Good morning and welcome to Tuesday. Icymi, we launched a brand-new website yesterday. What do you think? Just hit reply and let us know.

• One fun thing: If you’re currently on desktop (i.e., a laptop or home computer), click to visit our site and then type “thedonut”... you’ll see something pop up in the top right corner.😉

🚀⏰ Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news takes 4.77 minutes to read.

"The person who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones."

–Confucius (551 BC – 479 BC)

North Carolina is an eight-seed in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, not a nine.🤦‍♀️ Still, it doesn't make their upset of defending champ No. 1 Baylor any less impressive.

🇺🇦 Russian missiles struck Kyiv, Odesa, Mariupol and other locations across Ukraine yesterday, as Moscow appeared to signal a shift in its battle plan amidst a stalled military ground offensive.

• The Institute for the Study of War, a non-partisan DC think tank, said the war has now reached a “stalemate” after Ukrainian forces defeated the initial Russian campaign, which aimed to capture several major cities within days of invading.
• "Stalemate is not armistice or ceasefire... If the war in Ukraine settles into a stalemate condition Russian forces will continue to bomb and bombard Ukrainian cities, devastating them and killing civilians," the institute added.
• Ukrainian officials said that Moscow demanded Mariupol surrender by 5 a.m. yesterday morning, in exchange for sparing the lives of those who complied and allowing “peaceful civilians” to escape.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reportedly responded that Russia would have to “destroy us all” before Mariupol would surrender.

How the invasion is impacting…

📱 Social media: Soccer star David Beckham handed his Insta account – and its 71.5 million followers – over to a Ukrainian doctor in Kharkiv for a day; Dr. Iryna, a child anesthesiologist, posted Stories using videos and photos from the front lines of the war.

🛢️ Oil & gas: Per the WSJ, there’s growing support for an EU-wide ban on the purchase of Russian oil, though several nations – including Germany, Italy and the Netherlands – have voiced their opposition.

• Last year, crude oil and petroleum product exports made up 37% of Russian export revenue, with around half of it going to Europe (for a price equivalent to $97 billion in euros).

🏛️ The SEC (the agency, not the collegiate conference) unveiled a landmark proposal yesterday that would require companies listed on US exchanges to disclose their climate-related risks and greenhouse gas emissions.

• The proposed law would compel businesses to obtain independent certification of their climate estimates.
• As written, most companies in the S&P 500 would have to report the greenhouse gas output of both their supply chain and consumers.
• While hundreds of firms have already begun to report such information, SEC officials say the current system is inconsistent and makes it hard for investors to compare across different companies.

✋ Yes, but… The proposal is all-but-certain to face legal challenges from Republicans and some industry groups, which argue the new rules go far beyond the SEC’s mandate to protect investors by requiring that companies disclose financially-relevant information.

• Some businesses fear the new rules could leave well-meaning firms potentially liable to lawsuits, given how difficult it is to accurately measure emissions and climate change risks.

👀 Looking ahead… The SEC’s draft proposal will now be open to public comment for at least two months before the agency starts working to finalize a rule.

+Dig deeper: From the Left | From the Right

The American Psychiatric Association added “prolonged grief disorder” to its official diagnostic manual last week, ending more than a decade of argument in the field of mental health.

🤔 Why it’s a big deal: Grief is a universal emotion, and the APA is psychiatry’s most powerful body in the US. Its manual is the standard reference for the field, shaping the treatments and insurance decisions of millions for years into the future.

📜 Background… Since the ‘90s, some researchers have argued that intense forms of grief should be classified as mental illness, saying society tends to accept the suffering of grieving people and fails to steer them toward treatment that could help.

• Research by Dr. Holly G. Prigerson, a psychiatric epidemiologist, has shown that for most people, symptoms of grief peak in the six months after the death.
• But a group of outliers – ~4% of grieving individuals – remain stuck and depressed, struggling with mood, functioning and sleep over the long term. (Many of the articles we read used the example of a grieving widow/widower.)
• The disorder’s definition in the manual was designed to be applied to these individuals who are incapacitated from grief one year or more after their loss.

✋ Yes, but… Throughout the past few decades, critics of the idea have argued strongly against categorizing grief as a mental disorder, warning of false positives – aka grieving people told by doctors that they have mental illnesses when they are actually emerging, slowly but naturally, from their losses.

• They also warn that the diagnosis will be seen as a growth market by drug companies, who will then try to persuade the public that they need medical treatment to emerge from mourning (since the addition of prolonged grief disorder to the psychiatric manual means insurance companies can now be billed for treatments).

📊 Flash Poll: What’s your take?

Grief is a mental disorder as defined by the APA; no qualms → (Vote)

Grief is a mental disorder as defined by the APA, but I’m worried about some things → (Vote)

It’s not a disorder → (Vote)

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🇬🇧 The UK government is reportedly considering a $21+ billion proposal to build a solar-powered space station that can beam energy down to Earth using microwaves or laser beams.

• Space-based solar power is one of the technologies featured in the UK’s Net Zero Innovation Portfolio, which aims to find solutions that allow the country to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
• While the idea of beaming solar energy down to Earth from space isn’t new, recent developments in key technical areas – like lightweight solar panels, wireless energy transmission and space robotics – have made the prospect more achievable.
• The UK’s initial test satellite, which could potentially be operational by 2040, would be able to deliver 2GW of power to the country’s power grid, which has an overall capacity of about 76GW.

✋ Yes, but… Assembling even just one space-based solar power station is an enormous task that would require many space shuttle launches.

• Although the system is designed to reduce the UK’s carbon footprint in the long run, it would actually increase net emissions in the short-term due to the environmental impact of so many launches into space.

🌎 Zoom out: A handful of other organizations are currently exploring the feasibility of space-based solar power stations, including the US military, the Chinese government, the European Space Agency and the Australian government.

• ☝️ A new Broadway musical about Michael Jackson is launching a national tour across 17 major cities starting next year.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 💰 Berkshire Hathaway is acquiring insurance company Alleghany for $11.6 billion.
• 🛒 Instacart joined Uber and Lyft in adding a surcharge to help drivers cover fuel costs; the charge is $0.40 per order.
• 💘 Match Group is launching a new dating app called Stir that will target the roughly 20 million single parents in the US.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 🏀 The Sweet Sixteen for women’s March Madness has been finalized; games will resume on Friday.
• 🇺🇦🎮 Epic Games announced ahead of the release of the new Fortnite season that all proceeds from the first two weeks would be donated towards Ukraine relief; the company raised $36 million after just 24 hours.
• 🏈 The Cleveland Browns announced the acquisition of QB Deshaun Watson from the Houston Texans for a package that includes three first-round picks; the Browns also signed Watson, who has been accused of sexual assault or harassment by nearly two dozen women, to a new five-year, $230 million contract.

SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🔐 Passwords with eight characters or fewer can be hacked within roughly eight hours, per a new study.
• 🧊🪐 A team of scientists at UNLV discovered a new form of ice that’s created under high-pressure conditions; it may be common on distant, water-rich planets.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• 🎤 Sir Mix-A-Lot is releasing 6,665 unique cartoon NFTs called Bit Butts at the end of this month; the Baby Got Back singer is donating a portion of each sale to the Colorectal Cancer Alliance.
• 🍟 McDonald’s infamous Szechuan sauce is coming back on March 31, but there’s a catch: it's only available through the app.
• ✈️ A Boeing 737-800 crashed in southern China on Monday with 132 people on board; no signs yet of survivors; the plane plummeted more than 20,000 feet in a little over a minute.
• 🇲🇲 Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Myanmar military’s violent repression of its largely Muslim Rohingya population amounts to genocide; it’s the sixth time the State Department has formally used the term since the Cold War. (From the Left | From the Right)

+Update: Telegram’s ban in Brazil has been lifted.

💬 Quoted… “The labor market is very strong, and inflation is much too high.”

• Fed Chair Jerome Powell told Congress yesterday that the central bank is prepared to raise interest rates by a half-percentage point – high enough to deliberately slow the economy – if it concludes such steps are warranted to combat inflation.
• Dig deeper: From the Left | From the Right | What's the role of the Federal Reserve?

📶 📉 Fact of the Day: Despite historic levels of inflation, the average price of a cell phone plan is actually decreasing.

💘📱 Stats of the Day: In a survey of 5,000+ recently-engaged couples, The Knot found that 1 in 4 had met online. Of those couples, three dating apps were the most responsible:

1. Tinder: 27%
2. Bumble: 23%
3. Hinge: 21%

🤯 Did You Know?... In 1990, Michigan police rounded up a group of 86 drug dealers by inviting them to the fake wedding of two of their customers, who were undercover cops.

• The arrests got underway once the wedding band – also undercover officers – started playing "I Fought The Law (And The Law Won)."

📖 Worth a Read: Are Advertisers Going to Infiltrate Our Dreams? → (The Hustle)

A herd of 60 elephants was celebrated last week at Thailand's Botanical Park in honor of National Elephant Day. 

• The huge animals were treated like royalty as they helped themselves to a massive fruit buffet to mark the occasion.(☝)

🐘🐘🐘 Don't you forget about me... As a symbol of national pride, elephants play an important role in the cultural identity of Thailand. 

• "People enjoy seeing the elephants and giving them food, especially bananas that they like, and [the elephants] all look healthy and happy," said Kampon Tansacha, president of Nong Nooch Tropical Garden.

🔢🎓 Calling all math scholars… Obtain the desired result by adding, subtracting, multiplying or dividing the numbers provided below. Each provided number can be used only once, and you don’t necessarily have to use each one.

Numbers: 1, 3, 4, 15, 100

Result: 126

📚 Any book-lovers in the audience?... Unscramble the words below. The theme is: “Parts of a Book.”

MEDKLWAONGSTNEC

EIXDPAPN

RBLIYHIBGAPO

TNADOEDIIC

NOOETFOT

❓ Trivia: How long has Queen Elizabeth II reigned over England? (Rounded to the nearest decade)

keep scrolling for the answers

Check out our referral prizes you can get just for introducing people you know to this newsletter. 👇

Here’s your unique link to copy & send to anyone you think would like the DONUT:

Numbers: 3 x 4 = 12; 12 - 1 = 11; 11 + 15 = 26; 26 + 100 = 126

• There are other answers, too; this is just the easiest one we could find

Word Scramble: Acknowledgements, appendix, bibliography, dedication, footnote

Trivia: 70 years