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Google has agreed to pay C$100mn a year into a fund to support news organisations in Canada as part of a deal with the government, ending a dispute that led it to threaten to cut links to news from its services.

The pact ends a six-month stand-off following the passage of an online news law designed to funnel some of the cash that Google and Meta, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, make from online advertising to bolster the finances of news organisations. The dispute blew up into the biggest conflict between the internet giants and a national government over news subsidies since Australia became the first country to pass a law on the issue in 2021.

Meta suspended links to news stories in Canada earlier this year in protest at the law, and Google threatened to follow suit when the law goes into effect in mid-December unless the government diluted the impact of the legislation.

The search giant dug its heels in against being forced to pay for news links in its services, which it feared would set a precedent that could be applied to other types of online links. Rather than hurting the news companies, the internet giants have always claimed that their links deliver valuable traffic to news sites, with Google claiming its news links are worth C$250mn a year to Canadian publishers.

However, Canada’s Online News Act was explicitly aimed at bringing what it called greater “fairness” to payment for online news following a huge shift in the online advertising market to Google and Meta. 

Google also objected that the Canadian law would leave it with open-ended financial liability, since it would be forced to negotiate with each publisher individually and would face an arbitration process the company believed would be stacked against it.

In a compromise announced on Wednesday, Pascale St-Onge, minister of Canadian heritage, said that the agreement would “benefit the news sector and allow Google to continue to play an important role in giving Canadians access to reliable news content”. Google’s payments would be made to a collective fund, she added, ending the need to negotiate with each publisher separately.

Canadian officials estimated earlier this year that the act would require Google to pay C$172mn to publishers. It was unclear on Wednesday whether the final regulations under the act, which are due to be released before it goes into force on December 19, would still amount to Google paying for carrying links — something the company has strongly objected to.

Meta indicated that the deal with Google would make no difference to its decision to block news links in Canada. “Unlike search engines, we do not proactively pull news from the internet to place in our users’ feeds and we have long been clear that the only way we can reasonably comply with the Online News Act is by ending news availability for people in Canada,” it said.

CNN
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Another tornado threat will take aim at the southern US on Thursday, less than two weeks after at least a dozen tornadoes hit Louisiana and Mississippi.

This time, the tornado threat will center on Texas as a storm system begins to take shape in the southern Plains.

Severe thunderstorms are expected to rumble to life late Thursday morning across Texas and Oklahoma and track east into portions of Louisiana and Arkansas.

The greatest risk of tornadoes will be primarily in southeastern Texas – including parts of the Houston metro area – from late Thursday morning through mid-afternoon. An enhanced risk, or Level 3 of 5, for severe storms is in place for the area on Thursday, according to the Storm Prediction Center.

Storms in portions of southwestern Louisiana could also produce a tornado or two Thursday afternoon.

In addition to tornadoes, any severe thunderstorm on Thursday could produce hail, damaging wind gusts up to 60 mph and heavy rainfall.

The severe storm threat will linger into Thursday night in Louisiana as the storm system begins to track generally from the Plains into the Mississippi Valley.

Rain will fall across an expansive part of the Mississippi Valley, Midwest and Southeast as the storm pushes north and eastward Thursday night into Friday.

This rain is desperately-needed in the Lower Mississippi Valley, especially in Louisiana and Mississippi, which are battling some of the worst drought in the US.

Louisiana is suffering through its worst drought on record – one which has fed unprecedented wildfires. Exceptional drought – the US Drought Monitor’s highest level – covers almost three-quarters of the state, according to data released last week. Exceptional drought covers more than a third of Mississippi.

One to 3 inches of rain is expected to fall across the Mississippi Valley on Thursday, and an additional 1 to 2 inches could fall Friday in portions of the Gulf Coast and Southeast.

Additional severe thunderstorms are possible, but much less likely, on Friday from Louisiana to Alabama and the Florida Panhandle. A marginal risk level for severe storms, or a Level 1 out of 5, is in place for the area on Friday.

November marks the start of a secondary severe weather season in the South. The clash between cold, Canadian air drilling into the region and lingering warm, moist air over the Gulf of Mexico typically leads to an uptick in damaging thunderstorms from November to December.

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Russia has built up a large stockpile of missiles and intends to use them in a bid to destroy Ukraine’s power and heating infrastructure in the coming months, Nato’s secretary-general has warned.

With the front line largely frozen after Ukraine’s autumn counteroffensive failed to make significant gains, Kyiv has stepped up calls for more air defence supplies from its western allies as it girds for another winter bombardment.

“Russia has amassed a large missile stockpile ahead of winter, and we see new attempts to strike Ukraine’s power grid and energy infrastructure, trying to leave Ukraine in the dark and cold,” Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg told reporters in Brussels on Wednesday.

“We must not underestimate Russia. Russia’s economy is on a war footing,” he said following a meeting of allied foreign ministers and their Ukrainian counterpart.

The warning from the head of the US-led military alliance, which Ukraine has applied to join, comes as EU countries and US lawmakers continue to squabble over respective new financial support packages for Kyiv proposed by Brussels and the White House, raising questions on the longevity of western backing as Russia’s invasion grinds on.

Antony Blinken, US secretary of state, said he saw “no sense of fatigue” among Nato members regarding support for Ukraine.

Russia is planning to spend Rbs10.8tn ($122bn) on defence next year, three times the amount allocated in 2021, the year before the invasion, and 70 per cent more than was planned for 2022, according to a bill on Russia’s budget that President Vladimir Putin signed on. The enormous sums in Russia’s record Rbs36.6tn budget for next year will take defence spending to 6 per cent of gross domestic product.

Arms manufacturers are working three shifts a day to meet the defence ministry’s orders. Several civilian factories have shifted to defence production, as well as some non-industrial sites including a bakery that now makes drones.

Putin told arms makers in September to “raise production capacity in the shortest possible time, keep facilities as busy as possible, optimise technological cycles, and cut down production time without lowering quality”.

Russia’s intelligence agencies have also stepped up their operations to import western dual-use technology — goods that have both potential civilian and military applications — for the defence industry.

The rush for parts has forced Russia to seek ways around western sanctions and export controls by smuggling western-made technology through third countries such as Turkey, according to western officials.

Despite Putin’s orders, Russia is not putting an emphasis on quality, accepting whatever parts arms manufacturers can get their hands on to increase missile production, western officials say — even if that makes them less accurate.

A senior Ukrainian intelligence official told the Financial Times that Russia was now receiving frequent shipments of munitions from Iran and North Korea, including Iranian one-way attack drones and North Korean artillery shells and rockets.

The artillery is arriving in quantities that will ensure Russian troops can at least continue fighting at a level consistent with the hostilities in recent months, while the drones are likely to be used along with long-range missiles in Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure over the winter months.

Stoltenberg’s remarks come after Russia launched its biggest drone attack of the war on November 25, targeting Kyiv’s energy infrastructure and signalling what Ukrainian officials fear marked the start of a winter air campaign.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday said his country’s air defences have had a success rate of more than 90 per cent in intercepting Russian missiles and drones in the latest wave of attacks. But he said Kyiv still needed more help from the west to get through the tough winter ahead.

“There is a clear need to develop and reinforce our mobile firing groups, as well as to get all highly effective air defence systems [from western partners],” Zelenskyy said.

Stoltenberg said Russia was “now weaker politically, militarily and economically” than before the February 2022 invasion and had “lost a substantial part of its conventional forces. Hundreds of aircraft. Thousands of tanks. And more than 300,000 casualties.”

Oleksandr Lytvynenko, Ukraine’s chief of foreign intelligence, wrote in a rare public report on the war last week that Russia’s military had been weakened but that Putin had set his economy on a war footing, significantly increasing its arms production which is likely to continue at least until 2026.

“The Kremlin believes that it has enough resources for hostilities with Ukraine at the current level for a long period,” he said. “At the same time, Moscow is convinced that Ukraine’s internal resources are allegedly ‘approaching complete exhaustion’.”

Russia’s goals in Ukraine, to gain as much territory as possible, remain unchanged, he added. Going into winter, the conflict had now fully attained the “stage of a war of attrition”, Lytvynenko said.