I will talk to you soon.