 Pictured: Zelensky advisor Kyrylo Tymoshenko, who stepped down on Tuesday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's anti-corruption drive has led to the resignation of a presidential advisor, four deputy ministers, and five regional governors. The crackdown follows reports that some state officials were taking bribes, buying expensive food, or enjoying lavish lifestyles. More: - Zelensky said there would be "no return to what used to be in the past, to the way various people close to state institutions" would take advantage of state resources.
- He has banned government officials from leaving Ukraine for any reason except authorized business.
- Kyrylo Tymoshenko, a close advisor to Zelensky and frequent government spokesman, resigned on Tuesday after journalists reported that he was driving luxury sports cars.
- Ukrainian Deputy Infrastructure Minister Vasyl Lozinskyi was arrested on Saturday on suspicion of taking a $350,000 bribe in exchange for electricity generators.
Zoom Out: - Ukraine has a long history of corruption. Last year, the country ranked No. 122 in Transparency International's list of the 180 most corrupt countries.
- The European Union has said that Ukraine must root out corruption in order to join the regional bloc in the future.
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 New research found that over 70% of New Yorkers who filed Covid-related workers' compensation claims required medical treatment or could not work six months after filing. The study, which provides concrete evidence of the long-term problems some people suffer after contracting COVID-19, also found that 18% of Long Covid patients had not returned to work a year after getting sick. Of those patients, more than 75% were younger than 60 years old. More: - The research was published by New York State Insurance Fund, New York's largest workers' compensation insurer, based on the fund's internal data.
- Patients in the study filed for workers' compensation after contracting Covid while working in high-risk environments such as hospitals and grocery stores in the first two years of the pandemic.
- The report said that Long Covid is "an underappreciated yet important reason for the many unfilled jobs and declining labor participation rate in the economy."
- Gaurav Vasisht, CEO of the insurance fund, described the study's estimates as "conservative" because they don't account for Long Covid patients who continued working despite their symptoms.
Zoom Out:
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An Israeli ultra-nationalist group that provides financial support to Jewish radicals convicted of violent hate crimes is reportedly collecting donations through a New Jersey non-profit. According to an Associated Press investigation, the Shlom Asiraich group is working with the World of Tzedaka non-profit in New Jersey. More: - Shlom Asiraich, which means "The Well-Being of Your Prisoners," has been fundraising in support of ultra-nationalist terrorists and their families in Israel since at least 2018.
- The group has provided support to Yigal Amir, who assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, and to Amiram Ben-Uliel, who was convicted of murdering a Palestinian baby and his parents in a 2014 arson attack.
- Marcus Owens, an attorney who worked for Internal Revenue Service in the 1990s, said that the Justice Department could determine that World of Tzedaka is providing "material support for terrorism."
- The Associated Press investigation was conducted in partnership with Shomrim, the Center for Media and Democracy in Israel.
Zoom Out: - International observers are concerned that the new far-right Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could embolden Israeli extremists and encourage violence against Palestinians by Israeli settlers.
- Netanyahu appointed Itamar Ben-Gvir, a disciple of ultra-zionist ideologue Rabbi Meir Kahane, as a senior cabinet minister.
- Kahane was a U.S.-born Orthodox rabbi whose extremist variety of Zionism continues to influence Israeli politics more than 30 years after his assassination.
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 GOOD NEWS: Space dust could provide new insight into how to deflect an Earth-bound asteroid. Three microscopic dust particles were originally collected from the 500-meter-long Itokawa asteroid by a Japanese probe in 2005. They were returned to Earth in 2010, and scientists have been analyzing them since. More: - Itokawa is a rubble pile asteroid, meaning that it is formed by rocks, dust, and pebbles held together by their collective gravitational pull.
- However, Itokawa is estimated to have been formed 4 billion years ago, which indicates that these asteroids can be "hard to destroy once they are created" because they can absorb shocks better than solid asteroids.
- Planetary scientist Fred Jourdan, the lead author of the study, said that the resiliency of such asteroids might require new ways to push them off-course if one is headed toward Earth.
- Jourdan suggested that a nuclear blast in space could be used to divert an asteroid.
- The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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 Employment at temporary staffing agencies in the U.S. has been falling for five consecutive months, potentially indicating a labor market cooldown in 2023. Employers fired 35,000 temporary workers in December 2022 in what was the biggest monthly drop for contractors since early 2021. More: - 223,000 new jobs were added to the U.S. economy in December, the lowest monthly total in two years.
- The U.S. unemployment rate fell to 3.5% in December, from 3.6% a month earlier, one of the lowest levels in decades, despite the slowdown in job growth in the second half of 2022.
- Federal Reserve officials expect the unemployment rate to increase following interest rate hikes aimed at fighting inflation.
- James Knightley, the chief international economist at ING, said that the new data is a "real warning sign" that the labor market may be affected by an economic downturn despite strong unemployment numbers.
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 The Spanish labor ministry issued a €57M ($62M) fine to food delivery app company Glovo for labor law violations. Glovo is alleged to have illegally hired ~8,000 foreign nationals starting in 2019. More: - Glovo was fined €79M ($86M) for similar violations in September 2022.
- In 2021, Spanish Labor Minister Yolanda Díaz supported the passage of a "Riders Law" granting employee status to food delivery app drivers who were previously classified as self-employed freelancers.
- The Barcelona-based company, which also operates in other European countries, said that it plans to appeal the fine.
- Glovo argues that the alleged violations occurred before the 2021 law was passed and says the government has been unclear about the new rules.
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- A human rights group and 16 Myanmarese people filed a criminal complaint in Germany against the military junta governing Myanmar. The complainants allege that the generals leading Myanmar committed war crimes during a 2017 crackdown on minority Rohingya Muslims and after the 2021 coup.
- Walmart will raise its national minimum wage for store employees to $14 per hour. Walmart CEO John Furner said that the retailer's average hourly wage in the U.S. should reach $17.50 in early March.
- U.S. skier Mikaela Shiffrin won a record 83rd World Cup race, bringing her closer to the all-time record of 86 victories set by Sweden's Ingemar Stenmark in the 1970s and 1980s.
- Egypt's currency has been devalued by ~33% since October, and the country's inflation rate currently stands at 20%. Egypt is Africa's third-most populous country, with more than 109 million residents.
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 Passionate Instincts No.12 by Alexis Hunter. 1984.
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 |  | Daniel Smith is an Inside Analyst who currently resides in Miami, Florida. A native of Brooklyn, New York, Daniel spent the last four years as a PhD candidate in Politics and International Studies at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. He is fascinated by tech, business, politics, venture capital, and everything in between. When he’s not writing for Inside he can be found kicking a ball on the nearest rugby pitch. Follow him on Twitter @DanSmithInside. |  | | Editor | Eduardo Garcia is a writer and editor based in New York. He is the author of "Things You Can Do," an illustrated book about climate action. Bylines in The New York Times, The Guardian, Slate, Scientific American, and others. In one of his previous lives, Eduardo worked as a Reuters correspondent in Latin America for nearly a decade. | |
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