German Chancellor visits the White House, Team USA stacks silver: 5 Things podcast
On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: A week of diplomacy?
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz heads to the White House today as tensions continue in Eastern Europe. Plus, money and tech reporter Michelle Shen talks about a bad week for Facebook, Team USA stacks up silver medals in Beijing, Ahmaud Arbery's murderers face a federal hate crimes trial and there are questions after a Navy SEAL candidate died following 'Hell Week' training.
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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson and this is 5 Things you need to know Monday, the 7th of February 2022. Today, the Germans' role in Russia-Ukraine tensions, plus are people leaving Facebook, and more.
Here are some of the top headlines:
- Researchers at MIT have discovered a new material that's as strong as steel, but as light as plastic. The material was several times stronger than bulletproof glass.
- The Coast Guard rescued 18 people from an ice sheet that broke away in Lake Erie over the weekend. No one required medical attention.
- And New Orleans Saints running back Alvin Kamara was arrested and charged with battery last night in Las Vegas. A victim reported being injured during an altercation at a nightclub after Kamara finished playing in the Pro Bowl football game.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz heads to the White House today as tensions remain high in Eastern Europe with Russian troops around Ukraine's border. The meeting comes after a report that Russia has assembled at least 70% of the military firepower it plans to have in place to give President Vladimir Putin, the option of launching a full scale invasion. For his part, Scholz is facing criticism over Germany's economic ties with Russia, particularly a gas pipeline connecting the two countries. Jeff Rathke from the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies has more on what to expect in the German chancellor's visit.
Jeff Rathke:
How to deter Russia is at the essence of the Biden-Schultz meeting because averting war and preserving the European political order is crucial for everything else that Germany wants to achieve in the world, and frankly, also for the Biden Administration. Germany has an extremely complex relationship with Russia, not only because of Russia's role as the leading supplier of energy to the German economy, but for historical reasons, there is still an overwhelming consciousness in Germany of the destruction and human toll of the Second World War on the Soviet Union.
But more narrowly for Chancellor Scholz's Social Democratic Party, Russia is a very sensitive issue. On the one hand, there is the memory of Social Democratic chancellors like Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt. So that is seen as kind of a high watermark as the glory days of Social Democratic foreign policy initiatives. And so there is a nostalgic and sentimental attachment to the idea of diplomacy with the Soviet Union, or now with Russia. The Democratic Party's most prominent former leader, ex-chancellor Gerhard Schröder, is on the board of two Russian energy companies. And there was a news item just today that he's going to be nominated to the Board of Gazprom.
Taylor Wilson:
Russia is concentrating about 100,000 troops along Ukraine's border. The country is urging the US and its allies to prevent Ukraine or other former Soviet countries from joining NATO, something Washington and NATO have rejected.
Also today, French President Emmanuel Macron will travel to Moscow for a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Daily active Facebook users have declined for the first time in the social media company's history. That's according to an earnings report from parent company Meta Platforms. Money and Tech Reporter Michelle Shen has some insight on why users are leaving.
Michelle Shen:
What we observed is that Facebook, or its parent company Meta, its stock dropped really dramatically. And for the first time in Facebook's history, the number of daily active users went down slightly from the third to the fourth quarter. And we were kind of like, let's look into why users are leaving Facebook, especially younger users. And so I interviewed a lot of people who were in younger generations, like Gen Z or early Millennials. And a lot of what people said was that Facebook became less of a place for social connection and more of a place that was really formal. It was full of ads or memes, and it just wasn't really helping them see what was going on in their friends' lives anymore. Plus, a lot of the people on Facebook are older now and you might have your grandma or your aunt on there, and you might not want to post things that they would know about or see. And so a bunch of them have been flocking to other sites like Instagram or TikTok to be able to socially express themselves or to find entertainment.
I think Facebook has made it a very clear priority. In one of the earnings calls that Zuckerberg was in, he said, "We've been focusing too long on trying to get as many people on Facebook as possible and casting a wide net when we really should be focusing on our younger users." And that's where the most potential, I guess, to make money lies. And so they have been doing a lot on platforms like Instagram to encourage creator-based content, similar to TikTok. So like getting content creators to make things that are entertaining to users. And on top of that, they're doing a lot of stuff with the metaverse to try to create these like virtual environments that younger people might enjoy. I would say right now, those efforts by Facebook are not doing super well and they're continuing to lose young users, but they have been realigning and Zuckerberg has said the process may take years before that materializes.
Taylor Wilson:
Meanwhile, shares of the social media giant dropped more than 26% on Thursday. That was the first day of trading after Meta reported a decline in profit and users during the last three months of 2021. According to the Wall Street Journal, the loss is the largest one day decline in US history. But what exactly caused the stock to drop?
Michelle Shen:
I dug into the earnings report quite a lot, and I was trying to figure out what exactly happened. And I think the key metric was that the daily active users for Facebook dropped from like 1.93 billion to 1.929 billion. So it's actually a very small amount. And I think investors might have overreacted a little bit, but it is the first time in Facebook's history that the number of daily active users has dropped. It's always been rising.
But if you also look at Facebook's overall portfolio and family of apps, which includes Instagram and WhatsApp, it did grow modestly. And so even though people are dropping off of Facebook, the number of users is still increasing for overall the company Meta, which includes all of these different companies under its umbrella.
Something that clued me into this story, also from the earnings report, is that the monthly active users for Facebook still went up. It's just the daily active users that went down. And that kind of indicated to me that it's not like certain young people are deleting Facebook or getting off of it entirely. They still find some sort of utility from Facebook. It's just that their role with Facebook has evolved over time to become much more formal, to become much more of a way of presenting themselves professionally, as opposed to a day-to-day way of updating friends about their lives. And I think that's what really stood out to me as well.
Taylor Wilson:
For more, head to the Tech section on USATODAY.com.
Team USA has earned its first figure skating medal at the Beijing Winter Olympics. The squad took home silver in the team competition after Madison Chock and Evan Bates turned in a season best score in the ice dancing free program. Star Nathan Chen was also part of that team, landing multiple quads and a triple axle. He's set to take the ice again today for the men's short program.
Also today, a hyped-up matchup between the US and Canada in women's hockey. The US will try to carry over momentum from an 8-0 win over Sweden yesterday. And Canada's coming off a six one victory over the Russian Olympic Committee.
Meanwhile, there's less pleasant news in skiing after US athlete Nina O'Brien had to be stretchered off the giant slalom course with an apparent severe leg injury. And defending champion Mikaela Shiffrin wiped out on the same course.
As of this morning, Sweden leads the games with three gold medals while the US has no golds yet, but three medals overall, silvers in that team figure skating competition, in women's mogul freestyle skiing, and in women's slopestyle snowboarding. For updates up to the minute every day throughout the Olympics, stay with USA TODAY Sports.
The three white men convicted of killing black jogger Ahmaud Arbery are back in court today. Jury selection is set to begin in their federal hate crimes trial. Travis McMichael, who was found to have actually pulled the trigger in Arbery's murder, initially pleaded guilty to a charge of interference with rights that would've given him a sentence of 30 years in federal prison to serve alongside his life sentence for the murder. But he withdrew that plea on Friday. His father Gregory McMichael also withdrew his plea agreement last week. Their withdrawals came after a judge rejected the initial terms of the agreements. She said she did not have enough information to decide it was a fair deal. That move was encouraged by Arbery's family. In addition to the McMichaels, Roddie Bryan, who filmed the killing and is also serving life in prison will also face the hate crimes trial.
An investigation will continue this week into why a Navy SEAL candidate died and another was hospitalized after completing so-called "Hell Week" training. Yesterday, the Navy identified the sailor who died as 24 year old Kyle Mullen, who passed away at a San Diego area hospital. The Navy says they were not actively training when they reported being ill. The other sailor was in stable condition.
Thanks for listening to 5 Things. You can find us wherever you get your audio, including Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Thanks as always to PJ Elliot for his great work on the show, and I'm back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA TODAY.