China weighing weapons for Russia? 'Last of Us' sparks zombie fungi fears: 5 Things podcast

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: Blinken says China considering supplying weapons to Russia

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken says China is pondering supplying weapons to Russia. Plus, there are concerns about where U.S. aid to Ukraine is going, USA TODAY National Correspondent Elizabeth Weise talks about zombie fungi, paid verification is coming to Facebook and Instagram, and USA TODAY Consumer Travel Reporter Zach Wichter talks about getting bumped from flights.

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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson and this is 5 Things you need to know Monday, the 20th of February 2023. Today, concerns that China might be upping its support of Russia in Ukraine. Plus a look at zombie fungi, and paid verification is coming to Facebook and Instagram.

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Secretary of State Antony Blinken said yesterday that the US is detecting signs that China is considering supplying weapons to Russia amid its invasion of Ukraine. China declared a year ago that its relationship with Moscow has no limits, but the country's support so far has been limited to not include weapons. Blinken told CBS News from the Munich Security Conference, quote, "We've made very clear to them that that would cause a serious problem for us and in our relationship." Boosting Russia's diminishing arsenal might not only stack the odds against Ukraine, it might also raise the possibility of escalating the conflict into a world war. Russia is already getting assistance from Iran, which has supplied it drones used mostly to damage Ukraine's civilian infrastructure. Ukraine has been receiving support mainly from the US and much of Europe. This coming Friday marks one year since Russia invaded Ukraine.

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Meanwhile, ahead of this week's anniversary of the war, there are concerns about where the billions of dollars spent by the US are going. The Inspector General who has overseen aid to Afghanistan since 2012, along with some House Republicans, are warning that there needs to be closer oversight for the military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. The $113 billion appropriated by Congress last year approaches the $146 billion spent in 20 years for military and humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan. The Pentagon says safeguards have been put up to make sure that US weapons are accounted for by Ukrainian forces after they've been transferred. Support in the US remains strong for Ukraine's resistance to Russia, but it's softening. An Associated Press poll last month showed that 48% of US adults say they favor the US giving weapons to Ukraine. That's a drop from May of last year when that number was 60%.

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As the planet heats up due to climate change, some fungi are figuring out how to exist at higher temperatures than they normally do. So what's that mean for the dreaded zombie ant fungus, and how worried should humans be? USA TODAY National Correspondent Elizabeth Weiss explains. Beth, welcome back to the program.

Elizabeth Weiss:

Thank you.

Taylor Wilson:

So, is climate change making fungal infections more dangerous?

Elizabeth Weiss:

Oh boy. Isn't that just a hysterically wonderful topic? So it is actually, because there are maybe as many as five million fungi in the world, but most of them can't survive at mammalian body heat. So we're basically too hot and they can't live in us, and so we're protected. Unfortunately, some of them, as the climate warms they're starting to evolve to do better in warmer temperatures. And the belief is among scientists that some of these, as they get better at surviving at higher temperatures, are actually now able to survive in mammals, and we are mammals. So there you are.

Taylor Wilson:

Definitely concerning. So what are some of the human fungal diseases that could get worse with climate change?

Elizabeth Weiss:

So there's some interesting ones that are popping up. The one that you hear about a lot in the US, cocci, it's also called Valley Fever, used to be just in the arid Southwest a lot in the Central Valley here in California. But now it's starting to show up in people as far north as Washington state. And it is a debilitating disease. You can get it and clear it and be fine, but for some people, and I've talked to people who've had it, and it's suddenly they are on disability for the rest of their life. So there's cocci, there's this candida auris. It's weird because it's a fungus that used to be rare in humans, and then it independently popped up at four different places around the world. And the thought is that it's probably adapting to a warmer environment. It can cause blood infections for people who are hospitalized, and blood infections that are hard to get rid of.

The oddest one, sporothrix brasiliensis. What's happened with this is that cats, they pick it up from the environment because they're down on the ground, and then they get these open lesions on their face and their paws and other parts of their bodies. And what they found is that veterinarians who are treating them, the cat would shake its head, and these spores would come out of the lesions on the cat's face and get into the eyes and the skin of the veterinarian and infect them. One guy I talked to at the CDC said, "What concerns us is that this type of fungus in its spore form couldn't infect others, but guess what? It can now."

Taylor Wilson:

All right, so ideas about zombies and the zombie apocalypse are very much back in pop culture with this hit show The Last of Us. So how realistic is this and the fungus storyline within the show?

Elizabeth Weiss:

So it is not realistic if you are a human. If you're an ant, it is. And so here's the deal. There's a guy at University of West Virginia in Morgantown who is the world expert in zombie fungal insect diseases. And he said, "The thing is, it takes a really long time for all of this stuff to evolve." He thinks that for any of these fungal infections to evolve to the point where they could turn humans into zombies, he's like, "You're talking a couple of million years." So it's not the 20 years that you get on the TV show. That said, they in fact do exactly this to ants and cicadas, and it is so deeply, deeply gross. Do you want me to describe it to you?

Taylor Wilson:

Let's hear it. Let's hear it.

Elizabeth Weiss:

So with the ants, and it's known as zombie ant fungus, it's a spore that invades the ant, and then through this really dreadful combination of chemical and physical manipulation, it forces the ant to leave whatever it's doing and to climb as high as it can possibly go. And then it coerces the ant to perform it's called a death grip. It bites down on the leaf or the twig or wherever it is so it's fixed in the spot. And then the fungus ... The ant's alive during all this. The fungus kills the hosts, the ant, and then basically eats its body from the inside to produce more of itself. And the fungus bursts out of the head of the corpse and sprays spores that rain down on unsuspecting ants below.

Taylor Wilson:

All right, well a good time to be thankful to be human and not an ant or a cicada or something else, huh?.

Elizabeth Weiss:

That's why we are happy to be mammals with a nice high body temperature.

Taylor Wilson:

Absolutely. We always appreciate you, Elizabeth. Thanks so much.

Elizabeth Weiss:

You're so welcome.

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Taylor Wilson:

Paid verification is coming to Facebook and Instagram. The parent company for the social media apps will begin testing Meta Verified this week. It's a subscription service that allows users to pay to verify their account to get a blue badge, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. He said the service will also give subscribers direct access to customer support. The announcement comes after Twitter launched a similar service, Twitter Blue, last year.

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Have you ever gotten bumped from a flight you paid for? It's becoming more and more common, as USA TODAY Consumer Travel Reporter Zach Wichter told me. Zach, thanks for coming on the podcast.

Zach Wichter:

Yeah, happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

Why are airlines bumping more passengers off of flights these days?

Zach Wichter:

It's a good question, and the simple answer is supply and demand. We saw since the pandemic that travel demand has really snapped back. But also during the height of the pandemic, airlines downsized in a lot of ways. Staff took early retirements, people took buyouts, people took furloughs. There were all kinds of ways that airlines tried to hedge their operations against what was going on when travel demand plummeted. And since then, airlines are trying to get bigger, but they haven't been able to grow back to where they were fast enough to meet the demand, which is pretty much back at pre-pandemic levels, especially for leisure travel. And so what we're seeing is a mismatch in how many people want to fly versus how much airlines are actually able to fly. And part of that is that they're overselling more flights than they used to, because there's such high demand that they are in a position to be able to do that. And the result of that is that more people are getting denied boarding from flights that they've paid for.

Taylor Wilson:

Zach, maybe a dumb question ...

Zach Wichter:

No such thing.

Taylor Wilson:

How is overbooking like this legal? Are there not any rules preventing airlines from doing this?

Zach Wichter:

So it's actually a pretty common practice. And I know that it sounds counterintuitive, but we live in a capitalist society and from a capitalist standpoint, it actually does make sense. And the reason for that is basically that statistically speaking, on most flights there's going to be some number of people that either cancel very last minute or just don't show up. Why it's becoming a bigger problem now is travel patterns have also changed. People are traveling differently than they used to, whether that's because they're blending work and leisure trips, or because they're taking vacations on different days, or their remote work opportunities mean that they can travel on days that weren't traditionally high demand days. And because of that, because of these changing patterns, airlines' data isn't as good. They're having a much harder time predicting how many people are going to not show up for flights or how many people are going to show up for flights. And that's part of why we're seeing these numbers go up.

Taylor Wilson:

All right. Anyone listening who's maybe recently been bumped from a flight, this is for you. Zach, what are passengers entitled to when this happens to them?

Zach Wichter:

First, I just want to make a distinction between voluntary bumping and involuntary bumping. We've all heard that announcement at the gates where airlines say they're looking for volunteers. People go up to the gate and kind of negotiate with the agent or wait for the best offer. In the case of an involuntary bumping where the airline has oversold a flight, they are not receiving enough volunteers, and they just don't have enough seats to accommodate everyone, the DOT does have pretty strict rules for what you're entitled to. In the case of a domestic flight, you are entitled to 200% of the value of a one-way ticket up to $775 if you arrive at your destination one to two hours beyond when you were originally supposed to arrive. If that delay goes to over two hours for a domestic flight, you're entitled to 400% of the value of the one way fair up to $1,550. For international flights departing from the US, it's the same numbers, but the lower threshold is a one to four hour arrival delay, and then it goes to the higher tier for over four hours of arrival delay.

Where it gets a little more complicated is that if you are on a flight departing internationally coming to the US, you're typically governed by the laws of the country that you're leaving from. And so those numbers don't apply for inbound travel. It's only for domestic and outbound international travel from the US.

Taylor Wilson:

Fantastic insight on all of this, Zach. You cover travel for USA TODAY. Thanks so much. Appreciate you.

Zach Wichter:

Yeah, thanks again for having me on.

Taylor Wilson:

Thanks for listening to 5 Things. You can find us every day of the week right here, wherever you get your audio. I'm back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA TODAY.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: China ponders weapons for Russia, 'Last of Us' fungi alarm: 5 Things podcast