Business

A technological meltdown left employees of airlines, banks, hospitals and emergency services around the world staring at the dreaded “blue screen of death” on Friday as their computers went inert in what is being described as a historic outage.

“This is basically what we were all worried about with Y2K, except it’s actually happened this time,” internet security analyst Troy Hunt said via X.

From continent to continent, Microsoft users reported being suddenly knocked offline, and the culprit was determined to be cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, which says one of its routine software updates malfunctioned.

“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts,” the company said in a statement.

Customers using Mac and Linux operating systems were not affected, CrowdStrike said.

When the faulty update crashed computer systems, scores of airport travelers were stranded, hospital appointments were delayed and live news broadcasts were cut short.

How big is the outage?

It is massive, far-reaching and sudden.

Some computer problems cascade, creating ripples of failures. But in this case, the flaw permeated Microsoft systems worldwide nearly immediately. The company says its Windows 365 Cloud PCs, apps and services were affected.

While server-related outages are common, the scale of the CrowdStrike disruption was astonishing to many tech observers.

“This IT outage is a stark reminder of how dependent we are on technology and many other things that happen behind the scenes that most of us are unaware of,” said Louisville-based tech executive Adam Robinson on X. “Modern society and the many comforts we enjoy is a fragile thing.”

What kinds of companies and services went offline?

Delta Airlines, United Airlines and American Airlines grounded all flights.

In some states, including Alaska and Ohio, 911 phone lines were down overnight Thursday, although Alaska State Troopers said on Facebook that service was restored by 4:30 a.m. Friday.

In Germany, some hospitals canceled non-emergency operations.

The London Stock Exchange’s news service stopped working.

Broadcasters around the world were also hit. In France and Australia, live television broadcasts were knocked offline.

Sky News, a major U.K. news channel, was off air for a time on Friday morning. It later returned, but without “full capabilities,” its chairman, David Rhodes, said on X Friday afternoon. A post on Australia’s ABC News website said the broadcaster was experiencing a “major network outage.”

How do people fix their computers?

CrowdStrike says the problem was not a cyberattack, but rather a software glitch. The company said the issue has been identified and that a fix was sent to customers.

It also published a workaround that involves booting a Windows machine in a recovery environment, deleting a single file in the CrowdStrike directory, and restarting.

What is CrowdStrike?

It’s a U.S. cybersecurity firm based in Austin, Texas. The company went public in 2019 and is currently in the S&P 500 index. As of early July, CrowdStrike’s stock had been riding months of gains. But share prices fell sharply in early trading Friday.

“This is clearly a major black eye for CrowdStrike,” said WedBush analyst Dan Ives.

CrowdStrike made headlines in 2016, when the company was hired by the Democratic National Committee to investigate a breach of its data systems. CrowdStrike determined that the hack was a case of foreign interference — the work of Russian-backed hacking groups.

The company’s marquee product is its “Falcon” cybersecurity software — and it traced the current problem to a change in a sensor in that system. That also helps explain how and why the resulting failures spread so quickly: Rather than being stored locally, the Falcon security platform “is 100% cloud-based.”

Grocery prices are no longer climbing as much as they did in the last two years — but many Americans are still frustrated by what it costs to put food on the table.

Some people have apparently hit their limit. One of the biggest snack makers said this week that its sales fell this spring as grocery shoppers became more sensitive to rising prices.

Here are three things to know about food prices these days — and why it still feels more expensive at the checkout lane of your favorite grocery store.

What is going on with food prices?

It may not feel like it, but grocery prices have actually leveled off for the most part.

The latest consumer inflation report, out this week, showed grocery prices rose just a little over 1% in the last 12 months. That’s a big improvement from the previous year, when prices jumped nearly 5%, and the year before that, when they soared by double digits.

However, leveling off is not the same as prices coming down, and the U.S. is still feeling the cumulative effect of those earlier increases.

And that leads to frustration for shoppers like Cindy Seinar, a retired autoworker in Lynchburg, Virginia.

“You go in for one thing, and you come out and it’s $45,” she says, describing her experiences at the grocery store.

And for Seinar, just like for many other Americans, the frustration is compounded by “shrinkflation.” That’s when companies reduce package sizes, meaning you get less than you used to for the same or sometimes even higher prices.

“Sugar is only 4 pounds,” Seinar says. “You’re not even getting a 5-pound bag anymore.”

Grocery prices are particularly noticeable because they are such a significant chunk of the typical family’s budget, accounting for about 8% on average, according to government data. For lower-income families, it’s often more than that.

How are people adjusting to higher prices?

For a while, many people just gritted their teeth and paid up — but Americans are starting to push back.

PepsiCo, which reported earnings this week, said sales of its Frito-Lay snacks actually fell during the most recent quarter. Some of that is because shoppers are balking at the higher prices by cutting back on chips altogether or by switching to cheaper store brands.

Amanda Whitworth stocks grocery shelves at a Target store in Florida. She often finds herself steering customers to the in-house bargains at the discount retailer.

“You may not ever have considered the Market Pantry bread, but it’s $1.39 for a big loaf of it,” Whitworth says, referring to Target’s private label. “While that may not be someone’s first choice, it’s a quarter of the price of some loaves.”

Whitworth also does the food shopping for her family and says she has made similar substitutions of her own.

“Before, we would have bought a big bag of frozen chicken nuggets for our son. And the particular bag went up three extra dollars,” Whitworth says. “So we started making homemade chicken nuggets, which we’ll probably never switch back because they’re so good.”

That sends a message to the big food producers. When PepsiCo and others start losing market share, they grow more cautious about pushing up prices. In some cases, they start to offer discounts — and that’s one reason grocery prices aren’t climbing as fast as they had been.

So are grocery prices finally going to come down?

To some degree.

The prices of some individual grocery items have come down. Fruit and vegetable prices have dropped over the last year, for example. So have milk and cheese prices.

However, the overall cost of groceries is unlikely to fall substantially.

But there is a silver lining. As grocery inflation slows, wages are catching up.

Over the last year, average wages have risen 3.9%, or about three and a half times as fast as grocery prices.

The typical worker now has to work about the same number of hours to buy a week’s worth of groceries as in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

That’s good news — even if for many Americans it doesn’t feel that way.

Kroger and Albertsons plan to sell 18 grocery stores in Alaska, including Juneau’s Safeway in the Mendenhall Valley, as part of the plan to merge the two grocery giants.

The CEOs of Kroger and Albertsons shared a joint video statement following the announcement. Albertsons CEO Vivek Sankaran said the sales will help keep prices low and give more options to shoppers. 

“This merger is the right thing for our customers and our associates,” he said. “For our customers, we strengthen the American retail landscape and thoughtfully selected stores to ensure customers continue to have a choice of where to shop.”

A list released on Tuesday includes Carrs, Eagle and Safeway stores across Alaska — and more than 550 other stores across the U.S. 

The merger plan still needs to be approved by regulators. But, if that happens, the 579 stores on the list will be transferred to C&S Wholesale Grocers, LLC. C&S operates grocery stores across the country, including Piggly Wiggly, and is the nation’s largest wholesale grocery supplier. 

Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen said the list is a significant step toward completing the merger. 

“Divested stores are not closed stores,” he said. “C&S is committed to operating these stores as they are today.”

Despite the excitement expressed by the CEOs, the plan has seen a lot of pushback since it was announced in the fall of 2022. 

Local municipalities, state lawmakers and Alaska’s U.S. delegation have called to block the merger, arguing it could cause more food insecurity in rural places in Alaska, drive up prices and limit options.  

And the Federal Trade Commission and attorneys general in states like Washington, Illinois and California have filed suits to stop the merger.

In a statement, Rep. Mary Peltola said she would “continue to support the FTC’s efforts to block this merger.” 

If the merger is approved, the divestiture of the stores will be roughly $3 billion. The companies say there are no plans to lay off employees at the stores.

WESTBOROUGH, Mass. — Plastic bags of dark powder sit on a metal shelf. The powder contains minerals that came from lithium-ion batteries and are destined to be made into batteries again. That, in itself, is not revolutionary.

But where this shelf is located — in an unassuming industrial park an hour west of Boston — symbolizes how the battery-recycling industry is on the cusp of change.

Today, key steps in the battery-recycling process mostly happen overseas, particularly in Asia. Companies there have spent years building up a battery supply chain in which recycling and building batteries are closely connected.

But more and more batteries spend their lives powering electric vehicles in the United States. Shipping minerals halfway around the world costs money, creates carbon emissions, adds supply chain risks and, from the U.S. perspective, pushes some jobs and profits overseas.

That’s why the U.S. government is pouring money into an effort to bring the whole battery-recycling ecosystem to the United States. Meanwhile, automakers and battery companies, as they build new battery and EV plants across North America, want recycling close by; they’ll have a lot of batteries to scrap in the years ahead as electric vehicle sales rise.

These minerals in their 25-pound plastic bags, recycled by a company called Ascend Elements, epitomize the new geography of battery recycling. They were ground up in Georgia, processed in Massachusetts and headed to Michigan for manufacturing — every step happening in the United States.

Keeping battery minerals closer to home

Lithium-ion batteries are hazardous waste if they’re discarded, but they’re a valuable resource if they’re recycled.

Because they’re hazardous, some states legally require battery recycling. And because they’re valuable, EV batteries are often recycled even where it’s not mandated: Vehicle dismantlers can sell the batteries for money.

But how does it work? Step 1 is safely collecting batteries, discharging them and then disassembling and shredding them. The result is a black powder that’s called “black mass” in the battery-recycling industry. This happens at locations scattered across the U.S., including at an Ascend Elements facility in Georgia.

Then that powder of jumbled-up minerals is frequently shipped overseas to get turned back into something useful. In Westborough, Mass., Ascend Elements is doing those steps closer to home. The powder gets combined with sulfuric acid, where some minerals dissolve and others don’t, making it easier to sort them apart.

Ascend takes out (and in some cases, sells off separately) everything except the nickel, cobalt and other costly minerals that go into a battery’s cathode. The levels of each mineral get fine-tuned, and the mixture is dried back into a powder again.

Last month, the company began shipping the powder coming off the line — precursor cathode active material (pCAM), to use its technical term — to a buyer that will put the material into batteries for heavy-duty vehicles. Ascend believes this is likely the first time that pCAM made wholly in the U.S. from recycled materials is being used in commercial manufacturing.

Newer, cleaner processes for recycling batteries

In some cases, recycling processes, not just locations, are also changing. An older method relied on burning battery materials, which wasted many of the minerals and created pollution.

A newer method involves dissolving the minerals in acid instead, recovering more minerals with less waste (or potentially no waste, if companies reuse water and find uses for all their chemical byproducts). “Recyclers all across the world are adopting this technology,” says battery expert Beatrice Browning.

Meanwhile, Ascend is skipping several steps by not isolating all the minerals separately, like most acid-based processes do. “That’s extracting 98% of the material because you’re worried about the 2% of impurities,” co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Eric Gratz explains. “So we flip the problem around, and we’re extracting the 2% of impurities and keeping the nickel, manganese and cobalt together.”

Imagine you have a large Lego creation and you want to make a different Lego creation. Melting the whole thing down would be a brute-force waste of energy. Taking it apart and sorting all the bricks is more finicky but much more effective — like extracting out each mineral one by one. What Ascend is doing is more like breaking it down but not sorting all the bricks, just keeping them together in a big pile.

Meanwhile, some companies are working on a form of recycling called “direct recycling” that would take the battery apart without shredding it at all. It’s like keeping big chunks of Lego bricks together and reusing them as a single unit. And still other companies are exploring new ways to use electricity or other technologies to refine how metals are, well, refined.

A dual purpose: cutting emissions, boosting profits

Ascend’s production line is built right behind the company’s research and development lab, where Matthew Valdiviezo is watching a vivid teal liquid spin in a beaker as he explains that chemistry is all about rules. And his work is all about manipulating those rules — “to make us money in the long run,” he says, “and help the planet, of course.”

For many environmentally conscious drivers, battery disposal is a major concern. And it’s true that if batteries wind up in landfills, they would be a serious problem. But environmental advocates see a huge opportunity in recycling.

“Battery recycling can play, in the long run, a really big role in making electric vehicles more sustainable,” says Dale Hall of the International Council on Clean Transportation. “Decades from now, we’ll need very little new virgin raw materials to build new EVs. And that’s very different from what you have now with combustion engine vehicles, where you’re going to always have to be producing new virgin oil and feeding tons and tons of that into the vehicles over their lifetime.”

Meanwhile, Valdiviezo’s other motivation — the bottom line? That’s real too, and lots of other companies are chasing it.

Redwood Materials, started by a Tesla co-founder, is building multibillion-dollar plants in Nevada and South Carolina. “There is an incredible opportunity to create this closed-loop supply chain here domestically for the first time,” the company’s vice president of government relations and communications, Alexis Georgeson, told NPR in an interview earlier this year.

And, she noted, battery recycling is profitable today.

Cirba Solutions, another big player, is working on plants in Ohio and South Carolina. “We’re building as fast as we humanly possibly can build,” says CEO David Klanecky. “And I think we’re going way too slow, to be honest with you.”

“It’s not fast enough”

The pressure for speed might seem counterintuitive. EV batteries can last more than a dozen years (maybe much longer — the first mass-market EVs aren’t old enough to have much data beyond that). Some outlive their vehicles and could have a second life, like storing backup power for a building. And there aren’t that many EVs on the roads — yet.

But EVs from the first generation are starting to reach the end of their lives. Recalled batteries or those damaged in vehicular accidents also need to be recycled, as does scrap material coming from the production lines of plants manufacturing new batteries. Meanwhile, the nascent battery-manufacturing industry in the U.S. is hungry for materials, especially ones that meet made-in-America requirements for federal incentives.

That’s pushing companies to move fast. “Two years ago, there was nothing in here,” says Ascend senior process engineer Zain Nasir at the plant in Westborough. “The amount of hours everybody’s put in trying to get this place to where it is is just incredible.”

In the lab where she was testing products to confirm their quality, Rebecca Neslusan laughed when I asked her about the timeline. “The pressure is on,” she said. “As fast as we can do it, it’s not fast enough.”

In fact, the milestone that Ascend hit in June — that first commercial shipment out of this manufacturing line — is itself proof of the sense of urgency. For a chemical plant, the production line here in Massachusetts is tiny. It was originally meant to be a pilot, a proof of concept. But the demand is too high.

“We’re shipping here because the customer wants and needs the material as soon as possible, you know, basically faster than we can build our facilities,” says Gratz, the company’s co-founder and CTO.

His billion-dollar plant in Kentucky is due to open early next year.

Wrangell’s former hospital building had a buyer, but he has quashed the deal — citing a headline in the local newspaper.

The project would have renovated the old Wrangell Medical Center into much-needed housing. But Georgia resident Wayne Johnson ended his plans because he didn’t like a headline in the Wrangell Sentinel that read: “Hospital property developer now wants borough lots for free.”

Johnson intended to purchase the building for $200,000, which is significantly less than the appraised value of $800,000.

He also planned to buy the six adjacent lots and he said he was going to develop between 36 and 40 housing units on the property.

“Unfortunately, the local newspaper decided to characterize it as the lots being conveyed under, I think the headline was, ‘Developer now wants borough lots for free,’” Johnson said. “I never wanted anything for free.”

The City and Borough of Wrangell offered Johnson the six lots for free if he demolished the asbestos-filled medical center by June 30, 2026. But Johnson said there were still inherent costs — he estimated the demolition expenses at roughly $1 million. Johnson said the Sentinel’s headline was inaccurate, which caused him to pull out of his investment.

“I’m just in a situation where, you know, just my reputation and my intents are very positive towards the city of Wrangell,” he said. “I felt like the headline, unfortunately, and even portions of the story, misrepresented what the city and I had agreed to.”

He said withdrawing from developing the lots removes any doubt others might have in him.

The Wrangell Sentinel’s publisher, Larry Persily, disagrees that the headline was wrong.

“I felt the story was accurate. The headline was accurate,” he said. “It’s unfortunate that Mr. Johnson has decided to cancel his investment and development plans in Wrangell.”

Originally, Johnson was supposed to close on the purchase by May 31. But then he asked the borough for the adjacent land at a reduced cost.

The borough agreed to change the contract to include a requirement for demolishing the building, which would save the borough from liability. And, in return, Johnson would get the six lots for free.

Persily questions whether it really was the headline that changed Johnson’s course.

“So it all changed because of a headline, which I find somewhat a convenient excuse for someone who maybe didn’t want to follow through after all,” he said.

Persily has been in Alaska journalism and politics for decades. He said he does not feel a need to defend the headline.

“I’ve been at this for 50 years,” he said. “I’ve been called worse things by better people. No, I don’t (think I need to defend myself). I feel I should explain myself when people ask.”

Earlier this year, Persily said he had a few interactions with Johnson when reporting on the development project. He said their interactions were cordial until June 28, two days after the headline came out.

He said that Johnson accused him of purposefully writing the headline for clickbait or sensationalizing it for attention.

“Look, clickbait,” Persily said. “I think (what) people in Wrangell use bait for is fishing, not social media.”

Borough Manager Mason Villarma said he doesn’t have much to say on the withdrawal, except that he appreciates the time everyone spent on planning.

“A lot of staff worked hard on seeing through as far as we could go,” he said. “Moving on and what I hear is we have two interested parties already.”

The borough spends approximately $100,000 a year to maintain the old hospital building. It was estimated that demolishing the building would cost $2 million.

As for Johnson’s future in Wrangell, the Georgia resident said he intends to continue to visit often. He has a two-year lease on the island, has two boats docked in town and is looking for land to build a house on. He also brought a food truck to Wrangell to sell boiled crab.

And he’s running as a Republican for U.S. Congress in Georgia this year.

“I will be leaving in a couple of weeks to head back to Georgia to fully engage in my campaign for the United States Congress,” Johnson said. “It’s going to be a very intense few months.”

A half dozen women — in their 30s, 40s and 50s — gather in a classroom in Phoenix for a few hours on a weekday morning.

They are all caregivers of young children.

There’s Yosbri Rojas. When her own 8-year-old is at school, she takes care of two younger children, whose father works with Rojas’ husband installing fiber optic lines.

“I like that the children feel happy with me,” Rojas says in Spanish.

Graciela Cruz is also here. She works early mornings in a warehouse, from 4 to 9 a.m. During the day, she parents her own 2-year-old daughter and also watches her neighbors’ 1-year-old while the child’s parents are at work cleaning houses and offices.

Cruz and Rojas are participants in an Arizona state-funded initiative called Kith and Kin. The 12-week program aims to give family, friend and neighbor caregivers the kind of training and support that licensed caregivers are required to have.

Licensed or not, caregivers make work possible

While most federal and state funding for child care in the U.S. goes to licensed settings, Arizona is one of a number of states that have long recognized the importance of informal caregiving arrangements that are allowing millions of parents go to work.

Such arrangements, which can be paid or unpaid, are especially common in immigrant communities and communities of color, where many parents hold jobs with nontraditional hours and prefer caregivers who share their language and culture.

A study in the south Phoenix area found that 60% of children from birth to 5 years old were being cared for outside of licensed child care settings.

That study led the nonprofit organization Candelen to launch Kith and Kin in 1999.

“There was the high need to provide both training and support” in communities where families with young children live, says program director Angela Tapia.

Now, 25 years later, programs like Kith and Kin are getting renewed attention in the wake of the pandemic, which put a spotlight on the fragile state of the child care industry.

There’s increased urgency from federal and state policymakers and businesses to ensure communities have access to affordable, high-quality child care, paving the way for parents — especially women — to work, an essential element of a robust and well-functioning economy.

A crash course in caregiving fundamentals

The aunts and grandmothers and neighbors who attend the Kith and Kin classes often don’t think of themselves as caregivers, says Tapia, much less as contributing to the economy.

“It’s more something they do out of love and to help their family and friends,” she says.

But caregiving requires more than love, and that’s where the program come in.

Over 12 weeks, the caregivers, who are predominantly women (though they do see the occasional grandfather or uncle) undergo training in basic health and safety, including CPR, as well as more advanced topics such as child development, positive discipline and injury prevention.

The women share personal challenges, ask for advice and offer comfort and support.

Funding comes from Arizona’s tobacco tax

The sessions are paid for in part by Arizona’s tobacco tax. Candelen estimates it trains about 1,000 caregivers a year.

Melinda Gulick, CEO of Arizona’s early childhood agency First Things First, says the funding is recognition that all children, regardless of where they spend their first years, deserve a high quality early childhood experience.

“Being ready on the first day of Kindergarten is the biggest indicator of academic success and success in life as well,” she says.

Gulick points out, in some rural parts of Arizona, there is no licensed child care, and even where there are options, Arizonans are known for wanting choice.

“This is a liberty and freedom state,” she says. “For many parents, the best place for [children] to be is with their auntie or their grandmother or in a co-op in their neighborhood.”

Keeping caregiving in the family

That’s certainly how Cynthia Diarte felt when she had her son Esteban. He’s now two and a big fan of Bluey, the beloved children’s television character.

Diarte, a teacher, grew up on the Texas-Mexico border, cared for by her grandmother while her mother went to work at an airport restaurant.

Diarte says it was never a question who would watch her children when she became a mother herself. Her mother, Elvia Elena Nunez, insisted she be the one, carrying on their family tradition.

“As his grandmother, my love is different from any other caregiver,” Nunez says in Spanish.

As a Kith and Kin participant, Nunez has appreciated learning new ways to keep Esteban entertained without screens. She also cherishes the community she’s built with the other caregivers and the enrichment Esteban has gotten through the program.

While class is in session, Esteban is with other toddlers, singing songs and playing games in the child care room down the hall.

“He’s bringing more vocabulary. He’s starting to speak up a little bit more,” says Diarte. “He really needed that social aspect, the relationship with other kids.”

And she expects those relationships to endure. A side benefit of the Kith and Kin classes is how close the caregivers become.

“They end up becoming like the madrinas, like the godmothers, the godparents, to each other’s children,” says program director Tapia. “They stay connected throughout the years.”