On today’s episode of the 5 Things podcast: Zelenskyy to address Congress
Ukraine’s president will make his latest plea to the US for more help amid Russia’s invasion. Plus, reporter Elisabeth Buchwald stops by to talk about the Fed’s inflation plans, women’s March Madness tips off, reporter Mike Snider talks about new research on alcohol shrinking the brain and Uber adds a surcharge amid rising gas prices.
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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:
Buenos dias. I’m Taylor Wilson, and this is 5 Things you need to know Wednesday, the 16th of March 2022. Today, Zelenskyy’s latest plea, plus the Fed’s plan to fight inflation, and more.
Here are some of the top headlines:
- Two journalists working for Fox News were killed this week outside of Kyiv. They are video journalist Pierre Zakrzewski and Ukrainian journalist Sasha Kuvshynova. They were killed in a vehicle hit by fire on Monday.
- The employee of Russian state television, who interrupted a live news broadcast by protesting the war in Ukraine has been fined, but could also face a prison sentence. Marina Ovsyannikova said she was interrogated for 14 hours without legal support.
- And a North Korean missile exploded just after liftoff earlier today in an apparent failure. It’s the 10th launch of its kind this year.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will address US Congress today. He’s hoping to make a direct appeal to US lawmakers for more help as Russia continues its invasion of his country. Previewing his speech from him, Zelenskyy thanked President Joe Biden and others for $13.6 billion in new support, but he also appealed for more weapons, harsher sanctions on Russia, and his familiar plea to close the skies above Ukraine. That last point has not been something Western leaders have been prepared to do out of fears of growing the conflict beyond Ukraine and possibly sparking nuclear tensions with Russia. Zelenskyy was visited yesterday by the prime ministers of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovenia. They traveled by train to Kyiv to show support for Ukraine. Polish Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki.
Taylor Wilson translating for Mateusz Morawiecki:
“This invasion has to stop. The blood on the street, your mothers, your children, your wives are safe, but those who are killed by Putin, they can never be forgotten and they are not forgotten.”
Ukraine and Russia are set to hold talks again today. Zelenskyy said yesterday that Russia’s demands were becoming what he called “more realistic.” Before the latest talks, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow would press its ongoing demands that Ukraine drop its bid to join NATO. And Zelenskyy even told European leaders that he realized NATO has no intention of accepting Ukraine.
As for the scene on the ground in Ukraine, apartment buildings continue to be shelled in and around the capital of Kyiv. Shrapnel from an artillery shell slammed into a 12-story apartment building in central Kyiv earlier today. That set off a major fire, though it’s not clear if anyone was injured or killed. Russia is intensifying forces in Kyiv’s suburbs and 12 towns around the city are without water, while six are without heat. Tonight’s low temperature in Kyiv is 18 degrees. Russian ground forces remain stalled in much of the country, but Russia continues a string of air assaults and is also firing from Naval ships in the Azov and Black Seas.
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With the prices of food and other commodities on the rise, it’s widely expected that the federal reserve will raise interest rates today to fight inflation. As Finance Reporter Elisabeth Buchwald explains to producer James Brown, it’s likely the first of several steps to get things under control.
Elizabeth Buchwald:
We’ve had inflation that’s been really high for about a year now and that’s causing Americans to pay more or on all types of goods and services. And the Fed, one of their main policy objectives is to control inflation and to promote low unemployment. So now they’re moving to use one of their tools, which is raising interest rates to control some of the inflation. And they’re likely going to be raising rates today. And that’s going to have a lot of ramifications. It’s probably part of a bigger picture cycle that they’re doing. It’s not just going to be a one and done type deal.
James Brown:
So we can expect more of this?
Elizabeth Buchwald:
We can expect more rate hikes in the coming months. And that’s what the Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has signaled to us because inflation is higher than the central bank has expected it to be. And to get it back down, it’s not going to be enough just to raise rates by a little bit. But he’s in a balancing act right now, knowing that there’s all this tension going on with Ukraine and it’s rattling markets and all of that, between that and lowering inflation, because it really is putting a strain on Americans’ budgets.
James Brown:
Let’s take that apart for a moment. So if I want to take out a loan on a house or to buy a car, odds are it’s going to cost me more over time. Is that what I’m hearing?
Elizabeth Buchwald:
Yeah, it will cost you more, but it’s not going to be a crazy amount more. So I think there’s this fear that the Fed raising interest rates is going to mean you’re paying thousands of dollars more for an auto loan, for a mortgage. It’s going to be gradual. And what they’re doing is, what they said they’re going to do at least is, do a quarter percent increase, which is not a whole lot. I mean, people are paying pretty high rates on credit cards. Well, actually pretty low rates right now, but historically have paid high rates on credit cards and it’s just that little tiny percentage increase, isn’t going to kind of rattle things that much. You’re not going to have to be straining to make ends meet, but yes, over time it is more expensive to take out loans.
James Brown:
How would raising interest rates control inflation or deflate inflation?
Elizabeth Buchwald:
You can essentially just think of the Fed raising interest rates as though you’re getting an interest rate increase on loans and credit cards and all of that. It just makes that more expensive. So when it’s harder to get access to money, prices theoretically should come down because easy money is what puts the prices up.
James Brown:
Elisabeth Buchwald, thanks for joining us.
Elizabeth Buchwald:
Thank you.
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The Women’s NCAA Basketball Tournament tips off today with a pair of play-in games. 16 seeds Howard and Incarnate Word will battle at 7:00 Eastern, followed by 11 seeds Dayton and DePaul at 9:00. Then another pair of games is set for tomorrow. You can watch tonight’s women’s play-ins on ESPNU. Meanwhile, on the men’s side, 16 seeds Bryant and Wright State play at 06:40 before 11 seeds, Notre Dame and Rutgers at 9:10. Yesterday, Texas Southern and Indiana moved on to the field of 68. You can watch the men’s play-ins on truTV.
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According to a new study, moderate consumption of alcohol, even just one drink a day for women and up to two for men is linked with a loss of brain volume. Reporter Mike Snider tells us that the more you drink, the more your brain may shrink.
Mike Snider:
There’s been a lot of research over the years about alcohol consumption. Too much can bring on all kinds of diseases or cause mortality in addition to diseases. But there’s also this aspect that we’ve had for decades that moderate drinking and light drinking actually can be a health benefit to people. So now that brings us to modern day and we have these kind of conflicting ideas about what alcohol does and the reason we have that is because there just hasn’t been longitudinal studies of certain types of drinking over vast amounts of people.
So what these researchers did is they took this group of about 36,000 adults in the UK. It’s a long-term study. All these people had had a brain scan and they’d answered a questionnaire in advance of what was their alcohol intake and other types of things they did. And they looked at all the brains scan. They divided the people into how much alcohol they had each week, everything from people who didn’t drink at all to those who drank more than two beers or two glasses of wine daily.
So what they found was that the amount of alcohol you drank, led to increased brain shrinkage. So if you’re 50 years old, they pick that age to use as an example of the findings they had, if you drank half a beer or half a glass of wine each day, your brain aged about a half a year. But if you increased that to a full pint of beer or a glass of wine a day, it was as if your brain had aged two years. And then as you drank more, if you drank a beer and a half or a glass of wine and a half daily, it was as if your brain had aged three and a half years.
So what they’re saying is there is an association with alcohol consumption and brain shrinkage. We know our brain shrinks as we age, and as we get older, that leads to eventually, in most people, some decreased brain function, memory, things like that. The thought would be, if your brain is shrinking and you’re not that old yet, you could have these same kind of functions, too. Now these aren’t shown chemically. They didn’t tie the individual people to the brain scan and say, hey, there’s really no way to say, hey, is your brain functioning better than it was a year ago, based on how much alcohol you’ve taken in. But they say there’s an association here. So what we need after this is even more study about the effect of alcohol. There’s no definite tie here, but they say that the research shows there’s an association.
Taylor Wilson:
Check out Mike’s full story in today’s episode description.
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Beginning today, Uber will get a little more expensive. The app is adding a surcharge to rides and deliveries as gas prices are soaring around the country. The costs are based on the average trip distance and increase in gas price in each state. The extra charge will be either 45 cents or 55 cents on each ride and 35 or 45 cents on each Uber Eats order, depending on location. The surcharge though will not apply to rides or deliveries in New York City. Drivers there received a 5.3% increase to the city’s minimum earning standard earlier this month.
Thanks for listening to 5 Things. You can find us wherever you get your pods, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your smart speaker device. And if you’re on Apple Podcasts, we ask for a five-star rating and review if you have a chance. Thanks to producers James Brown and PJ Elliott for their great work on the show, and I’m back tomorrow with more than 5 Things from USA TODAY.
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism