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Since its launch in January 2022, KSI and Logan Paul's Prime Hydration has taken over shelves, social feeds and resale sites. Marketed at £2 a bottle in supermarkets across the UK with some strict 'one per customer' rules, the viral energy drink has since landed in local off-licences and sites such as eBay at a much higher price point. The drink even prompted one diehard fan to create an app dedicated to helping others monitor stock levels after witnessing teens and parents queueing up in the early hours to get their hands on a bottle. In a recent YouTube video, KSI reacted to the inflated Prime prices, with one eBay listing at a staggering £500 ($631). A separate listing saw a single bottle of Prime Lemonade for £148 ($186) with 22 bidders. "That’s why there’s a huge rush to get them… people are making stupid profit," he said. "There’s probably people that actually want to try the drink, but then there are also people that are like, 'yeah, I can make a s*** ton of money.'" Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter People Are Reselling Prime for THIS MUCH?? www.youtube.com This isn't the first time the YouTuber addressed Prime's inflated resale prices. Earlier this year, KSI took to Twitter, telling followers, "It's literally impossible to combat." "We’re sending loads to retailers," he responded to one fan. "However I fear that not all of the bottles will end up on the shelves due to foul play and opportunists. And I hate to say it but it’s literally impossible to combat that I’m afraid." In a separate TikTok video, KSI urged fans to stop paying the ridiculous resale prices. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Lionel Messi said there “could have been a tragedy” after police clashed with fans during Argentina’s World Cup qualifier against rivals Brazil at the Maracana in Rio. The match was delayed by half an hour following crowd trouble in the stands, which started before kick-off and during the national anthems. In response, Brazilian police charged at the Argentina fans, with the fighting taking place in a section of the stadium that contained the visiting players’ families and friends. Some Argentina supporters ripped up seats to throw at the police, who were wielding batons, while others attempted to escape the scene. Led by Messi, the Argentina players went over to try and calm the situation. Images showed the Aston Villa goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez trying to grab a baton from a police officer’s hand as the Argentina players appealed for the fighting to stop. The World Cup winners then left the pitch and returned to the dressing room for more than 10 minutes. When the match eventually resumed, Argentina won a bad-tempered qualifier 1-0 to leave Brazil in crisis after suffering their third straight defeat. The clashes in the stands occurred just two weeks after similar scenes at the Copa Libertadores final between Brazilian side Fluminense and Argentine giants Boca Juniors, which was also held at the iconic Maracana stadium. “It was bad because we saw how they were beating people,” Messi told reporters after the match. “The police, as happened in the Libertadores final, were once again repressing the people with night sticks. “We went to the locker room because it was the best way to calm everything down, it could have ended in tragedy. “You think about the families, the people who are there, who don’t know what’s going on and we were more concerned about that than playing a match that, at that point, was of secondary importance.” The Argentina players were joined by Brazil captain Marquinhos as they appealed for calm in the stands. The defender said: “We were worried about the families, women and children that we were seeing in panic up there in the stands. “Down on the pitch it was hard for us to understand what was going on, it was a very scary situation.” On the pitch, Argentina took a huge step towards qualifying for the 2026 World Cup as Nicolas Otamendi’s header secured a 1-0 win, but the match was littered with fouls, skirmishes and cards. Brazil finished with 10 men after Newcastle’s Joelinton was sent off for hitting Argentina’s Rodrigo de Paul in the face. Brazil have now lost successive matches to Uruguay, Colombia and Argentina and are eight points behind the world champions in the qualifying table. The five-time World Cup winners sit sixth, which is the last spot that guarantees qualifying for the finals, after six rounds.

“The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now in this very room." So says Laurence Fishburne’s Morpheus in sci-fi classic ‘The Matrix’ as he offers Keanu Reeves’s Neo the choice to find out just how “deep the rabbit hole goes”. Now, just as Neo discovered that the "life" he'd been living was little more than an algorithmic construct, scientists and philosophers are arguing that we could be stuck inside a simulation ourselves. In a paper published earlier this month, physicist Melvin Vopson, of the University of Portsmouth, offered scientific evidence for a philosophical theory known as the simulation hypothesis. This, in a nutshell, posits that the entire universe and our objective reality are just super-advanced virtual reality illusions. Elon Musk is among the well-known fans of the theory, which – as Dr Vopson notes in his paper – has been “gaining traction in scientific circles as well as in the entertainment industry”. The university lecturer also pointed out that recent developments in a branch of science known as information physics “appear to support this possibility”. Information physics suggests that physical reality is made up of bits of information. However, Dr Vopson has gone further and is working to prove that information has a physical mass and is a fundamental building block of the universe. He even claims that information could be the mysterious dark matter that makes up almost a third of the universe. In previous research, the physicist proposed that all elementary particles (the smallest known building blocks in the universe), store information about themselves, much like DNA in humans. Then, in 2022, he discovered a new law of physics, christened the second law of infodynamics, which states that entropy – the degree of randomness or disorder – within an isolated information system either remains constant or decreases over time. In other words, the system becomes less and less chaotic, implying that there is some kind of mechanism governing it rather than random chance. “I knew then that this revelation had far-reaching implications across various scientific disciplines,” Dr Vopson said in a statement released by the University of Portsmouth. “What I wanted to do next is put the law to the test and see if it could further support the simulation hypothesis by moving it on from the philosophical realm to mainstream science.” Is the Universe a Simulation? | Melvin Vopson www.youtube.com Dr Vopson employed the law in a range of different fields, including genetics, cosmology and even symmetry. Here, he found that the abundance of symmetry in the Universe (think snowflakes and facial structures) could be explained by the second law of infodynamics. "Symmetry principles play an important role with respect to the laws of nature, but until now there has been little explanation as to why that could be,” he said. “My findings demonstrate that high symmetry corresponds to the lowest information entropy state, potentially explaining nature's inclination towards it." Again, put simply, nature prefers things to be as well-ordered as possible. He continued: “This approach, where excess information is removed, resembles the process of a computer deleting or compressing waste code to save storage space and optimise power consumption.” As a result, this “supports the idea that we’re living in a simulation.” Dr Vopson is serious about this idea and, last year, even launched a crowdfunding campaign to test it. At the time, he announced that he had designed an experiment to determine whether we are all just characters in an advanced virtual world. “There is a growing community out there looking seriously at the possibility that information is more fundamental to everything than we think,” he said in a statement released back in December. “If information is a key component of everything in the universe, it would make sense that a vast computer somewhere is in control. “Assuming the universe is indeed a simulation, then it must contain a lot of information bits hidden everywhere around us. I’ve devised an experiment that proposes a way of extracting this information to prove it’s there.” His proposed experiment is based on his conclusion that information is physical and that elementary particles have a DNA of information about themselves. He posited that the information in an elementary particle could be detected and measured by using particle-antiparticle collision. “We can measure the information content of a particle by erasing it. If we delete the information from the particles, we can then look at what’s left,” he said in the December statement. “This experiment is highly achievable with our existing tools, and I’m hoping the crowdfunding site will help us achieve it.” And whilst the crowdfunder closed well before reaching its proposed £185,000 target, Dr Vopson still hopes to carry out the ambitious test. Following his most recent paper, he suggested the experiment had the power to confirm the “fifth state of matter in the universe” and “change physics as we know it.” Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Russia has warned Western countries that supplying Ukraine with F-16 fighter jets would carry “colossal risks”, after US president Joe Biden announced the US would support the delivery of warplanes. As G7 leaders met for the second day of the summit in Japan, Russian deputy foreign minister Alexander Grushko accused Western countries of “still adhering to the escalation scenario”. “It involves colossal risks for themselves,” he added. “In any case, this will be taken into account in all our plans, and we have all the necessary means to achieve the goals we have set.” Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky has long stressed the need for F-16 jets, but the US previously hesitated to provide them. The warplanes can travel at twice the speed of sound and can engage with targets in the air and on the ground. Mr Biden has now informed his allies that it will allow the advanced planes to be donated to Kyiv. Mr Biden, who is attending the G7 with other members, also announced training for Ukrainian pilots. It comes as Ukraine has denied claims by Russia that it has taken full control of Bakhmut but warned the situation in the key battle town is “critical”. Hanna Maliar, Ukraine’s defence minister, pushed back on the claim by Yevgeny Prigozhin that his Wagner Group of mercenaries had seized the town around lunchtime. “Heavy fighting in Bakhmut. The situation is critical,” she said on the Telegram messaging app. “As of now, our defenders control some industrial and infrastructure facilities in the area and the private sector.” Prime minister Rishi Sunak welcomed President Biden’s decision on the F-16 fighter jets, having previously pressed allies to provide the Ukrainian president with the jets. “The UK will work together with the USA and the Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark to get Ukraine the combat air capability it needs. We stand united,” he said in a statement. The RAF does not have any US-manufactured F-16s. Mr Zelensky touched down in Japan to join the G7 summit on Saturday morning, saying in a statement that “peace will become closer” as he headed to talks. It is understood it was Mr Sunak who suggested to the Ukrainian war leader that he should attend the Asian summit in person. Mr Sunak is understood to have pitched the idea during a phone call about a month ago before it was then broached with the Japanese hosts. Mr Zelensky’s presence at the meeting will potentially bring him into contact with India’s Narendra Modi and Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who have not supported Ukraine like their Western allies. Neither are G7 members, but India is being represented at the summit because it is the current G20 chair, while Brazil has been invited as a guest. Mr Zelensky’s attendance at the G7, the group that Russia was expelled from over its 2014 annexation of Crimea, is another show of solidarity from Western allies. Japan said Mr Zelensky has a “strong wish” to take part in the talks that will influence his nation’s defence against Vladimir Putin. On Saturday, Mr Sunak met with French president Emmanuel Macron for discussions at the summit and had a short “brush-by” meeting with German chancellor Olaf Scholz. They discussed providing military aid and “longer-term security assistance” to Ukraine as well as tackling small boat crossings of the Channel, Downing Street said. Meanwhile, the G7 announced it would establish a new team to root out and counter Russia and China’s use of economic coercion to influence nations’ decisions. Worried by the outsized role China now plays in supply chains for everything from semiconductors to critical minerals, the G7 issued a communique that set out a common strategy towards future dealings with the world’s second-largest economy. “We call on China to press Russia to stop its military aggression, and immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw its troops from Ukraine,” the leaders said in a statement. They warned that countries attempting to use trade as a weapon would face “consequences”, sending a strong signal to Beijing over practices Washington says amount to economic bullying. “We are not decoupling or turning inwards. At the same time, we recognise that economic resilience requires de-risking and diversifying,” they said. “A growing China that plays by international rules would be of global interest.” Later on Saturday, the Vatican announced that Pope Francis has asked Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, head of the Italian bishops’ conference, to carry out a peace mission to try to help end the war in Ukraine. Pope Francis first spoke of his intention to launch a mission when he was returning from a trip to Hungary last month. A Vatican diplomatic source said Cardinal Zuppi would try to meet separately with both President Zelenskiy and Russia’s President Putin but gave no timescale for the plans. Read More The Body in the Woods | An Independent TV Original Documentary The harrowing discovery at centre of The Independent’s new documentary Sunak meets Zelensky at G7 summit as hopes rise of Ukraine getting fighter jets ‘Peace will become closer today’: Ukraine’s Zelensky arrives for G7 summit in Japan

IRVING, Texas & ABERDEEN, Scotland--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 24, 2023--

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