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Facebook, YouTube to Restrict Some Russian State-Controlled Media Across Europe
Facebook, YouTube to Restrict Some Russian State-Controlled Media Across Europe
Facebook, YouTube and other social networks are restricting access to Russian state-controlled media outlets RT and Sputnik across Europe, amid calls to crack down on disinformation. The move will likely heighten tensions between some of the world's most popular social networks and the Russian government.
Facebook's parent company, Meta, said Monday that it will limit the accessibility of Sputnik and RT across the European Union.
"We have received requests from a number of governments and the EU to take further steps in relation to Russian state-controlled media. Given the exceptional nature of the current situation, we will be restricting access to RT and Sputnik across the EU at this time," Nick Clegg, who oversees global affairs at Meta and is a former UK deputy prime minister, said in a tweet.
Clegg didn't respond to questions on Twitter about what the restrictions entail, how many requests Meta has received and from which governments or how many Facebook users will be impacted by these restrictions. Clegg also didn't say when these restrictions would start. RT's Facebook page has 7.4 million followers and Sputnik's Facebook page has 1.4 million followers. The media outlets are also on Facebook-owned Instagram, a photo and video service. RT has 839,000 followers on Instagram and Sputnik has 116,000 followers.
On Tuesday, Google said in a post on Twitter that it would block YouTube channels connected to RT and Sputnik across Europe.
"Due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, we're blocking YouTube channels connected to RT and Sputnik across Europe, effective immediately," reads a tweet from the official Google Europe account. "It'll take time for our systems to fully ramp up. Our teams continue to monitor the situation around the clock to take swift action."
Google, the video giant's parent company, didn't immediately respond to questions on how many YouTube channels would be blocked. RT's main channel on YouTube has more than 4.6 million subscribers, while Sputnik has over 300,000 subscribers.
Facebook's move came a day after Meta announced it had restricted access to several accounts, including from Russian state-controlled media, in Ukraine after a request from the government there. Meta has been facing more pressure to take action against these media outlets for spreading propaganda and false claims after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
On Sunday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a tweet that the EU's executive branch is developing tools to ban "toxic and harmful disinformation" published by RT and Sputnik and their subsidiaries. The EU is an economic and political union of 27 countries, including France, Germany and Spain.
Following Facebook's move on Tuesday, RT took issue with unspecified comments from European government officials and actions by social media platforms, with its deputy editor-in-chief saying in a statement that no one had pointed to specific evidence of falsehoods appearing on its site during the Ukraine crisis. In its own statement, Sputnik's press arm characterized the restrictions as an "information war against the Russian media."
RT and Sputnik are on other social media sites, including Twitter and TikTok. A spokeswoman for TikTok said users in the EU won't see content from RT's and Sputnik's accounts. Twitter started labeling state-affiliated media, but a spokeswoman said the company had "nothing to share at this time" when asked if the company was also planning to restrict RT and Sputnik.
The rare move by Meta also raises questions about whether Russia will further restrict access to Facebook and Instagram. Ukrainians have put pressure on Facebook to remove access to the main social network and Instagram in Russia, but Clegg said Sunday those platforms are also being used by protesters and as a source of independent information. "The Russian Government is already throttling our platform to prevent these activities. We believe turning off our services would silence important expression at a crucial time," Clegg said in a tweet on Sunday.
Russia said last week that it's partly restricting access to Facebook after the social network refused to stop fact-checking and labeling content posted on Facebook by four Russian state-owned media organizations. Russia's telecommunications regulator, Roskomnadzor, alleges Facebook violated "fundamental human rights" by restricting the country's state-controlled media.
Facebook and YouTube have also been barring ads from Russia state media. Twitter also said last week that it's temporarily pausing ads in Ukraine and Russia.
On Sunday, Meta also announced that it removed a network of about 40 fake accounts, Pages and Groups on Facebook and Instagram from Russia and Ukraine. Meta said some of these accounts pretended to be news editors and ran fake news websites and published stories that included "claims about the West betraying Ukraine and Ukraine being a failed state." Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp, created a special operations center with experts who speak Ukrainian and Russian to help monitor its platform.
CNET's Carrie Mihalcik contributed to this report.
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Biden Sends $53B to US Chipmakers by Signing CHIPS Act Into Law
Biden Sends $53B to US Chipmakers by Signing CHIPS Act Into Law
President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act into law Tuesday, sending $52.7 billion to processor manufacturers over five years in an effort to help the US reclaim semiconductor industry leadership lost to Taiwanese and Korean companies and challenged by increasingly capable Chinese firms.
The legislation has already helped encourage smartphone chip designer Qualcomm to spend $4.2 billion with chipmaker GlobalFoundries to build processors in New York, the White House said in a fact sheet released Tuesday. And Micron will invest $40 billion in memory chip manufacturing capacity, the White House said, a move that could elevate the US share of memory chipmaking from 2% to 10%.
"The CHIPS and Science Act supercharges our efforts to make semiconductors here in America," Biden said in a speech Tuesday at the White House's Rose Garden. "America invented the semiconductor, and this law brings it back home."
It costs billions of dollars to build new chip fabrication facilities, called fabs. The CHIPS Act will knock about $3 billion off a $10 billion leading-edge fab, said Intel, which is sinking more than $40 billion into new and upgraded fabs in Arizona, Ohio, New Mexico and Oregon and stands to be one of the biggest beneficiaries.
US fabs made 37% of processors in 1990, but that's dropped to 12%, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association. The CHIPS Act is designed to reverse that trend, shoring up an industry that's critical to electric vehicles, laptops, weapons systems, washing machines, toys and just about anything that uses electricity about anything with a power plug or battery.
The law emerged after a chip shortage made it clear how much US industries and the US military now rely on processors made overseas. As Intel, a Silicon Valley fixture, struggled to advance over the last decade, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. in Taiwan and Samsung in South Korea took the lead. China, eager to foster a native chipmaking industry, subsidized its own rivals like Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp.
TSMC and Samsung are foundries, businesses that build chips for other companies. Intel, in contrast, has chiefly built its own chips. Part of Intel Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger's recovery plan is to add a foundry business, expanding its manufacturing volume and drawing in new customers such as Taiwanese chip designer MediaTek. Although Samsung and TSMC have headquarters and most of their chipmaking business overseas, both are building new fabs in the US, too. GlobalFoundries, a foundry based in the US, isn't on the leading edge of chipmaking for most technologies, but it's expanding capacity, too.
That chip shortage frustrated consumers eager to lap up PlayStation 5 game consoles during the COVID-19 pandemic and shuttered US auto plants as crucial electronic components stalled manufacturing. The shortage also provided a measure of rare bipartisan support for the CHIPS Act, which passed with a 243-187 vote in the House of Representatives and a 64-33 vote in the Senate in late July.
Waning chip manufacturing in the US comes with geopolitical worries. China claims Taiwan as its own territory and has been saber-rattling with military exercises since Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives, visited Taiwan last week. Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent cessation of high-tech product imports also shows how vulnerable a country without its own industry can become. This week, the chip shortage led the US auto industry to drop production of 100,000 vehicles.
RK Anand, chief product officer at automotive AI chip designer Recogni and a longtime Silicon Valley executive, laid out the problem. One of his earlier employers, network gear maker Juniper Networks, relied on IBM to make its chips. But as Big Blue slipped behind, Juniper switched manufacturing to TSMC to keep up with rivals like Cisco, Anand said. IBM eventually exited the chipmaking business altogether.
"In the last 20 years, it's been disappointing that we've given up that leadership," Anand said. "We better get back on it."
Nantero, a startup trying to leapfrog today's memory chips using an exotic material called carbon nanotubes, could be the opposite example to Juniper, hoping CHIPS Act funding will let it find a fab in the US.
"Right now fab access is so limited in the US that many companies either fail or go overseas while waiting in line," said CEO Rob Snowberger, who attended Biden's signing. "Nantero will now be able to plan our future around staying in the US."
Massive government subsidies are anathema to the free-market ethos that generally prevails in the US, but CHIPS Act allies argue they're necessary to compete with subsidies in South Korea, China and Taiwan. Japan's government subsidizes the development of the exact technology Nantero hopes to commercialize.
US chipmaking won't suddenly surge
Businesses and consumers shouldn't expect immediate relief from the CHIPS Act. For one thing, it takes years to build a new fab, so new capacity won't arrive right away.
For another, many of the processors that have stalled products are built with older, less advanced chipmaking technology. Chipmakers are generally more eager to invest instead in leading-edge methods that make premium chips like those that power Apple iPhones, Nvidia graphics accelerators and Amazon data centers.
Making a handful of fabs significantly cheaper can help US manufacturing, but it's a long way from building the rich network of companies that prevail in Asia, supplying materials like giant polysilicon crystal ingots that are sliced into chip wafers to all the testing, packaging and assembly work that takes place after chips are made.
"Efforts must also support the larger semiconductor ecosystem, which spans everything from wafer substrates to chip probers to items as mundane as shipping materials," said Jim Witham, CEO of power electronics maker GaN Systems. He believes the CHIPS Act funding is only a beginning. "We've lost many of these capabilities in the US, and rebuilding them takes time and money."
The Boston Consulting Group expects it would cost $350 billion to $420 billion to create a self-sufficient semiconductor supply chain in the US.
Fusion Worldwide, which distributes chips worldwide and has had a front-row seat to the semiconductor supply chain crisis, expects it'll be two or three years before the CHIPS Act funding really makes a difference. And the law largely sidesteps some of the most acute shortages, said Paul Romano, chief operating officer at Fusion.
"The legislation will improve long-term US standing around newer, complex chip production but isn't likely to do much to boost supply of older technology components," still in high demand for cars and other industries, Romano said. Although the CHIPS Act helps US manufacturing, it "won't go nearly far enough in helping achieve parity with the Asian fabs."
Chip industry cheers the CHIPS Act
Chip industry players cheered the law. The Semiconductor Industry Association estimates that it will create thousands of jobs and make supply chains more resilient for industry and military customers that rely on processors. The Information Technology Industry Council, whose members include dozens of tech companies, included the CHIPS Act as a top policy priority. It's now the Commerce Department's job to rapidly approve CHIPS Act applications so the money can flow, the ITI said in a statement Tuesday.
Under the law, companies receiving the subsidies may not use them for dividend payments or stock buybacks, Biden said.
The CHIPS Act includes $39 billion in manufacturing incentives. Of that $2 billion is for the older generation chips that automakers and military equipment makers require. It also includes $13.2 billion to spur research and development and to improve worker training.
The full title of the legislation — the CHIPS and Science Act, with CHIPS standing for Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors — is so named because the $53.7 billion in semiconductor industry funds are part of a larger $280 billion law that also funds basic and applied research at the government's National Science Foundation, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and Commerce Department.
The chipmaking subsidies and research funding will "cultivate the tech hubs of tomorrow, spurring new innovations and technologies right here at home," said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, which stands to benefit from investments by GlobalFoundries and other chip makers.
When Local Newspapers Fold, Polarization Rises. Here's What You Can Do
When Local Newspapers Fold, Polarization Rises. Here's What You Can Do
Russia's invasion of Ukraine, rising energy costs and our ongoing struggles with the coronavirus pandemic take up a lot of our attention these days. But there's more going on a lot closer to home -- you just might not know it, because your local newspaper is gone.
More than a quarter of hometown newspapers have disappeared in the last century, leaving about 70 million Americans with little or no way to stay informed about their city and county governments, schools or businesses. As the country heads toward the 2022 midterm elections, Americans are increasingly turning to friends and social media to stay informed -- which isn't always trustworthy, as we learned during the 2016 election when around 44% of Americans were exposed to disinformation and misinformation through untrustworthy websites.
"The state of local news in America is dire," said Tim Franklin, senior associate dean of Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism and head of the Medill Local News Initiative.
Local journalism isn't just a nice idea. Community newspapers report some of the most important stories in our country. That includes the Boston Globe's 2002 series exposing the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston's sex abuse of minors, Sara Ganim and The Patriot-News' coverage revealing Penn State sex abuse scandal involving Jerry Sandusky and the Charleston Gazette-Mail's 2017 expose on opioids flooding into West Virginia.
This is part of Citizen Now, a package that aims to empower readers with information about our changing world.
CNET
But for every Pulitzer Prize-winning local journalism story, there are countless more that have served as chroniclers of their communities and watchdogs of the people in power. And when they aren't there, research from the Brookings Institute found there's generally more government waste and fraud.
"When you have less local news, there's various effects, some of which you'd find predictable: lower voting turnout, more corruption, more waste," said Steven Walden, president and co-founder of Report For America, a nonprofit that funds young reporters to work in understaffed newsrooms throughout the US. "There's also evidence that you have more polarization and misinformation."
The journalism industry has been struggling to adapt. Advertising, once a vital part of the newspaper world, has shifted to online. Meanwhile, profit-hungry newspaper owners have chosen to lay off staff and reduce the quality of their products.
Nonprofit organizations have stepped up to support newsrooms in several ways, but ultimately, they live or die by their communities. Many local papers and radio stations depend on individual donations to fund reporting that would never be done by larger publications, covering civic meetings and investigating local issues that lead to exposés which fix injustices. Even simply signing up for and reading local news draws people closer to issues that affect them -- and reinforces what publications do.
"Most of these stories weren't big but they mattered immensely to the residents in a community larger outlets didn't regularly cover," said Greg Yee, now a reporter at the Los Angeles Times, speaking about his year writing for the Farmington Daily Times in Farmington, New Mexico. (Full disclosure: Yee is a former colleague of this article's author.) Stories that stick out from that time include a mobile home park cut off from natural gas in winter and a new gas station opening in a Navajo Nation community, the only fuel access in 30 miles, that significantly improved locals' quality of life.
"A good local news organization is a problem solver: it identifies problems and helps a community come together to solve it," said Penelope Abernathy, visiting professor at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism, who heads a site dedicated to mapping news deserts, areas with one or zero local papers. "And a good news organization shows you how you are related to people you may not know you're related to in another part of the county, region or state."
The Washington Post / Getty Images
Long, withering decline
Journalism jobs have been shrinking for decades, driven by declining newspaper circulation and the rise in digital advertising. The news industry's advertising and subscription businesses have roughly halved over the past decade. Much of that money's shifted to Google, Facebook and Amazon, which together now hold 64% of the US online advertising market.
For newspapers, that shift in spending is catastrophic. In the decade after the great recession in 2009, the Pew Research Center found newspaper newsroom employment in the US had dropped by more than half, to about 35,000 workers.
Ironically, the news industry has more readers than ever before – upwards of 10 times as many, according to Danielle Coffey, vice president and general council of the News Media Alliance.
"We don't have a broken product. It's being consumed at exponential rates," she said. "The source of the problem is the revenue problem."
It wasn't always this way.
The founding fathers believed so strongly in newspapers as a public good that they set up government subsidies for postal rates, reducing the cost of distributing the news – which at the time, was delivered on horseback.
In the 1960s and '70s, though, publicly traded paper owners began fixating on profits. To impress shareholders, news organizations conglomerated into big chains that gobbled up local papers into regional networks, said Amanda Lotz, professor of the Digital Media Research Centre at Queensland University.
"The financialization pressure really moves [newspapers] away from the balance between a commercial and public service enterprise of providing news to a community," Lotz said.
Rounds of acquisitions resulted in the gutting of editorial budgets and staff. With fewer reporters, newspapers started relying on national stories published by wire services, a trend that created "ghost papers" that had little or no local content. Meanwhile, the internet became an easy substitution for things online that had until then been exclusive to the paper, like weather, sports scores, classifieds and even news.
Venture capitalists and other financial firms began buying up newspapers in the 1980s but rapidly accelerated in the last two decades, growing to own over 23% of US newsrooms today while wringing out profits with more layoffs.
"Those losses put more strain on already stretched newsrooms and the publications ended up churning through staff," said Yee, who worked for four years at a pair of newspapers owned by hedge fund Alden Global Capital. "All of that translates into worse, inconsistent coverage of the communities they're trying to serve."
As a result, from 2004 until the start of the pandemic in 2020, the US lost a quarter (around 2100) of its newspapers, according to a report from the University of North Carolina's Hussman School of Journalism and Media. By the end of last year, another hundred were gone, Poynter reported, expanding news deserts that are mostly located in financially-impacted rural areas in the country's interior.
Some papers have tried to rely more heavily on subscriptions, while transitioning to mainly digital publishing. Some success stories include the Chattanooga Times Free Press, which has been operating since 1869. Last September, it switched to a daily digital edition and a single print edition on Sunday from a daily print edition. The publication spent $6.1 million to give all its monthly subscribers iPads and train them one-on-one how to use them to access their daily paper, and it's retained subscribers through the transition.
"There are some real success stories in this transition. If you can lower your paper costs and your distribution costs and if you can attract enough digital subscribers, you can support a local newsroom on that. But many local news organizations are still getting a significant chunk of their revenue from print advertising," Medill's Franklin said.
Bloomberg / Getty News
Legislative fix, maybe
One way the news industry could regain revenue and profit is to seek compensation from big tech platforms. After all, advocates say, Facebook, Google, Twitter make money selling ads next to links, videos and photos published and shared freely to their networks.
Legislators in Australia were the first to pass a law in February 2021 requiring Google and Facebook to negotiate with publishers for compensation to use their work, while France followed with its own legislation shortly thereafter. The latter locked horns with Google before finally securing legal assurance that the search giant would pay local media outlets when they appear in search results. Critics like the Electronic Frontier Foundation lament that the Australian and French laws ensured deals for big media publishers at the expense of smaller ones, but that hasn't stopped Canada and the UK from gearing up to pass their own versions.
A version of that idea in the US, called the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, was proposed in March, 2021 by Senators Amy Klobuchar, Rand Paul, Cory Booker, and Lindsey Graham -- a rare bipartisan effort. The bill would allow news organizations to collectively bargain with tech companies for compensation, but hasn't moved out of committee yet.
Another idea to fund journalism Is the Local Journalism Sustainability Act introduced a year ago in the House by Representatives Ann Kirkpatrick and Dan Newhouse. That bill, if it were to become law, would give newsrooms around $50,000 annually in tax breaks to hire reporters. Small businesses, meanwhile, would receive $5,000 for the first year to advertise in local papers, and Americans would get a $250 stipend to pay for news subscriptions. It's unlikely to pass, though, in part because of partisan bickering over other spending plans on Capitol Hill.
"We need to make sure these publications can sustain themselves through this crisis and beyond, and I believe the credits in this bill make significant progress in providing a pathway to that sustainability," Rep. Kirkpatrick said when announcing the bill.
Nonprofit newsrooms
Some news organizations are finding funding beyond ads and subscriptions. Nonprofit foundations and philanthropic organizations are funneling grants and other aid money to newsrooms, including a new wave of nonprofit publications, like ProPublica, which run mostly on foundation and individual donations.
The American Journalism Project is a self-described venture philanthropy firm that to date has raised $90 million to back 32 local nonprofit newsrooms. Founded in 2019, it's also helped launch four more, taking the startup incubation model and applying it to digital newsrooms.
The organization focuses on both funding newsrooms and guiding them toward self-sustainability by diversifying their revenue streams, said Sarabeth Berman, CEO of the American Journalism Project. Newsrooms they've helped grow by around 67% in their first year and are projected to double their revenue in three years.
"Will local news only be nonprofit? No. Is nonprofit news vital for the future of an informed citizenry? We think so," Berman said.
Report For America, founded in 2017, describes itself as a service organization, which helps pair young reporters fresh out of college with legacy newsrooms. The organization financially supports the reporter by paying half their salary (up to $25,000) the first year, then a third (up to $20,000) the following year. After that, it's up to the publication to decide whether to hire them permanently.
"If you're not in New York or Boston or Washington, some of these news organizations have trouble getting people to go out to smaller towns," said Report For America's Waldman. "We have a very significant recruiting operation and are able to create a sort of self-selected group of people who are really passionate about local."
Report For America has grown its graduating class to 130 reporters this year, up from its first class of 13 in 2018 -- to date, over 560 reporters have gone through the program and partnered with local newsrooms. They include Laura Roche of the Charlotte News & Observer writing about the fraught debate over museums returning the unethically sourced remains of Black people, Sierra Clark of the Traverse City Record-Eagle writing about Melissa Isaac and many others in her Anishinaabek Neighbors series, and Brandon Drenon of the Indianapolis Star writing about the NAACP and others criticizing Indiana schools for failing Black students.
Report for America also connects newsrooms with donors in their area in an effort to get the community more involved in funding its local news again.
"Our goal is to actually help change the local business models in a way that they can sustain that," Waldman said.
The nonprofit Knight Foundation pledged to give $300 million to news organizations in 2019, some of which will go to both the American Journalism Project and Report For America, among other nonprofits that in turn support local newsrooms -- efforts that can be seen city by city on this interactive map. The flow of financial support is important for local newsrooms that operate on nonprofit and for-profit models, which are both valuable to their communities, said Jim Brady, vice president of the Knight Foundation's journalism program.
"Nonprofits tend to be more investigative or enterprise in nature, and the for-profits tend to provide more information on how consumers can live their daily lives. So we think both must be part of the answer to how local news can thrive," Brady said.
An infographic from the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media's project website, The Expanding News Desert, headed by Penelope Abernathy.
UNC Hussman
What to do if you don't have local journalism
News experts have advice for what to do if you live in a news desert, with little or no coverage. First on the list: Stop thinking that social media posts are an informative replacement for reporting. Social media can help people know what's going on, but it's rife with bias and misinformation.
"There's a proliferation of misinformation and disinformation that goes unchecked because there's no local journalist checking on the facts. [Social media is] a place where unvetted gossip can get spread," Franklin said.
People need to learn to spot misinformation that's spread on social media by publications that look like they're trustworthy but aren't. Both the World Health Organization and the Poynter Institute have their own free online courses to learn how to fact-check posts yourself -- not just to spot fake news, but also to understand the agenda behind why they're spreading in the first place.
In the voids left by local papers, citizen journalists and bloggers have stepped up to provide their communities with informative coverage, but they lack the oversight and vetting a newsroom provides. For lack of better options, a citizen reporter could start a site on Substack and write about local events, Franklin suggested.
The best thing to do is to reach out to regional papers the next town over and request coverage. You can find your nearest local or regional paper on Newspapers.com or NewspaperMap.com. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has a station finder site too, and if you're a fan of National Public Radio, you can sign up to become a member of your local station in order to help support it. It isn't a perfect solution for an existing newsroom to stretch to cover another area, but is far better than starting a new local publication from scratch.
But if your community decides to launch a new publication, organizing it as a nonprofit newsroom is a successful way to go. They rely on donations -- foundation support and individual giving account for a combined 83% of nonprofit revenue, according to the Institute of Nonprofit Newsrooms' 2021 Index. And that model is working: 83 of the over 400 nonprofit newsrooms affiliated with INN are less than five years old.
Then there's nonprofit newsroom Berkeleyside, which hosted the so-called first 'direct public offering' where it solicited a combined $1 million in funding from 355 of its readers (an average of $2,816 per person) in 2018 to get started. These are technically securities, but sold directly to its readers, and the publication continues to publish today. It's one of many ways newsrooms are innovating new ownership structures to stay solvent.
"We need to get more support from communities, from local community foundations, from national media foundations and from high net-worth individuals to help make local news sustainable in all areas of the country," Brady said.
Correction, June 28: The original version of this story incorrectly stated how many reporters were in Report For America's first graduating class. Its first graduating class of reporters was in 2018 and had 13 members.
Ukraine Invasion: What to Know Today About Inflation, Stocks, Gas Prices and More
Ukraine Invasion: What to Know Today About Inflation, Stocks, Gas Prices and More
Russia continued its assault on Ukraine on Monday, with heavy shelling in Kharkiv, the country's second-largest city, killing dozens of people and sending hundreds more to the hospital, according to Ukrainian officials.
Also on Monday, Russia and Ukraine sent delegates to neighboring Belarus for their first talks since the invasion began last week.
Russia's attacks have shut down shipping in Ukraine, a country with a massive agricultural industry, particularly corn and wheat. And economic sanctions against Russia have rattled stock markets, gas prices and more around the world.
Here's how the Ukraine crisis is affecting the US and global economies. For more, get the latest updates on the crisis, learn how to help those impacted by the conflict and find out where to get reliable updates online.
Gas and oil prices
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has caused global energy prices to spike, with crude oil rising Thursday above $105 a barrel for the first time since 2014. The price cooled down briefly but, by Monday morning, was back up to $105.07 a barrel in early trading.
At that time, the national average for a gallon of gas had reached $3.61, according to AAA, compared to $3.35 a gallon just a month ago and $2.71 one year ago. Many analysts believe the average could easily tick past $4 a gallon in March.
Russia is one of the world's largest producers of crude oil and natural gas, providing roughly 40% of the European Union's gas. Sanctions from the West could affect access to that supply, especially with Germany putting a halt to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that was intended to bring natural gas from Russia to the EU via the Baltic Sea.
Analysts predict that the price of gas in the US could soar because of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Getty Images
The White House said President Joe Biden will work to offset gas prices by releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a deep underground storage complex along the Gulf Coast holding an estimated 600 million gallons of crude.
However, some experts believe that won't have much effect on prices.
"We're already at the lowest level of reserves in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve since 2002, so we're already bumping up against constraints there," Isaac Boltansky, director of policy research for BTIG, told Yahoo Finance. "And, frankly, it hasn't had that much of an impact."
Continued inflation
"We could see a new burst of inflation," the American Enterprise Institute's Christopher Miller told The New York Times about the possibility of a sustained war in Ukraine.
Russia is the largest exporter of platinum and palladium, a metal used in mobile phones, automotive exhaust systems and fuel cells, and on Thursday prices for palladium hit a six-month high. Rising prices for essential metals could lead to increases for manufacturers and, ultimately, consumers.
In January, the Consumer Price Index, which measures consumer costs for goods and services, surged 7.5% over the same time last year, representing a 40-year high. If the invasion continues to disrupt supply chains and cause energy prices to spike, inflation could rise even further from already "very high levels," Goldman Sachs analysts said in a report Sunday, CNN reported.
"The inflation picture has worsened this winter as we expected, and how much it will improve later this year is now in question," economists for the Wall Street institution wrote.
Stock market volatility
As word of the Russian invasion broke Thursday morning, global stock markets took a hit: The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 830 points, while the Nasdaq slipped about 1.5% and the S&P 500 tumbled 2.5% at the start of trading.
After rallying on Friday, stocks prices tumbled again on Monday, the last day of February: The Dow fell about 489 points, or 1.43%, by 3 p.m. ET, while the S&P 500 dropped 54 points, or 1.23%, and Nasdaq dipped 0.76%, or about 106 points.
In Europe, on Friday, the German DAX, French CAC 40 and British FTSE also all marked strong rebounds from Thursday lows. But by Monday, the DAX had declined 106.21 points, or 0.73%.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index shed 0.24% Monday, while China's Shanghai Composite Index ticked up 11 points, or 0.32%.
Russia's main stock market, the Moex Index, suspended trading Thursday morning, according to The Wall Street Journal. On Friday, it bounced back, rising 20% to 2,470 points.
Trading on the Moex was suspended again on Monday, the same day the Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange temporarily halted trading of select Russian companies.
More cyberattacks
The US departments of Treasury and Homeland Security have both sounded the alarm over possible cyberattacks on US banks, hospitals, government offices and power grids in retaliation for sanctions against Moscow.
On Thursday morning local time, websites for the Ukrainian cabinet and foreign affairs and education ministries were all experiencing disruptions.
Herbert Lin, senior research scholar at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation, told The Atlantic's Rachel Gutman that the Russians have elevated cyberattacks to an "art form."
Though US banks have been heightening their defenses, Lin added, utilities in larger cities might be more at risk because they lack the extra funding for cybersecurity.
Lin discouraged a panicked response by everyday Americans but said having extra cash and a go bag might not be a bad idea. He underscored that those items should always be in place regardless.
Rising food prices
Food prices have already risen in the US and abroad, and analysts say the Russian invasion of Ukraine is only pushing them higher.
Ukraine is the world's largest exporter of sunflower seed oil, an industry that has come to a virtual standstill amid the ongoing attacks. That absence will undoubtedly drive up the price of soybean oil, palm oil and other alternatives, even as the world faces a shortage of vegetable oils.
Ukraine is also one of the top five corn exporters in the world, trading some 35.9 million metric tons in 2019 alone. An extended open conflict would likely see prices go up in Europe for corn and related goods, including cooking oil, corn syrup and livestock feed.
Soybean prices have also surged in the US in recent months, following an unusually poor crop in South America. If US farmers have to make up the difference in both corn and soybeans, which compete for land, prices for both crops will likely rise in the United States, as will the cost of packaged goods made with them.
Prices of wheat and corn could rise, with a ripple effect on packaged goods made with grain.
Aja Koska/Getty Images
Russia is the world's largest exporter of wheat, a crop that Ukraine exports as well. Together the two countries account for nearly a third of the global wheat trade.
The US doesn't rely on Russian wheat, but Robb MacKie, president of the American Bakers Association, told The Washington Post the grain markets "are all tied to each other."
If the conflict continues for more than a few weeks, American consumers will see rising prices for anything that has grain in it: flour, pasta, pizza, cereal, animal feed -- even beer.
Cryptocurrency Donations Pour Into Ukraine. This Week in Bitcoin and Crypto News
Cryptocurrency Donations Pour Into Ukraine. This Week in Bitcoin and Crypto News
Welcome to Nonfungible Tidbits. Our focus this week: Russia's war in Ukraine.
In addition to uprooting the lives of Ukrainians and throwing the international order into chaos, the Russian invasion has created a proving ground for some of the most ambitious -- and cynical -- use cases for cryptocurrency. On the one hand, crypto has become a tool for individuals and organizations to provide charitable support and donations to Ukrainians (as well as a new frontier for online scammers). But there are reports of Russian oligarchs using the technology to evade an increasingly aggressive bevy of financial sanctions. We'll also look at the sale of an NFT of the Ukrainian Flag to support Ukraine -- a project backed by a member of the Russian punk band PussyRiot.
Our other stories include scams trying to exploit donations to Ukraine, and how some cryptocurrency exchanges are handling the sanctions against Russia.
Cryptocurrency donations worth millions raised for Ukraine
More than $50 million in cryptocurrency has been raised for Ukraine in the time since Russia began military operations in the nation last week. Many of these donations have been made directly to the Ukraine government. Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's minister for digital transformation, tweeted wallet addresses for cryptocurrency donations, which was also tweeted by Ukraine's official twitter account. Over $47 million in cryptocurrency has been donated in this way, says Elliptic, a blockchain analysis firm.
Read CNET's full story on how Ukraine raised bver $55M in crypto to help resist Russia .
NFT backed by a member of Russian punk band PussyRiot raises $6.7 million for Ukraine
Aside from direct donations to the Ukrainian government, UkraineDAO, an online organization backed by a member of the Russian punk rock group PussyRiot, has raised millions by auctioning a Ukrainian flag sold as an NFT. Contributors were able to share ownership of the NFT, and 3,200 individual contributions took place in 72 hours for a total of $6.7 million in ether.
Scammers trying to exploit the war in Ukraine
If you want to donate to help Ukrainians, it's good to be aware of scams on social media that are using the war in Ukraine for illicit gain. These scams can take the form of fake charities and other organizations claiming to support Ukrainians. Especially when it comes to cryptocurrency, anyone who wants to donate should be careful, as cryptocurrency transactions are generally irreversible and difficult to track. If you're inclined to donate, check out CNET's list of charities and make sure you do your research first.
Read CNET's full story on how war in Ukraine brings out scammers trying to exploit donations.
Cryptocurrency exchanges don't want to bar users in Russia
While the White House hasn't yet commented on this directly, Bloomberg reports the Biden administration has asked cryptocurrency exchanges to prevent Russian people and organizations from using virtual currencies to circumvent Washington's sanctions. Bloomberg cites a White House official saying that American authorities are aggressively fighting any misuse of digital assets to avoid sanctions. Reuters reports that Binance, as well as US-based Coinbase and Kraken have agreed to screen users and block anyone targeted by sanctions, but the exchanges have stopped short of banning all Russian clients. Binance and Coinbase are the two largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world by market cap.
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As Russia's Cyberattacks on Ukraine Mount, the Risk of Impact in Other Countries Rises
As Russia's Cyberattacks on Ukraine Mount, the Risk of Impact in Other Countries Rises
This story is part of War in Ukraine, CNET's coverage of events there and of the wider effects on the world.
Russia could ramp up cyberattacks against Ukraine in an effort to destabilize its government and economy, security experts warn, an online assault that potentially might spread to other countries, including the US.
In recent weeks, the Russian government is believed to have initiated a handful of cyberattacks against Ukraine. Last month, hacker groups linked to Russia's intelligence services were blamed for a cyberattack that defaced dozens of Ukrainian government sites with a message warning the country to "be afraid and expect the worst."
Days later, Microsoft said it had identified dozens of computer networks at Ukrainian government agencies and organizations infected with destructive malware disguised as ransomware. On Feb. 16, the New York Police Department warned that Russian or pro-Russian criminal threat actors could launch cyberattacks on infrastructure, government entities, and local law enforcement according to CBS News.
Cybersecurity experts say the attacks could be a precursor to more serious cyberassaults on Ukraine, which Russia is determined to prevent from joining the NATO security alliance. Russia has amassed more than 100,000 troops on Ukraine's border, raising concerns Moscow may be preparing for an invasion of its neighbor. Russia annexed a portion of Ukraine in 2014.
The Russian troop buildup has prompted a flurry of diplomatic activity aimed at defusing tension. So far, those efforts haven't been successful. US intelligence officials said in early February that they had evidence that Russia was planning to create a video that will depict a fake attack on its troops that could be used as a pretext to invade Ukraine. Days later, President Joe Biden urged Americans in Ukraine to leave rather than risk getting caught in a potential invasion.
If Russia does invade, it will undoubtedly employ more cyberattacks as part of its military strategy, researchers say.
Adam Meyers, senior vice president of intelligence at CrowdStrike, says the current round of cyberattacks on Ukraine could indicate Russia is refining its cyber capabilities. Russia's game plan with online attacks, he says, is to create chaos and inflame tensions between the two countries.
"From what we've seen in Ukraine historically, it's almost been a laboratory of experimentation for Russia," Meyers said.
He pointed to the NotPetya attack, which crippled computers across Ukraine in 2017. The malware locked up files like criminal ransomware would. When experts took a closer look, however, they realized that its true purpose was to destroy data rather than make money.
NotPetya did what it was intended to do -- wreak havoc in Ukraine. It also spread to unintended targets far outside of that country, shutting down companies including FedEx, Merck, Cadbury and AP Moller-Maersk.
The most recent malware attacks against Ukrainian targets, dubbed WhisperGate, also appear to be bent on destruction rather than making money, Meyers said.
Of course, cyberattacks will only be part of a broader campaign if Russia chooses to invade Ukraine, with malware and online disinformation being among the many weapons the country could use.
Quentin Hodgson, a senior international and defense researcher at the Rand Corporation focusing on cybersecurity, said Russia's cyberoperations are unique because they aren't clearly separated from conventional military and intelligence operations as they are in other countries, including the US.
Still, Russia will likely lean on old-school military muscle to grab the attention of the Ukrainian people, he says
"At the end of the day, they're still massing troops on the border," Hodgson said. "That's sending a signal that cyber can't."
According to a memo obtained by CNN in January, the Department of Homeland Security warned operators of US critical infrastructure, along with state and local governments, that Russia could launch a cyberattack on US targets if it feels its long-term security is threatened by a NATO or US response to what's going on in Ukraine.
CrowdStrike's Meyers said he thinks it's unlikely Russia would intentionally provoke the US with a state-sponsored attack against an American target. But US companies with a presence in Ukraine, such as hotel chains, along with international aid groups and think tanks, might have something to worry about.
Russia also could just look the other way, as it has for many years, when the cybercrime gangs known to run rampant within its borders go after US targets.
While Russian government arrests of known ransomware gang members and other cybercriminals have grabbed headlines recently, President Vladimir Putin hasn't historically been much help in bringing cybercriminals that target the West to justice, says James Turgal, former executive assistant director for the FBI's information and technology branch.
Turgal, who now serves as vice president of cyber risk, strategy and board relations for Optiv Security, says last year's ransomware attacks against Colonial Pipeline and meat processor JBS USA should serve as wakeup calls to all companies, especially those that can be considered critical infrastructure. Both those attacks were attributed to cybercriminals in Russia.
The NotPetya attack was a perfect example of how cyberattacks can affect countries far away from the conflict, he said.
"Whether it's intentional or not, whether you're a particular target or just collateral damage," Turgal said, "the threat is real."
