Putin Launches His Invasion of Ukraine - Biden imposes sanctions in response to what the U.S. calls the “greatest threat to Europe” since the Second World War. - link
A Sleepless Night of Russian Air Strikes in Ukraine - The attacks confirmed that a real war is coming, one that will result in a horrific and bloody toll. - link
Inside the American Medical Association’s Fight Over Single-Payer Health Care - A long-standing battle highlights a profession’s political transformation. - link
Sunday Reading: The Proliferation of the Podcast - From the magazine’s archive: a selection of pieces on a revolution in media. - link
J. Kenji López-Alt Says You’re Cooking Just Fine - Ahead of the release of his new book, “The Wok,” the food columnist reflects on kitchen-bro culture, who gets credit for recipes, and how not to be an asshole. - link
From Vox
What the Russian invasion of Ukraine could mean for global hunger -
Empty bread shelves in a supermarket on February 25, 2022 in Kyiv, Ukraine. | Getty Images
Extended conflict in Ukraine could raise food prices around the world — and hit the already hungry hardest.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has destabilized European security and the global energy market — and now food could be next.
Dozens of countries across the Middle East, South Asia, and North Africa that already suffer from food insecurity rely on Russia’s and Ukraine’s bountiful supplies of wheat, corn, and vegetable oil, and experts say the conflict could send food prices rising and increase global hunger.
“It’s yet one more instance of conflict surfacing in the world at a time when the world just can’t sustain it,” said Steve Taravella, senior spokesperson at the World Food Programme (WFP) of the United Nations. “Hunger rates are rising significantly globally, and one of the largest drivers of hunger is manmade conflict.”
Even before the conflict, global food prices were already at their highest point since 2011, thanks to volatile climate conditions like droughts and overly heavy rainfall, as well as the broader supply chain disruptions created by Covid-19. With 855 million peoplealready suffering from food insecurity, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine comes at an already challenging moment for global hunger. The disruption in food production also puts Ukrainians — at least 100,000 of whom have already been displaced — at higher risk of hunger, underscoring the strong link between conflict and food insecurity.
What happens next depends on the progress of the war and the financial sanctions being put into place against Russia, and experts warn against predicting how exactly the conflict will affect global food prices and supplies. But given Russia’s and Ukraine’s enormous roles in providing food for the world — particularly wheat — instability in the region’s food production and exports could have consequences that will go well beyond the theater of war.
When farms become a battleground
To get a sense of just how critical Ukraine and Russia’s farmers are to the rest of the world, you have to understand just how much they export.
Ukraine and Russia are top exporters of major grains and vegetable oils, according to a Vox analysis of the food export data from International Trade Centre in 2020. The two countries account for the majority of the world’s sunflower-seed oil exports, while Russia is the world’s largest wheat exporter. Combined, Ukraine and Russia were responsible for about 26% of global wheat exports in 2020.
Wheat and corn prices were on the rise before the war. On February 24, when Russia invaded Ukraine, Chicago wheat futures spiked to their highest level since the beginning of the year. (They’ve since fallen — a partial sign of how much volatility war can inject into global food markets.)
Ukraine and Russia are important food suppliers for low- and middle-income countries in which tens of millions of people are already food insecure. Prices are further rising due to the conflict, and more increases as the war continues could cause greater food instability and hunger — not only in Ukraine, but around the world.
Egypt and Turkey rely on combined Russian/Ukrainian imports for 70% of their wheat supply, while 95% of Ukraine’s wheat exports went to Asia (including the Middle East) or Africa in 2020. In the Middle East and North Africa region, Yemen, Libya, and Lebanon rely on Ukraine for a high percentage of their wheat supply, while Egypt imports more than half its wheat from either Russia or Ukraine. Countries in South and Southeast Asia, such as Indonesia and Bangladesh, are also heavily reliant on wheat from the region. The largest importers of Ukrainian wheat in 2020 were Egypt, Turkey, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Pakistan, while Russia is the source of a large percentage of wheat for many sub-Saharan African countries, including Nigeria and Sudan.
Disruptions in these exports will likely only increase the food insecurity already experienced by these countries. According to the WFP, nearly half of Yemen’s 30 million people get insufficient food. In Bangladesh, 29 million people get insufficient food, and over 30% of children under 5 are chronically malnourished. Indonesia and Egypt, respectively, are home to 26 million and 10 million people with insufficient food consumption, while over a quarter of Nigeria’s population — 55 million people, more than the entire population of Ukraine — have insufficient food consumption.
According to Alex Smith, a food and agriculture analyst at the tech- focused environmental think tank the Breakthrough Institute, rising wheat prices in countries with already high levels of food insecurity could be particularly devastating. In Yemen, where a long-running conflict was already worsening food insecurity, this is an “added bad element to an already bad scenario,” Smith said. In Libya, a supply disruption and higher prices would add to the existing food insecurity by limiting “the already food insecure people from getting the small amount of food they already are able to get and also puts more people into the category of food insecure,” he added.
Lebanon, whose wheat silos were destroyed two years ago in the Beirut port explosion and which relies on Ukraine for more than half its wheat, is already seeking alternative import deals, but hunger may increase anywhere that a government can’t afford to substitute wheat they were previously getting from Ukraine.
Russia is also the largest fertilizer exporter in the world, and pre-conflict fertilizer price spikes, according to Shirley Mustafa, an economist at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), have already been contributing to the rise in food prices. Further disruption to fertilizer production or exports would damage agriculture in Europe, potentially contributing to even higher food prices around the world.
Ukrainian agriculture is more likely to be affected by direct conflict than Russia as farmers are pushed off their farms, while port closures are already limiting exports. “In two-three weeks farmers could start the planting season in Ukraine,” Iurii Mykhailov, a Kyiv resident, reported in Successful Farming. “But the Russian invasion changed everything. Because of military hostilities there are going to be big shortages of fuel and fertilizers. There certainly will be a lack of loans. There even may be a shortage of machine operators because of military losses, etc.”
Russian farmers are unlikely to be directly affected by conflict, said Smith, but the country’s exports could be affected in other ways.
“The [region’s] major exporters — Ukraine, Russia, and Romania — ship grain from ports in the Black Sea, which could face disruptions from any possible military operation,” another WFP spokesperson told me on February 24; since then, Ukraine has already shut down ports and ships have been damaged by attacks.
“I think there’s less risk that sanctions will stop wheat exports from Russia,” Smith told me. “The real concern to me is actually whether Russia will choose to stop exports themselves in the case of sanctions or the conflict driving economic hardship for the Russian population, in which case Putin could just say we’re going to curb exports down as much as we can to keep prices of food low in Russia.”
This would not be unprecedented — following the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, Russia temporarily halted grain exports for a few months, and the country stopped exports for almost a year in 2010 after a series of droughts and wildfires. That decision raised prices around the world — and not only among Russian grain importers.
How conflict raises the price of bread
Global food prices have been almost continuously rising since June 2020, said Mustafa, who works on the FAO Food Price Index, which measures monthly changes in international food prices of a basket of commodities. The FAO Food Price Index is now the highest it’s been since 2011.
The rise has been due to a multitude of factors, including the weather anomalies created by the La Niña climate pattern, which has led to too little water in places like South America and too much in Southeast Asia. In the wheat sector, the US and Canada, two vital producers, were also hit by drought. Covid-19 has also continued to be a factor on both the supply and demand sides.
Conflict has historically been a driver of food price hikes. Researchers reported in a study that looked at 113 African markets between 1997-2010 that “feedback exists between food price and political violence: higher food prices increase conflict within markets, and conflict increases food price.” Other researchers have shown that the rise in food insecurity beginning in 2014 across sub-Saharan Africa was attributable to violent conflict, which increased in relative importance compared to drought from 2009-2018. A feedback cycle exists as well — food price increases driven by war contribute to further conflict even in places that weren’t involved in the original war themselves.
Mustafa told me the effects of disruption depend on where the crop supply is concentrated — for example, if there’s a high level of export concentration, other countries are not able to compensate for the disruption, but if there are lots of exporters, other countries could make up the difference. “It also depends on the type of disruption you see — the length of it, the duration. If it’s relatively short-term, markets could potentially adapt rather quickly. If it’s a little bit of a longer-term disruption concentrated in just a few players, then you could potentially also see the disruption stimulate production elsewhere to compensate.”
A hungrier world is a less stable one
In a worst-case scenario, the disruption to commodity prices could also contribute to conflict beyond Ukraine’s borders in countries that heavily rely on its producers for grain. Not only does conflict cause higher food prices; higher food prices can contribute to conflict even in areas of the world that are not directly affected by the original event.
Researchers Jasmien de Winne and Gert Peersman found that increases in food prices due to harvest shocks outside of African countries heighten violence within them.
“Although most violence does probably not occur because of higher food prices, but are caused by broader economic conditions or political grievances,” the authors write, “these income shocks can be a trigger to engage in violent events.”
Mustafa said that while the FAO was monitoring the situation, the agency could not give predictions on the specific crisis given the uncertainties in the situation. Taravella similarly said the WFP was in “watch and see mode,” and is ready to provide emergency assistance as soon as feasible.
The reality is that hunger almost always follows conflict. And when that conflict occurs in a major agricultural exporter like Ukraine and involves another like Russia, the victims could ultimately go far beyond the two countries at war.
Ukraine’s resistance is built on the backs of volunteers -
Ukrainian volunteers, one holding an AK-47 rifle, protect a main road leading into Kyiv, Ukraine, on February 25, 2022. | Daniel Leal/AFP via Getty Images
As Russia advances, Ukrainian civilians are picking up weapons and learning to make Molotov cocktails.
As Ukraine continues to wage a surprisingly successful resistance against Russia, Ukrainian civilians and volunteers are playing a crucial role in defending their county— one for which they have been preparing for the past eight years, since the last major Russian incursion in 2014.
Many civilians are taking up arms themselves, and the Ukrainian government has begun sharing bomb-making instructions and encouraging civilians to take down street signs “in order to confuse and disorient the enemy.”
It’s all part of a country-wide mobilization built on the back of the volunteer movement that fought against Russian forces in Crimea starting in 2014. Many of those same volunteers — and thousands more like them — are now stepping up to defend against a full-scale Russian invasion.
The readiness of Ukraine’s professional military has significantly improved since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, but “Ukraine is not a rich country,” Andrew D’Anieri, the assistant director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, points out. Civilian support, he said, is necessary for the military’s success.
“[Ukraine has] made great strides around better equipping its military, modernizing, but it’s pretty obvious they still do need this kind of crowdfunded support for things like night-vision goggles for soldiers and other kinds of high-tech equipment,” D’Anieri said. “I think it’s a really unique and kind of impressive aspect of how Ukraine has responded to eight years of war.”
That preparedness is on full display now: Many Ukrainians have volunteered to serve with the armed forces, and the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces (TDF) — an organized, civilian guard that fights to protect individual cities — are integrating as a formal part of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. And while the assistance of Western nations, in terms of providing weapons and training, has been critical, there are also civil society organizations — like Phoenix Wings and Come Back Alive — which were organized in the 2014 conflict and have mobilized into service now, collecting and delivering supplies like thermal imagers, body armor, and first aid kits to fighters.
Volunteers help support current military infrastructure
The current Ukrainian response only highlights how much the country has changed in eight years,former Ukrainian economy minister Tymofiy Mylovanov told Vox on Thursday.
In 2014, “a lot of people defected[to Russia], the leadership defected, we didn’t have [a] military,” he said. Now, Ukraine has a professionalized military — many of whom previously served in the volunteer forces fighting in eastern Ukraine in 2014. “A lot of people who were volunteers in the frontlines, then, they’ve become battle commanders by now,” he said. “So they are the institutionalized military now.”
Volunteers are also heading to the TDF, the urban battalions trained to defend Ukrainian cities. The Ukrainian government opted to make the TDF part of the Armed Forces starting this year, and according to Kyiv Independent reporter Illia Ponomarenko, the Ukrainian defense ministry expects 11,000 volunteers to sign up this year.
TDF units are supposed to “ensure security and order behind the frontline, assist the Armed Forces in combat operations, guard key infrastructure facilities, and render assistance in combating hostile subversive activities in their local areas,” Ponomarenko reports.
TDF units are made up of military veterans and ordinary civilians — adults of all ages and backgrounds, men and women — who keep their day jobs and train for combat on weekends or otherwise periodically. Leaders, including former television host and now chairman of Ukraine’s Reservists Council Anton Goloborodko, have been building up the force and training civilian recruits to support the armed forces. Although there have been several attempts over the years to formalize the forces, that finally happened when Ukraine’s National Resistance act took effect earlier this year.
Less formal methods of civilian resistance are spreading, too
Now that the invasion has started in earnest, much less formal methods to stave off Russian forces, particularly in urban areas, have been circulating, too — including instructions for homemade weapons.
On Saturday, the Ukrainian-language Twitter account of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine tweeted instructions for making Molotov cocktails — bombs made of glass bottles, a flammable substance, and a cloth fuse, which is lit before the improvised device is thrown at a target.
Олексій Данілов:
Коктейль «Спротив» Поки наші партнери завантажуть літаки, вагони і автівки зброєю для України - готуємо для російської сволоти наш фірмовий «братній» подарунок. Озброюємося, готуємось, нищимо окупантів! #stoprussiapic.twitter.com/FJ3hmaedpO
In English, the tweet reads, “Cocktail ‘Resistance’ While our partners load planes and cars with weapons for Ukraine, we are preparing our branded ‘brotherly’ gift for the Russian bastard. We are arming ourselves, preparing, destroying the occupiers!”
On Friday, Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar also encouraged Ukrainians to make the homemade incendiary devices in a Facebook post, the Washington Post reports. Following that post, in which Maliar wrote that “it is important that everyone resists,” Google searches for “how to make a Molotov cocktail” jumped in Ukraine, the Post reports.
The Ukrainian government is also handing out weapons of its own, with about 18,000 distributed in Kyiv alone thus far, according to the Post, and 70,000 AK-47 rifles distributed on Thursday alone. “When I heard the explosions I decided that I am ready” to fight advancing Russian forces, Olena Sokolan, a civilian who received a rifle, told the New York Times. “I am adult woman, I am healthy and it’s my responsibility.”
Volunteer fighters armed with assault rifles patrolled central Kyiv on Friday, ready to defend their country.
A thriving civil society, too, in which solidarity, activism, and charity are encouraged, is part of the war effort, and although the bulk of military assistance is coming from outside sources, those organizations are critical to equipping and supporting the military.
“There are all kinds of charitable foundations and funds. So that kind of ecosystem and infrastructure is there,” Mylovanov said.
The Ukrainian military has received training from NATO members, including the US, and for the past few months has also received weapons like Stinger missiles and Javelin anti-tank weaponry from NATO member states — primarily from US-supported transfers by Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania.
More weapons and more defense funding have poured in since the start of the invasion on February 24, with even Germany — a holdout both on equipping Ukraine and imposing forceful sanctions to Russia — announcing Saturday that it would send 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 Stinger missiles to Ukraine, in addition to authorizing the Netherlands to deliver 400 rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
Also on Saturday, the US announced$350 million in new military aid to Ukraine, <a href="https://twitter.com/StateDeptSpox/status/1497566559358885889?s=20&t=75kV4_4nYy2YDTfTRuHyig">including</a> “anti-tank and air defense capabilities.”</p> <p id="24y2Mh">In addition to direct aid from Ukraine’s western allies, both <a href="https://twitter.com/BackAndAlive/status/1497373442215133184">Come Back Alive</a> and Phoenix Wings have received crowdfunded<strong> </strong>donations in the lead-up to the Russian invasion, providing weapons and materiel to those on the frontlines. </p> <div id="DRMTRg"> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"> <p dir="ltr" lang="uk">500 тис.$
200 тепловізорів та теплоприцілів Завдяки вашій допомозі, фонд закупив і передав для захисту Києва і північного напрямку оборони рекордну кількість «тепла» Дякуємо, люди! Віримо у ЗСУ! pic.twitter.com/IMqBL89rdt
Despite the obvious buy-in from the Ukrainian public and a volunteer infrastructure providing strong support to the military, it’s important to keep perspective. Russia’s military is far larger and far more technologically advanced than Ukraine’s, which has fewer than 200,000 active-duty members to Russia’s 900,000. (Not all of which are currently deployed — by some estimates, Russia has about 200,000 troops in and around Ukraine, though numbers vary.) Russia has been building its armed forces for decades, and has far superior air and sea power; Ukraine’s professional army, meanwhile, had to be rebuilt from 2014.
Still, Russia has suffered serious setbacks in the invasion, and has thus far been unable to take Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, three days after launching an all-out invasion. A majority of the Russian forces that had amassed on the border are currently fighting in the country — about 150,000 troops — but in Kyiv and other cities, Ukrainian forces have been able to hold them off.
The Russian troops are “increasingly frustrated by their lack of momentum,” one Pentagon official told the New York Times Saturday, stymied by the Ukrainian resistance and other logistical issues.
And with new economic and tactical support from NATO member states — plus the mass mobilization of its people — Ukraine may be able to hold on much longer than Russia could have imagined.
Big Tech’s Russia problem -
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin at a meeting with business leaders in Moscow. | Alexei Nikolsky/TASS/via Getty Images
Social media companies are in a standoff with Russia on censorship — and there’s no easy solution.
On Friday morning, as Russia continued its unprovoked attacks on Ukraine, its government also launched an assault on Facebook, announcing that it would begin “partially restricting” access to the social media network in Russia, where there are an estimated 70 million users, because Facebook allegedly restricted pro-Russian news sites. Later that day, Facebook pushed back, writing that “Russian authorities ordered us to stop the independent fact-checking and labeling of content” and that the company would continue to support ordinary Russians “using our app to express themselves and organize for action.” On Saturday morning, Twitter also confirmed that its app is being restricted for some people in Russia.
Now Facebook and Twitter find themselves in a predicament that’s become increasingly common for social media networks in certain countries: They’re facing the demands of an authoritarian government that’s pressuring them to censor content it doesn’t like, and to allow propaganda to run unchecked. If they don’t follow the Kremlin’s orders, they risk being booted off of the local internet entirely. In some cases, refusing could put some of their local employees at risk — in the past, the Russian government has threatened to arrest tech employees based in the country when disputing with their employers. These situations threaten to fracture the way people communicate across the world.
There’s no simple solution to such a standoff. For the people living under these governments, losing access to major social media platforms can cut off a key way they communicate and resist their own government and its propaganda. In Russia, for example, residents who oppose the invasion of Ukraine have been using Facebook, Twitter, and other major social media platforms to distribute news about the attacks and to coordinate anti-war actions and protests.
“I think we’re heading toward an inevitable break in the global internet,” said Emerson Brooking, a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank who studies social media.
Social media in the 2000s was developed under a vision of a shared, open, and global internet, which required major tech platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to largely follow the political speech rules of whatever countries they operated in. That meant that tech companies — particularly in places outside the US and Europe — sometimes took down politically controversial speech at the behest of government orders.
Last September, Apple and Google deleted a voting app created by supporters of Aleksei A. Navalny, the imprisoned Russian opposition leader, after the Russian government reportedly threatened to arrest the tech giants’ employees if the companies left the app up in their stores.
“In every case it’s an implicit negotiation between companies and an authoritarian government,” Brooking told Recode.
But sometimes that implicit negotiation can break down, as it did last March when the Kremlin intentionally slowed down Twitter in Russia after warning social media platforms to take down content supporting Navalny after his arrest. We’re seeing these breakdowns happen more often.
A truly open, global internet never existed in China, where all US social media companies are officially banned under its “Great Firewall” that controls what citizens can access online. It no longer fully exists in India, where Twitter and Facebook have taken down content at the demand of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, which began censoring political dissenters with increasing vigor during the pandemic. And now, it may not exist much longer in Russia, at a critical moment in global history.
What happens next in Russia may continue to splinter the open internet.
Why Russian restrictions on social media could stifle the anti-war movement
Some politicians and online speech experts say it’s important for mainstream social media platforms to try to continue operating in Russia, while still moderating blatant misinformation and restricting propaganda pushed by Russian state media. That’s because social media platforms are giving Russians who disagree with the Kremlin a way to make their voices heard, and they’re offering Russians a way to get information that Russia’s state-run media organizations won’t share.
“It’s always a balance to make sure that Russians who want the real story — or at least the story as we see it — still have access” to social media platforms, European Commission Vice President Margrethe Vestager told Recode on Friday. “But propaganda shouldn’t have a place.”
In the next few days, it’s expected that Russia’s government will continue circulating false and misleading claims to support the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
Twitter, Google, and Facebook have all said they are increasing their efforts to remove videos that violate their policies. Twitter has temporarily paused its ads and some recommendations in Russia and Ukraine to prevent misinformation from spreading. Facebook announced on Friday it was prohibiting Russian state media from running ads. And YouTube told Recode that it’s evaluating whether new economic sanctions on Russia may impact what content is allowed on the platform. The video platform has faced criticism for allowing advertisers to run ads against Russian-backed state media outlet RT as it livestreams bombings in Ukraine.
It’s unclear if Russia will escalate its partial restrictions in response to Facebook’s continued refusal to stop moderating Russian media, or what exactly it will do to Twitter and YouTube.
Some internet security experts, social media researchers, and activists have advocated for US-based social media companies to cut off Russian state-funded media or state-run accounts, since that could weaken the Russian government’s ability to distribute propaganda.
“During the Cold War, we would never let Pravda publish in the United States,” said Jim Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Why are we letting the Russians do this?”
But for all the previously mentioned reasons, if tech companies further limit Russian state media and official government accounts, that could risk further retaliation by the Russian government.
All of this underscores how social media is a key battleground for global powers. It should come as no surprise that the Kremlin — which has proven itself masterful at interfering with US politics using social media disinformation campaigns during the 2016 elections — is once again trying to manipulate the online public conversation in its favor.
From The Hindu: Sports
Triumphant Sakshi, Divya share lead -
Five on top of the leaderboard - Lalith, Abhijeet, Koustav join Arjun, Gukesh
Fine win puts Bengal on top of the group - Akash and Shahbaz combine well to dismiss Hyderabad for 166; Tilak’s defiant knock in vain
Czechs join Poland, Sweden in refusing to play Russia in 2022 World Cup qualifiers - The Czech Republic is a potential opponent of Russia in next month’s playoffs
After 24 years, Australia's cricket team is back in Pakistan - Thousands of security personnel are expected to be deployed during the Australians' stay and the Pakistan cricket board expects fully vaccinated capacity crowds for the Tests and limited-overs series
From The Hindu: National News
Minister tells A.P. power utilities to ensure nine-hour supply to farm sector in rabi season - Projected cumulative energy demand from March to May has been put at 20,143 MU
Prime Minister lauds Visakhapatnam citizens for promoting cloth bags - ‘People are conducting a number of awareness campaigns against single-use plastic’
First batch of students from Ukraine arrive in Kochi - 19 students arrive, many still stranded in Ukraine
Milan-2022: increased cooperation will play a key role in protecting sovereignty of nations, say chiefs of different navies - The Indian Ocean Region opens up multiple opportunities and challenges: Admiral Hari Kumar
Odisha STF seizes two elephant tusks - During the search, two tusks weighing 5.662 kg and incriminating material were recovered
From BBC: Europe
Ukraine invasion: Fighting breaks out in Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv - Local officials say the city, home to 1.4 million, is now rid of Russian troops after fierce clashes.
West to cut some Russian banks off from Swift - The EU, US and allies will block a number of Russian banks from the main global payment system, Swift.
Ukraine conflict: Children on their own, parents stay behind - Mothers and grandmothers lead their children into the unknown as men aged 18 - 60 must stay behind.
Ukraine conflict: Terrified but coping, residents of Dnipro jolt into action - In Dnipro, teachers prepare Molotov cocktails while volunteers coordinate a huge aid stockpile.
Ukraine conflict: Thousands of people try to force their way onto a train to Poland - Fergal Keane described the scenes from a packed platform, as a mother and child are caught in the crush.
From Ars Technica
Australia’s standoff against Google and Facebook worked—sort of - Australia forced tech giants to pay for content; other countries now expect the same. - link
The weekend’s best deals: Bose QuietComfort 45, Xbox storage cards, and more - Dealmaster also has LG OLED TVs, the Nintendo Switch, Lenovo laptops, and SSDs. - link
Russia pulls out of European spaceport, abandoning a planned launch - “We will take all relevant decisions in response to this decision.” - link
How the games industry shake-up could play out - Many devs are leaving their studios to found new ones as indie players are snapped up. - link
Do birds have language? It depends on how you define it - Scientists find some parallels with human speech in cheeps and trills of birdsong. - link
From Jokes Subreddit
A Finnish joke from the Cold War -
During the Cold War, a foreign journalist asked a Finnish general what Finland would do if the USSR and NATO would fight a war in Finland.
He replied “first we would beat out NATO, and then the Soviets”.
The journalist was surprised about the order and asked why.
“We are civilized people. Work comes before pleasure”, the general replied.
A Russian truckdriver stops at the back of a long queue on the motorway. He sees a policeman walking down the line of stopped cars to briefly talk to the drivers. As the policeman approaches the truck, the truckdriver rolls down his window and asks:
Driver: What’s going on?
Policeman: A terrorist is holding Putin hostage in a car. He’s demanding 10 mill rubles, or he’ll douse Putin in petrol and set him on fire. So we’re asking drivers for donations.
Driver: Oh, ok. How much do people donate on average.
President Putin and his driver were on their way to Kyiv… -
President Putin and his driver were on their way to Kyiv in a car when all of a sudden they hit a pig near a farmhouse, killing it instantly.
Putin told his driver to go up to the farmhouse and explain to the owners what had happened. About one hour later Putin sees his driver staggering back to the car with a bottle of Horilka (Ukrainian vodka) in one hand, a cigar in the other and his clothes all ripped and torn.
“What happened to you?” asked Putin.
"Well, the farmer gave me the Horilka, his wife gave me a box of cigars and their 19-year-old and 21-year-old daughters made mad passionate love to me simultaneously.
“My God, what did you tell them?” asks Putin.
The driver replies, “I’m president Putin’s driver, and I just killed the pig.”
