one day, but to make not possible, more specialized, powerful telescopes need to be built. let's just hope that little baby of the had moves way. you're watching dw news, i'm being vigilant. i'll see next out of i called on the road with our travel super heroes. my mission is clear, you crushed iga and nicoli. felicia explored germany. they dive in and they check everything out. there's a lot going on and about germany tried and tested check in on d w. m. what secrets lie behind these

walls? discover new adventures in 360 degrees. and explore fascinating world heritage sites. d. w world heritage. 360. get the app now. ah. ah. brushing gas flows into europe appeared to be slowing as moscow introduces new sanctions. a warning shot perhaps for e u. countries still heavily dependent on the imports, but what does it mean for consumers down the line? also on our show, the fight over abortion access is intensifying. putting more pressure on corporate america to pick sides will look at what company stand to gain and lose from taking a stance. hello, welcome to the show. i'm seeking, beardsley and berlin. prices for european natural gas jumped thursday after moscow

announced new sanctions and appeared to pull back on gas deliveries to the you. prices rose 30 percent by one measure, continuing a broader rise and gas prices. there's only been accelerated by the war ukraine. moscow sanction gas prom, get manya as the former subsidiary of the russian gas giant, now controlled by german regulators, as well as germany's biggest gas storage facility. german economy minister, robert havoc said gas deliveries were falling. i have a supply that's no longer being delivered to me for in the amount of 10000000 cubic meters of gas daily from russia land. that's also an amount that we can compensate for. and the companies are in the process of securing gas supplies through other sources. it's really about, oh, but i also want to say explicitly that the situation can get worse as a result of political events. and we're monitoring the situation very closely. mid course are constant. what's your own boston,

or am i colleague air until the joins mean studio to help us understand exactly what's going on and air and there is a lot going on. we're hearing new sort of, i guess, messages every day or sort of a issues going on every day. what do we actually say though, about the state of russian gas livery to europe? well, of course, russian gas is still being delivered to the you and more specifically to germany. you know, you're still going to be able to go home. you can really heat your homes, you can go to cook your food heater water is going to get a bit more expensive gas future trading gas futures were trading about at $104.00 and they're expected to go up to 110 in the next couple weeks, it basically means we're still going to have to heat our homes. it's just going to get a little bit more expense or a lot more expensive, lot more expensive come fall. basically, this is kind of an economic shot across the bow from russia directed at the you and more specifically directed at germany. and it's, you know, it's the question is, are they going to escalate? that is the question. the question is, the fear is now and maybe it's, it's been this fear for a while, maybe even more. so now that there's going to be a sudden ghast office from rush. do we have any signs that this could be in the

makings? well, right now we don't really know what the kremlin is planning to do. of course, this is a little bit of economic sabre rattling at the moment. of course, the e u is looking at an oil embargo and actually eventually winning itself off of russian gas. and russia apparently is saying, you know, if you want to think about that as well, it's going to get a lot more expensive to you. and this is a taste of things to come at the same time that be a very dangerous move for the crime. when you have done that, for them to incredibly, a 55 percent of the russian budget is actually dependent upon the sale hydrocarbons . and of course, right now, the foreign currency reserves are being depleted at the same time their wage and incredibly expensive worn ukraine. so this isn't really a time for them to be putting a hole in their budget. you know, i would say if we're expecting a move like that, it'd be something that would happen further down the line. something that we could be looking towards the fall when temperature start following. if they're actually going to go nuclear in this aspect and really cut us off, we don't know yet. but i say look to the fall to see if there's actually going to

be an escalation in this conflict. alright, or until you to be business. thank you very much. thank you. and let's go now to some of the other global business stores making headlines. b p says it plans to re invest all its profits from north sea oil production back into the u. k. over the next decade, saying the amount could be around $21000000000.00 euros on that comes after calls from politicians there to charge a windfall tax on energy company profits. apple has lost its top spot as the world's most valuable company. shares in the tech firm slumping by more than 5 percent on wednesday. of the title now belongs to oil producer, aramco, which is now we're $2.00 trillion dollars, probably because of those rising oil prices, putting into apples to year rain, staying with markets. stable coins were supposed to be a more reputable corner of the crypto currency market. because they're paid to real currencies. now the world's biggest stable coin by market cap. tether has lost that

peg. that's adding to worries among crypto traitors. let's go over to james sweeney in new york for more. james, this is safe haven is not really such a safe haven anymore. and this sort of niche of the cryptographic market. what, what's going on? well, as we all know, the crypto markets have been getting hammered as of late. but this heather situation is a bigger beast amongst it's up because he had just one job and that's the maintain a stable value at one us dollar per coin. so the investors could supposedly have a stable place to put their cash. well they trade. but that stable place has become very turbulent and it looks like the foundations are cracking because tell the relies again on the dollar to maintain its value. and investors can change one unit of the other for $1.00 of the price of the other. slips below a dollar investors and then push to buy. it's either so they can exchange it for a dollar and make a small profit and vice versa. the small profits they can add up in the fight, the fancy financial word for that is arbitrage. so this back and forth arbitrage is supposed to push their prices back towards a dollar, but the system,

it's broken down and both tether and the dollar a rapidly selling off. there's no counterbalance the bears are on both sides. it's like, how can you prop up your buddy when you're both struggling to stand up? and despite several efforts to put together rescue plans by it's the theo right now, we're seeing the decline of heather as well as the us dollar and pay for quite the interesting such a request. so i fair to say that this is more bad news for the crypto market at large. this is going to have a large bearing on that market. fair to say, i mean, is there anything else to be said because this is, this is definitely black. bad for the broad equip the markets crypto has been having a lot as of late originally, it's all been due to high inflation in the federal reserves, ongoing monetary policy tightening, keeping investors away from risk, your assets like crypto. but now we had another issue unstable, stable coolants, the one sector of the crypt community that was supposed to be a constant no longer is. and what do people do when there's times of uncertainty? they so they so hard they so fast. and that's what we saw big going today, fall to about $26000.00. this all just one huge red flag for crypto,

who holders as well as crypto investors are james sweeney in new york. thank you very much. thank you. and we stay in the us. american companies are increasingly taking public stances on social and political issues. the latest such issue abortion a recently leaked supreme court draft decision would overturned the roe vs wade roe v wade ruling that legalized procedure throughout the us half a century ago. some big companies have responded to the looming abortion crackdown . the expected abortion cracked on by pledging support for employees, while others are remain quiet. microsoft joins a growing number of companies who are offering reimbursement for abortion related travel expenses. the list includes apple and amazon. apple 1st proposed such a benefit for employees after texas past sweeping anti abortion legislation in 2021

. it's a position that many will applaud, but one which has vocal opponents on the political right wing. a backlash has already started brewing with one u. s. senator introducing legislation that would prevent companies from receiving tax breaks on expenses tied to covering abortion related travel. why? the fight over abortion protections mirrors other thorny social justice battles from recent years. with companies taking clear public stances on activist movements such as black lives matter over. disney is opposition to the so called don't say gay bill in florida, lead to the governor, they're moving it's special tax status year to come to your corporation based in burbank, california. and you're going to marshall your economic might to attack the parents of my state. ah, we view that as a provocation, and we're going to fight back against that. taking stance is on hot button issues used to be relegated to the political arena for corporations. there's no winning

move here. whether they take a stand or stay silent, many will see any move as political. my colleague, cassandra son, was the author of that he, she joins me now in studio for more. cassandra, welcome. what is the benefits of these companies in providing these benefits and waiting into what is very obviously a device of debate, right? there are really 2 perspectives when we're looking at this. one is that these companies are genuinely trying to do what they think or possibly what enough people at the company think is the right thing to do. they're trying to make sure that employees have the same care regardless of what state they live. another perspective, possibly a little bit more cynical, but it's the business perspective here that they're competing for top talent. a lot of these companies are tech companies. they're competing for a small pool of employees. and they want to make sure that their compensation package, let's say, is appealing to a specific kind of potential higher. there is

a very big downside, it would seem to doing this because this is such a device of debate. what could that mean for these companies? you know, in the past we've seen a few reactions to these kinds of social issue stances, you could expect boycotts protests and possibly even legislation. so when we're looking at boycotts, we have seen that before, right? when nike took a stance they had calling cap or nic and some of their ads, the black lives matter activist and former and f l player. they got some boycotts and there was this idea that if you get woke, you're going to go broke, right? that there will be an impact on your bottom line if you take a progressive stance. now i've been reading some analysis of this that might say that's a little bit of a short term perspective. that when companies take these progressive stances, they're trying to appeal to a younger consumer base. and a lot of times younger people don't quite have as much money yet, but they're trying to build brand loyalty for the long term. so boycotts could be one potential reaction. also protests. we saw that recently with disney when they came out against that florida. don't say gala. so these are potential reactions

that we could expect. right now, i would assume that these companies have then concluded that perhaps the benefit outweighs the drawbacks of this. if they're just looking at the bottom line, for example, that would seem to just really employees and consumers do strongly want to see a stance. is that fair to say, or is it just some companies? how should we look at this? i think it's fair to say that it is just some companies right now. you know, we have a list of some of these companies that have come out with these stances, but there's a long list of companies who have so far stayed silent. but for the companies that have come out so far, i would say i would evaluate that. it's incredibly important, you know, with some of these tech companies, they offer all sorts of services to kind of get you to stay there longer. they want to build this environment that you know, work as family or familial, like. and with that comes certain responsibilities, and a lot of these employees take that quite seriously. so they're going to be putting pressure on their employers. there's also a crowded market in a lot of cases with consumers, right? it's not just employees,

it's consumers as well. and they want to make sure that they're spending their dollars or, you know, giving their clicks to companies whose values match their so its employees. yes. but it's also consumers putting pressure on these big corporations already cassandra song, dw business. thanks for coming into the studio and that's it for me and the dw business team, you can find out more online at g, w dot com slash business also on you too. thanks for watching is the end of the pandemic in site. we show what it could look like will return to normal and we visit those who are finding it difficult to success in our weekly coping. 19 especially over 90 special next on d, w to the point of strong opinions or positions.

international perspectives approaching and brushes, armed forces have suffered some serious setbacks during the invasion of neighboring you, craig, so will they scale back operations or is put in perhaps set to launch a new campaign? find out on to the point shortly. to the point. being 16 on d w. o. listen carefully. don't know how with today go. ah, feel the magic discover the world

around you. subscribe to. documentary on youtube, lou. lou. lou. around the world, people are taking off their masks as restrictions ease. many people are no longer scared of coven 19 and are enjoying more freedoms. but some doctors warned against not taking the corona virus seriously enough. the pandemic is far from over. also on the show, why have some countries apparently gotten through the pandemic better and faster than others.