Catching you up on what you Need to Know on Mar 18, 2022, with updates on the war in Ukraine, President Biden’s meeting with Xi Jinping, Meta removing a deepfake video of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Britney Griner, vaccine updates, and tech news.

Latest Clips

Need2Know: Ukraine Update, Biden China Talk, Deepfakes & Britney Griner

Meanwhile, guys, let's get you caught up in some of the stories you need to know this morning and we have to start of course with the latest in Ukraine cities packed with civilians continue to be under fire. But the ports city of Mariupol has established and agreed upon evacuation route right now for residents. Nine other rounds around Ukraine have also been established. That is civilians are fleeing to cities not yet under threat from Russian control. Now there has been some significant humanitarian aid that's been delivered so far to Ukrainian towns, about 36 tons of food and medicine so far coming from the northwest. Also today, President Biden is scheduled to hold a very big phone call with chinese President xi Jinping that over Russia's invasion into Ukraine. Now, U. S. Officials are reporting that Russia asked china for military and economic assistance all to help counter the effect of Western sanctions. That makes President Biden's call, Was she all that more important now ahead of the call, A Beijing official did say with respect to the Ukraine Russia conflict, That china quote, respects the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries and the call is expected to be held about nine a.m. This morning. Hannah. Meanwhile, baker facebook parent company meta has removed a digitally altered video of Ukrainian President Zelensky from its platforms. The video was determined to be a deepfake in which someone was Impersonating Zelinsky ordering his troops to surrender to the Russians, metas Head of Security Policy says the video was quickly removed for breaking its rules surrounding manipulated media. Ukraine's center for Strategic Communications also saw such a situation coming a few weeks ago, they warned citizens not to trust any surrender statement they see from Zielinski on television. Meanwhile, Russian media saying that the detention of american W N. B. A. Star, Brittney Griner has now been extended now to May the 19th. One of the most well known players in women's basketball. Greiner was traveling to Moscow when she was arrested in mid february. That was when airport security allegedly found cannabis vaping cartridge in her luggage. The charge could also carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. The 31 year old and two time olympic champion is said to be doing okay in detention and is seeing her legal team multiple times a week And some more news on the vaccine front. Early data from a new study suggests that 1/4 dose of the COVID-19 vaccine is quote ineffective for young healthy individuals that have already been boosted. The study, published by the New England Journal of Medicine found no additional antibodies for participants that received 1/4 dose mentioning the antibody levels. We're just about the same as a month after the 3rd dose vaccines from Pfizer biontech and Moderna. The study also found that infection rates among vaccinated individuals were only slightly lower than those who only received three doses. The head researcher on the study still emphasized how important it was to receive a third dose but concluded that 1/4 dose is likely only necessary for at risk populations? That's some pretty big news right there. Meanwhile, let's talk about amazon's huge $8.4 billion acquisition of Hollywood studio MGM. Now officially a done deal. That deal brings MGM more than 17,000 tv and 4000 films all under the amazon umbrella. Now, beyond that impressive slate of content, The acquisition also allows amazon to help MGM keep pace that in a space that's being fueled by increasing mergers and the ever involving streaming marketplace as well. This also comes after the deadline for the Federal Trade Commission to challenge that merger expired, which it may still challenge. That's if they determine the deal violates the law. Now, the european commission had signed off on the acquisition earlier this week and of course the biggest part in this acquisition, no doubt of the MGM library is James bond that is basically going to be the biggest part in all this. There's been indications from amazon that they want to turn James bond into more streaming things that you can put on prime video. But the hard part, a lot of people don't realize is James bond is also owned by a family, the broccoli family which owns controlling rights on them and they're very old school, they like James bond films to be in the theater. They don't like the streaming platforms. Very much so that's gonna be the sort of the next thing to sort of watch here. How does amazon deal with the broccoli family when it comes to, what's happening with James now secured? Is that part of the right? So true. I was looking at MGM film catalog by the way. That's 12 angry men create basic instinct. Rocky, legally blonde. Excuse me, Moonstruck, Silence of the lambs. I mean I could go on, it's all of these classic films so that could certainly help and look, we talked about this on this show all the time and we talked about this the other day with Discovery now putting all discovery plus stuff potentially here after this merger on HBO max, it's all content play against netflix. So now with your amazon and you have all of this stuff coming from MGM and don't forget Mark Burnett's all over. His reality programs are part of MGM as well. Your amazon now and you're feeling much better now about all of the content. You have the downside for all of this is, there's very few except for maybe Lions Gate studios left that are up for grabs right now. Maybe a 24 which has been rumored that Apple might want to acquire them, but there's very few independent studios that are left now and it's hard to keep tabs on which one is in which one? Like sometimes I want to watch this movie. Oh yeah, where do you watch it? Nobody knows who owns, what you have to kind of play that game in your head. That's the one thing I wish we had in the streaming culture is like something that sort of I mean Apple tv tries to do it but basically aggregates everything that it's like oh if I want to watch Mean Girls for the three billion times, what platform am I wanting to be able to watch it on? Right. Yeah, we have to make that chart, we'll get on that. All right, next up, Apple's app store dominance will face some challenges in europe. After lawmakers passed a new legislation coming in the next few weeks, the eu legislation will force Apple to allow software to be downloaded outside of its app store and give companies more control over consumers use of payment systems on their apps. If past violations of the new law could bring billions of euros in fines. This follows years of conflict between Apple lawmakers and regulators all over the world for its stranglehold of the app store. Apple is currently allowed to take commissions of at least 30% for in app purchases. Which has drawn plenty of criticism. Apple's defense is that it's simply providing a platform for these companies and any changes may expose users to security and privacy issues. So I was looking into this story and Spotify is obviously a huge app that a lot of people have Spotify decided to change this in 2016 and now since then customers can download the app from the app store, but then when they want to make additional purchases from Spotify, they have to do it within the Spotify app. Exactly. Therefore eliminating that 30% upcharge, you have to do it workarounds that way. Apple doesn't take the 30% cut. And that's sort of been the fight from a lot of people like Epic Games, the makers of Fortnite took Apple to court because of this situation because Epic Games was essentially saying Apple was taking millions of dollars away from them by taking that 30% fee here. And Apple saying, look, we obviously on the app store, but we're basically providing you security guarantees. We're providing this great platform for viewers here. So we obviously need to be compensated here at the same time. Now, a lot of experts are saying what happens here in europe Watch, what happens? Because if this gets approved, you likely could see something happen here in the United States as well because there's already sort of legislation being percolated by amy Klobuchar and some republicans as well in the Senate to maybe have the same thing happened here in the United States because it'll be difficult for Apple to basically say, okay, we don't have to take 30% in the in the european union, but we're fine taking it here in the United States. It will be a difficult argument essentially for them to make their Oh absolutely. And there's so many small companies who have happened and I didn't even realize that they are losing 30% could be in there. That's sort of the counter argument here that some people are saying, look, maybe if if the the medium approach here that like the middle ground is, Big companies lose that 30% to apple, but it's the smaller players that still are able to sort of keep that money. That maybe could be the middle ground here, but something obviously to watch.