On Sunday, G7 nations said they were standing with Ukraine for “as long as it takes” in their fight against Russia. On Monday, they translated those words into action with a plan to cap the price of Russian oil, depriving Vladimir Putin of a key revenue source.

What happened: G7 countries pledged to work toward fixing the price of Russian oil on the global market by securing an international agreement to only buy below a price cap. Officials are still determining the exact plan, but it would likely involve enforcing the price cap via certain services necessary for trading oil. 

• For example: If oil was being sold above the cap, insurers—most of which are based in Europe—could be prohibited from insuring its shipment, effectively blocking it from being moved around.

G7 officials hope the impact of the price cap would be two-fold, limiting Russia’s oil revenue and lowering astronomical energy prices for Western consumers. 

Plus: Following a few close calls, Russia is heading for a much-ballyhooed debt default after failing to pay ~US$100mn worth of interest on government bonds.

• In the short term, this means essentially nothing. The market has already adjusted to the long-expected default and Russia has already been cut off from borrowing, no bad credit rating necessary. But there could be long-term effects after the war ends that will make recovery difficult.

Why it matters: The endless Western sanctions on Russia have produced mixed results thus far. Sure, the country’s economy is projected to shrink ~10% this year (and citizens may never be able to eat a real McDonald’s Big Mac again) but Russia has been able to prop itself up through energy revenue, the profits of which have helped make the ruble the best-performing currency of the year. That could change if the G7 can put a global ceiling on the price of Russian oil.

Crypto-rupt: Crypto broker Voyager Digital fell ~22% on the Toronto Stock Exchange yesterday after it issued a default notice to crypto trader Three Arrows Capital for failing to repay a US$655 million loan.  

Batter(y) up: South Korean LG Electronics already makes pretty much everything, so why not electric vehicle battery chargers? The company is moving into the space after acquiring a majority stake in battery charger maker AppleMango.

Left hanging: Google is phasing out Hangouts and will shut down the video-call platform by November, forcing your one friend who always insisted on using it to finally download Zoom. 

Banking bad: Swiss investment baker Credit Suisse was found guilty of failing to stop money-laundering carried out by an employee on behalf of Bulgarian cocaine dealers in the country’s first trial criminal against a major bank.

We’ve all heard calls to save the bees and now we might be hearing calls to save the berries too as declining bee populations leave Canadian fruit crops unpollinated.

What happened: Canadian beekeepers have lost half of their colonies on average this year in the face of adverse weather conditions and a particularly destructive parasite. This has caused a chain reaction that threatens to reduce Canada’s fruit and veggie harvests as the honeybees farmers depend on to pollinate their crops are in short supply.  

• Bees are a critical part of Canada’s farming sector: According to Statistics Canada’s most recent report, there are 11,785 beekeepers in Canada tending to over 746,000 colonies producing honey and being rented to farms.

Blueberries, which are Canada’s largest fruit export, rely on bee pollination to grow reliably in large volumes, and have been particularly hard hit by the bee deficit. 

• The humble fruit represents 61% of the total value of fruits Canada shipped out in 2020.

Why it matters: The total annual economic contribution of honeybees through pollination is estimated to be as much as $5.5 billion per year—if they continue to die off at this pace, we’ll see smaller agricultural yields, higher food prices, and more global food insecurity.

• Experts worry that another year of poor pollination could cause serious shortages of even more essential crops, like canola.

Zoom out: Canada has imported ~320,000 bees this year to replenish its pollinating power, but some farmers and agriculture experts say we’d be better off building up our homegrown population of over 860 native bee species to take the sting out of the pollination problem.

Worried about inflation? Michael Burry of ‘The Big Short’ fame has already moved on to deflation, tweeting a warning yesterday that retailers’ oversupply of inventory—fearing more supply chain disruptions, they ordered too much—could lead to inflation trending down and cause central banks to put a pause on interest rate hikes. 

Amazon has announced some updates to Alexa that you’re going to find either creepy or cool, and we aren’t going to judge you either way: The smart speaker will eventually be able to mimic real people’s voices, including those who are dead. 

Alexa will use artificial intelligence to generate copycat voices based on just one minute of recorded audio. 

• In a demo of the new voice capabilities presented last week, Alexa reads to a child in the voice of his late grandmother… though we have to say, it doesn’t sound quite right.

Why it’s happening: Amazon wants people to use Alexa as much as possible and believes that equipping it with “human-like empathy” (their words) will encourage people to interact with it more.

• Amazon has had success getting people to put Alexa in their homes, but it hasn’t been a major money-maker so far—most people use it for built-in functions like playing music or getting the weather forecast rather than more lucrative features like online shopping.
   
• But if Amazon can get people to do more of their online activities through Alexa, it will control another powerful channel to sell products, services, and ads.

Yes, but: Replicating people’s voices raises a number of privacy and security concerns, including the risk of fraudsters copying the voice of a trusted friend or family member to scam people.

• There’s also the question of how someone’s voice can be used after they have died, and the ethics of replicating it without their consent.

Big picture: Amazon is still the dominant player in the smart speaker game, but its market share fell sharply last year—from 64% to 44%—with both Google and Apple gaining ground. Making Alexa feel a bit more human may be a path towards reversing that decline.

🪖 300,000. The number of troops NATO will place on high alert, a 7x increase from current levels, in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

🔨 80%. The share of Canadian companies surveyed by The Business Council of Canada that say they have had difficulty finding workers; 60% say they have lost revenue or cancelled projects due to labour shortages.

🍃 209 million. The number of cannabis users globally in 2020 according to the UN’s most recent World Drug Report—a number boosted by the pandemic as more people turned to self-medicating to deal with the lockdown blues.  

• This putt from the US Senior Open is one of the wildest shots we’ve seen in golf.
   
• Go inside the lost luggage store that sells airline baggage nobody ever claimed.
   
• Someone did an incredible job recreating the Battle of Verdun from World War One using Lego and stop-motion animation.
   
• Peep all the new Apple products rumoured for release this fall, including the iPhone 14.
   
• How to build a social circle and make friends when you move to a new city
   
• Long read: The biggest video game heist of all time.