Russia’s attacks on Ukraine will impact foreign direct investment in the country, according to  Investment Monitor. In 2020, Ukraine was the 10th-largest recipient of foreign direct investment (FDI) in central and eastern Europe, and the 56th recipient globally.

The U.S., U.K. and Germany are key investors in the country, and more than half of those investments are in software, renewable energy and logistics. FDI to Ukraine took a hit in 2014 when Russia invaded Crimea and slowly trended upward until the COVID-19 crisis.

After the drop in investment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, global FDI was worth an estimated $852 billion in the first half of 2021. But the recovery has been uneven. Most foreign investment to Ukraine has gone to its western regions, with German automotive companies being the biggest investors.

Russia invaded Ukraine on Thursday, and the assault is likely to drive up already high prices on commodities like wheat, natural gas and oil, and metals. 

World food prices are already at their highest level in 10 years, especially for wheat and dairy, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Russia and Ukraine produce 29% of the world’s wheat supply, 19% of corn and 80% of sunflower oil exports. Much of Russia’s wheat exports (70%) go to the Middle East and Africa, according to 2021 Refinitiv shipping data. 

Oil prices will also be affected, as Russia is the third-largest oil producer in the world and the second-largest crude oil exporter after Saudi Arabia. Russia supplies between 40-50% of Europe’s natural gas imports. When tensions between Russia and Ukraine escalated earlier this week, Germany called for a halt on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which would carry natural gas to Europe through Ukraine. 

Ukraine is also a significant producer of uranium, titanium, iron ore, steel and ammonia. And Russia is a significant producer of nickel, copper, palladium and platinum, contributing to 43% of the world’s palladium and around 6% of aluminum supplies. Sanctions against Russia may rattle the aluminum market, as they did in 2018, and the conflict could generally tighten the metals market significantly.

Cost shown is dollars per kilogram of payload.

Launching a spacecraft is 10 times less costly than it was a decade ago, according to Bruno Venditti and data from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He used measurements of the per-kilogram cost of the spacecraft and analyzed global launches, including ones dating back to 1960. 

While it still takes anywhere from half a million to $50 million dollars per seat for human space travel, the cost of sending “cargo spacecraft” is coming down. There are more players in the market now, with private companies like SpaceX sending both crews and cargo into space — and doing so in innovative ways: “SpaceX rocket boosters usually return to Earth in good enough condition that they’re able to be refurbished,” says Vinditti, “which saves money and helps the company undercut competitors’ prices.”

This is significant, given growing concern over the amount of space debris that is both orbiting and falling to Earth, often into what NASA refers to as the “spacecraft cemetery.”  

China emits 70% of the emissions that come from state-owned enterprises across the world, according to a report from Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy, followed by Russia and India, both of which emit 4% of total emissions annually.  

A combination of factors contribute to China’s dominance in carbon dioxide emissions: “China alone may have up to 150,000 SOEs,” the report’s authors say, along with the most high-emitting SOEs compared to other countries. Coal-fired electricity also contributes to a large portion of China’s SOE emissions. 

On an industry level, 85% (6.4 GtCO2e) of total SOE emissions come from the power sector, followed by oil and gas at 10%. But the countries in the study are also signatories to the Paris Agreement, the report’s authors also note, and many have committed to net-zero-emission economies by 2050. BRINK has explored various solutions to carbon dioxide emissions and alternative sources of energy in its coverage of carbon sequestration, battery technology, hydrogen power and wind energy.

Fifty-five percent of American teachers say they are thinking of quitting early because of the pandemic, a new survey from the National Education Association finds. That’s nearly double the number of educators who said they were thinking of retiring early in July 2020. The January poll found that of the 3,621 teachers who responded to the survey, 90% say that feeling burned out is a serious problem. 

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, approximately 600,000 educators have left the profession since January 2020. A disproportionate percentage of those who are leaving — 62% of Black and 59% of Hispanic/Latino educators — are already underrepresented in the teaching profession. 

Almost all of the educators surveyed (94%) say their school is open for in-person learning, and teachers whose schools aren’t open for in-person teaching say that staff shortages, rather than concerns over COVID-19, are the reason for closure. Those who have stayed in the profession continue to take on additional duties for sick colleagues during the pandemic and are handling unprecedented levels of stress.