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Taking new aim at Russia’s economy · Apple News Today

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  Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It's Friday, April 1st. I'm Shumita Basu. Duarte Geraldino is off. This is "Apple News Today." Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news, and how the world's best journalists are covering them.
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  Chernobyl is back under Ukrainian control after Russian forces moved out of the nuclear site. Russian and Ukrainian negotiators are set to talk more today. The Biden administration is hitting Russia with new sanctions. The president talked about the impact of previous moves in his speech in Poland last week.
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  President Joe Biden: As a result of these unprecedented sanctions, the ruble almost as immediately reduced to rubble.
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  But after that massive slide when sanctions first kicked in, the ruble recovered. "Politico" looks at how this is raising questions about whether sanctions are doing enough. Now, currency is only one part of the picture. Current and former Treasury officials tell "Politico" the recovery of the ruble is in large part because Russia has had to take extraordinary, and painful, steps to defend its currency. This includes limiting the ability of ordinary citizens to exchange rubles. One official explained these moves could be artificially inflating the ruble's value, which means sanctions are having an effect. There is still evidence the economy is suffering. The forecast from the Institute of International Finance has Russian GDP shrinking 15% this year. A key driver of the ruble's recovery is rising oil and gas prices. The Russian government has been pressuring foreign buyers to pay for energy in rubles. See, sanctions didn't hit those critical commodities. An expert on economics and security says the fact that the ruble is rebounding has more people calling for sanctions targeting Russia's energy sector. The new moves the U.S. rolled out yesterday are aimed at Russian tech companies, from aerospace to electronics. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen promised to, quote, "target Putin's war machine with sanctions from every angle, until this senseless war of choice is over."
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  The percentage of working Americans testing positive for drugs hit a 20-year high last year. Around 4% of workplace drug tests by Quest Diagnostics came back positive. That's a 50% jump since 2017. Will Feuer from "The Wall Street Journal" reports on how pot use is driving those numbers…
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  Will Feuer: Marijuana appears to be pretty prolific across the country, and I'd say that it's probably here to stay at this point as the laws change.
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  This rise in positive workplace drug tests is the result of a few different trends coming together. One is the legalization of marijuana and changing attitudes toward using it, and then there's also the pandemic labor shortage. Managers are having trouble finding workers, and some of them are relaxing their drug policies. Feuer talked to a staffing agency that's seeing the shift play out…
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  Feuer: Before the pandemic, none of their clients, none of the employers that they work with, would've ever considered accepting an employee who couldn't pass a marijuana test, but now they've all nixed those tests and they're totally open to working with people who legally recreationally use marijuana.
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  Fewer companies are testing people for marijuana use, especially in states where it's legal. The House is moving forward on a bill to legalize pot nationally, though it's not clear that it's gonna get through the Senate and actually become law. Polls show broad support for legalization among Americans. Feuer says workplace policies might have some catching up to do…
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  Feuer: They're gonna have to change their attitudes towards marijuana, whether it's legalized at the federal level or not, because some companies are already doing that. So if other companies wanna compete, they're gonna really have to evolve their attitudes and kind of meet employees in the middle.
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  Lately, it's hard to scroll through any streaming service without coming across a show about scammers. There's "Inventing Anna" on Netflix, about a young woman in New York claiming to be an heiress, and her accent sounds just as suspicious as her story…
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  [START INVENTING ANNA ARCHIVAL CLIP]
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  Anna Delvey (played by Julie Garner): I do not have time for this! I do not have time for you!
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  There's also "Bad Vegan" on Netflix. It's about a restaurateur who, along with her con-artist husband, disappears with a pile of money stolen from employees and investors.
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  [START BAD VEGAN ARCHIVAL CLIP]
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  Sarma Melngailis: My name is Sarma Melngailis. I don't currently have a job, officially, or any sort of occupation, and I'm going away to Rikers for three and a half months starting in a week.
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  We were interested in why studios keep serving us these stories and, I guess, why we keep watching them, so we called up Alissa Wilkinson. She's a senior culture reporter for "Vox" and she's been thinking and writing about this a lot lately.
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  Alissa Wilkinson: I think that there's sort of an anti-hero aspect to the scammer as a cultural figure, that we watch them and we don't want to root for them, but we're also kind of curious to see how far they're going to take it and whether they'll be successful.
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  Wilkinson told us another part of the appeal is "schadenfreude." You know, people like seeing victims get suckered, and they like seeing scammers get taken down even more.
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  Wilkinson: I think there's something really special about the story of the scam or the con that combines a couple of-- I don't know if they're uniquely American obsessions, but they certainly are American obsessions, which is that we're really interested in stories of people getting duped and just feeling kind of good about ourselves not being duped.
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  Another one of these fraudster shows is out on Hulu. It's called "The Dropout." It's about Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the blood-testing company Theranos. On this weekend's "In Conversation," I spoke to the reporter whose podcast is the basis of the Hulu show, ABC's Rebecca Jarvis. And instead of focusing just on Holmes, I asked Jarvis to tell us more about a lesser-known name in the Theranos story, Sunny Balwani. He was the COO of the company, and he and Holmes dated in secret for over a decade. Holmes was convicted of fraud earlier this year, and now Balwani is on trial facing similar charges.
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  Rebecca Jarvis: What is the defense for Sunny Balwani? Do they put a lot of people on the stand? If he goes on the stand, it will be fascinating, because we've heard so much less from him than we ever heard from Elizabeth over the years.
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  Basu: You can find that interview this weekend in the Apple News app. Just search for "In Conversation."
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  Saturday in the men's Final Four, Duke plays North Carolina. It's historic in that it's the final season for legendary Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski. It's dramatic in that it's got two of college basketball's most bitter rivals facing off. It's a dream matchup in some ways, but for some couples it is a nightmare, because the Saturday timing is messing up some people's wedding plans. Yahoo Sports has this story about couples who are diehard basketball fans, and they're trying to figure out how to balance the big game with their big day. One couple getting ready to tie the knot is a great example of this. She is a Duke fan, he is a UNC fan. When they first started dating, they said the basketball divide was a problem, but they got over it, they got engaged. Now, when they set their wedding date, they were not expecting UNC's surprise run into the Final Four, but they did figure out a solution for them and for their guests: a big projector. Yup, they're gonna screen the game during their reception, and they've promised to be civil as their opposing teams battle it out. As the bride says, "it will definitely be our first test as husband and wife."
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  You can find all these stories, and more, in the Apple News app. And when you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News+ partners. We'll be back with the news on Monday.
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