Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.
Hamburg Airport hostage drama ends after 18 hours
Summary: A 35-year-old man drove his car through a security barrier onto the Hamburg Airport tarmac over the weekend before parking under a plane, firing a gun in the air, and throwing burning bottles, all with his four-year-old daughter in the car with him, interrupting the takeoff process for a full commercial flight and shutting the airport down for about 18 hours; the standoff was ultimately ended peacefully.
Context: The man reportedly didn’t like decisions made by authorities regarding custody arrangements for his child between him and his ex-wife, and wanted to go to Turkey with her, and he reportedly took their daughter following an argument, which led to a child abduction report filed by the ex-wife; authorities have said that the daughter was unharmed and that the man has been in an “exceptional psychological situation.”
—BBC News
First plasma fired up at world’s largest fusion reactor
Summary: The world’s largest fusion reactor, located in Japan, has been successfully fired up for the first time, demonstrating that this approach to fusion works, and paving the way for the international fusion reactor ITER, located in France, to use these technologies, potentially as soon as 2025.
Context: This fire-up was intended to show that a machine built in this way using a tokamak, which is a doughnut-shaped vessel that uses magnetic fields to contain incredibly hot plasma, is capable of holding plasma heated to 200 million degrees Celsius for about 100 seconds—a lot longer than previous large tokamaks have been capable of; it will be another two years before this reactor fully powers up and produces the longer-lasting plasmas that will be required to do real-deal experiments, but this was an important milestone that will allow those next-steps to commence, which in turn may someday allow for the production and maintenance of fusion reactions that produce more energy than they consume.
—Science
Google’s antitrust headaches compound with another trial, this one targeting its Play Store
Summary: Alongside a large-scale, Justice Department-led antitrust case Google is embroiled in, the company is also facing a case brought by video game-maker Epic, which is challenging the commission that Google charges entities that have apps in its Google Play app store.
Context: This case is essentially the same as the one Epic brought, unsuccessfully, against Apple in 2021, and though that case was a loss for Epic, allowing Apple to continue charging its fee, the judge in that case and an appeals court decided that Apple should also allow apps in its app store to link to other payment options, allowing them to dodge the fee attached to all payments conducted in-store; Epic is hoping to achieve more than that in this case against Google, though even the option to link to outside payment systems would likely be considered a win, as both Apple and Google can currently charge whatever they want for apps using their app stores, and that’s made life difficult for app-makers, according to Epic, at least.
—The Associated Press
Thought still high by recent standards, catalytic converter thefts in the US have dropped substantially in 2023 compared to 2022, presumably because the black market value of metals like palladium, rhodium, and platinum these car parts contain (in small amounts) have plummeted; rhodium, for instance, was worth about $3,000/ounce in 2019, skyrocketed to $26,000/ounce in 2022 (due to supply disruptions), but then dropped to one-sixth of its peak in 2023 as pandemic-era supply issues disappeared.
—NBC News
157
Number of people who have been confirmed killed, so far, following Nepal’s worst earthquake in eight years over the weekend.
Another 250 or so people have been confirmed injured, and though far less damaging and deadly than a pair of quakes in 2015 that killed around 9,000 people and wiped out entire towns (including more than a million houses and many centuries-old temples), this new quake has rendered many areas uninhabitable due to the damage caused to buildings and other infrastructure.
—Reuters
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