Russia continues bombarding northern Ukraine / Biden asks Congress for Covid funding / NASA astronaut returns to Earth

Plus, Meta is reportedly paying a consulting firm to promote negative news about TikTok.

Inside.com Part of   Network March 30, 2022

Presented by

Russia continued bombarding Kyiv and Chernihiv on Wednesday, a day after pledging to scale down its assault in northern Ukraine. The U.S. was among the countries that expressed skepticism toward Moscow's pull-back announcement, warning that Russian troops may try to regroup and launch more attacks. Ongoing negotiations between Ukraine and Russia also appeared inconclusive nearly five weeks after the start of the invasion. More: Russia claims that it is "regrouping" its forces around Kyiv, that its mission in northern Ukraine has been a success, and that it is now focusing on "the final stage of the operation to liberate" areas of eastern Ukraine that have seen separatist violence for years. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and President Biden spoke for an hour on Wednesday. They discussed additional defensive support, humanitarian aid, and "a new package of enhanced sanctions," according to Zelenskyy. Russia threatened to significantly cut energy exports to Germany and demanded that payments for gas be made in rubles. Germany has initiated a contingency plan to ensure adequate energy supply should Russian gas be cut off.

President Biden asked Congress on Wednesday to approve billions of dollars in pandemic funding, warning that the U.S. may be unable to provide enough vaccines or therapeutics over the next year. The White House is seeking $22.5B in emergency funding, which would also go toward reimbursing doctors for the costs of tests and treatments for patients without health insurance. After brief remarks at the White House, Biden received his second booster shot; the additional vaccines were approved by the FDA and recommended by the CDC for individuals over 50 this week. More: Democrats and Republicans disagree on how the funding should be paid for, though negotiations continue. Republicans believe the money should come from pandemic funding earmarked for individual states, an idea previously dismissed by Congressional progressives. The White House says the lack of funding is already having negative impacts. Monoclonal antibody treatments distributed to states have been slashed and could run out in May without new funding. The nation could also see a shortage of at-home tests. Biden also announced the launch of a new website, covid.gov, as a source of pandemic information with national and local guidance. New daily COVID-19 cases in the U.S. remain at their lowest levels since just before the delta surge in July 2021. Some public health experts fear the BA.2 omicron subvariant, now the predominant variant in the U.S., could soon send caseloads higher.

A message from PIPE “This is going to fundamentally change how we raise money and how we scale…” Founders and business owners face one challenge after another as they grow. One of the biggest is finding a way to finance growth without giving away too much equity, taking on restrictive covenants, or being pulled away from the business to fundraise. When MUD\WTR co-founders Paul DeJoe and Shane Heath saw 400% growth in their first year, they couldn’t spend all their time raising rounds to finance that rapid growth:  “Being able to Pipe millions of dollars before we went to fundraise not only allowed us to focus and not worry about day-to-day cash, but it also showed investors that we had access to this capital anytime we wanted,” says DeJoe.  Ready to scale your business? Pipe is the world’s first trading platform to turn your recurring revenue into dilution-free capital. Find out what it means to Pipe your revenue by clicking below: Get Started

The Biden administration sanctioned Iran's missile program as negotiations to revive a stagnant international nuclear deal continue. The sanctions, announced Wednesday by the Treasury Department, come in response to an Iranian missile attack on the Iraqi city of Erbil several weeks ago, which Iran said was targeting Israeli "strategic centers." The missiles struck near a U.S. consulate building under construction in Erbil. More: The sanctions target the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the group that works on ballistic missile research and development, as well as Iranian entities that procure parts for missiles. In February, both the U.S. and Iran appeared to believe that a new nuclear deal was imminent. Officials now say the two sides are far apart on several issues. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett over the weekend and indicated that the U.S. would work to counter any hostile activity from Iran regardless of whether or not a nuclear deal was in place.

GOOD NEWS: Lynching is now a federal hate crime following the passage and signing of the Emmett Till Antilynching Act. In a signing ceremony on Tuesday, President Biden argued that racial hate is a "persistent problem," and not a relic of the past. The law allows for sentences of up to 30 years in prison if a criminal conspiracy to commit a hate crime results in death or serious injury. More: Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black boy, was tortured and killed after he was accused of harassing a white woman in 1955. An all-white jury acquitted his killers. The signing ceremony was attended by Rev. Wheeler Parker, the last surviving relative of Till to witness his abduction. There were more than 4,000 attacks classified as racial lynchings in the U.S. between 1877 and 1950, according to the Equal Justice Initiative. Previous efforts to pass anti-lynching legislation have failed since the early 20th century.

NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei returned to Earth after spending 355 days at the International Space Station, a record for an American. He returned in a Russian Soyuz capsule alongside Russian astronauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anton Shkaplerov. The end of Vande Hei's time in the ISS and his return to Earth followed normal procedures with the Russian Space Agency. More: The three astronauts touched down in Kazakhstan late Wednesday afternoon, and Vande Hei said it looked "beautiful out here." He said that he and his Russian crewmates avoided the topic of Russia's invasion of Ukraine over the last month. "I'm not sure we really want to go there," Vande Hei said. Vande Hei and Dubrov reached the ISS on April 9, 2021, and were joined by Shkaplerov in October. "People have problem on Earth. On orbit...we are one crew," Shkaplerov said in a post-landing interview. Russian cosmonaut Valeri Vladimirovich Polyakov spent 437 days on the Mir space station in the 1990s, setting a record for the longest spaceflight that still stands today.

Meta has reportedly paid a major political consulting firm to initiate a campaign disparaging TikTok. The firm, Targeted Victory, amplified negative coverage of TikTok through letters to the editor in major news outlets, and highlighted rumors about trends like the "Slap a Teacher Challenge." These actions were organized through Google documents like "Bad TikTok Clips," which cataloged successful attempts to paint TikTok in a negative light in U.S. media. More: TikTok is owned by the Chinese company Bytedance, which has raised privacy concerns among cybersecurity experts regarding U.S. data. Emails obtained by The Washington Post indicate that Targeted Victory and Meta were engaged in a significant opposition-research campaign against TikTok and even spread false rumors about the platform. For example, there's no evidence that the "Slap a Teacher Challenge" ever existed. Targeted Victory is a digital consulting firm that has worked with Facebook for years as well as prominent GOP congressional committees and super PACs.

QUICK HITS Don’t let the daily grind become a nightly one, Get custom nightguards and teeth whitening for 80% less than the dentist. Use code INSIDE33 for 33% off.* Tornadoes were reported in Arkansas as part of a storm that is expected to bring extreme weather to much of the U.S. southeast throughout the day. The Hubble Space Telescope has captured an image of the most distant star ever seen, some 12.9 billion light-years away from Earth, NASA said. The White House is expected to end asylum limits at the U.S.-Mexico border by May 23. The restrictions were put in place to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Bruce Willis, 67, is stepping away from acting after being diagnosed with aphasia, a condition that impacts cognitive abilities, his family announced. NFL safety Malcolm Jenkins announced his retirement on Wednesday, following a 13-year career where he won Super Bowls with both the New Orleans Saints and Philadelphia Eagles. Give your recruiting team an unfair advantage with Trinsly. Start your 21-day free trial.* *This is sponsored content.

CLICK ROULETTE The best ongoing bit in comedy...

Upcoming Events March 31 - How To Build In Web 3.0 (Register Here) April 04 - Blockchain and the Law (Register Here) April 05 - Venturing in VC - Episode #14 with Jay Kapoor (VSC Ventures) (Register Here) April 06 - Entertainment in the Metaverse (Register Here) April 07 - Road to Autonomy: Sidewalk Robots with Ali Kashani (Serve Robotics) (Register Here) April 14 - Shopping In The Metaverse (Register Here) April 28 - Alternative Investments 2: Crypto Safety Standards (Register Here) May 12 - Making Metaverse Dating a Reality (Register Here) May 19 - Understanding Fractionalization (Register Here) May 24 - Meet Our Fund 3 (Register Here) June 01 - Selling Consumer Goods in Web3 (Register Here) Want to see all of our upcoming events? Visit us at https://inside.com/events

Jonathan Harris is a writer and editor who lives in Los Angeles. Editor Eduardo Garcia is a writer and editor based in New York. He is writing an illustrated book about climate change that will be published by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House. 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.

Pipe is the world's first trading platform for recurring revenue.

Click to Share ➞

767 Bryant St. #203, San Francisco, CA 94107 Copyright © 2022 Inside.com

Did someone forward this email to you? Head over to inside.com to get your very own free subscription! You received this email because you subscribed to Inside Daily Brief. Click here to unsubscribe from Inside Daily Brief list or manage your subscriptions.