1 Biden Warns Putin Of "Strong Response" If Ukraine Is Attacked
“Direct and straight forward.” That's how National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan is describing President Biden's roughly two-hour video call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Ukraine. Russia has been amassing troops and apparatus on the border of Ukraine. Sullivan told reporters that Biden warned Putin about strong economic response and "other measures" in the event of military escalation in Ukraine. Sullivan did not elaborate on what those consequences might be. Still, Sullivan said U.S. officials don't believe Putin has actually made a decision about invading Ukraine. Putin has been seeking assurances that Ukraine will never be invited to join NATO – something the U.S. is a non-starter. As for the tone of the exchange, Sullivan called it "useful," and added, :There was a lot of give and take. There was no finger wagging.”
2 Amazon Server Outage Affects Numerous Sites
Netflix, Disney+ and many more high-profile sites were offline due to an Amazon server issue yesterday. The company said the "root cause" has been identified and work is underway to get things back online completely. Many of Amazon's products were dealing with outage issues as a result of what happened. Sites affected also included Tinder, Venmo, the trading app Robinhood and cryptocurrency exchange site Coinbase. Those trying to sell on Amazon were having trouble accessing Seller Center, which is used to manage orders. The company said network devices in Northern Virginia were behind the outage. As of this morning, Amazon says "many" of its services are restored. While many services have come completely back online, Amazon still isn’t sure when all services will be restored.
3 Debt Ceiling Plan Moves Through Congress
The House is passing a new debt ceiling plan after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell cut a deal with Democrats. McConnell and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer agreed to create a one-time process that would allow Democrats to raise the debt ceiling on partisan votes alone. The legislation will now need to be voted on in the Senate to move forward. The legislation would make Congress specify the exact dollar amount of the new national debt limit which is likely to be more than 30-trillion-dollars. As part of that, Senators will decide whether to raise the debt ceiling or not tomorrow. While McConnell expressed confidence enough GOP senators will support a measure to allow the other bill to pass with a simple majority, some of the 11 Republican lawmakers who helped advance related legislation in October have also said they won't support the current agreement.