$30 Trillion.

Long, slow waves of electrical activity.

1. America’s gross national debt topped $30 trillion for the first time yesterday, an ominous fiscal milestone that underscores the fragile nature of the country’s long-term economic health as it grapples with soaring prices and the prospect of higher interest rates. The breach of that threshold, which was revealed in new Treasury Department figures, arrived years earlier than previously projected as a result of trillions in federal spending that the United States has deployed to combat the pandemic. That $5 trillion, which funded expanded jobless benefits, financial support for small businesses and stimulus payments, was financed with borrowed money. The borrowing binge, which many economists viewed as necessary to help the United States recover from the pandemic, has left the nation with a debt burden so large that the government would need to spend an amount larger than America’s entire annual economy in order to pay it off. (Source: nytimes.com, fsapps.fiscal.treasury.gov)

2. Two years into the pandemic, the coronavirus is killing Americans at far higher rates than people in other wealthy nations, a sobering distinction to bear as the country charts a course through the next stages of the pandemic. The ballooning death toll has defied the hopes of many Americans that the less severe Omicron variant would spare the United States the pain of past waves. Deaths have now surpassed the worst days of the autumn surge of the Delta variant, and are more than two-thirds as high as the record tolls of last winter, when vaccines were largely unavailable. With American lawmakers desperate to turn the page on the pandemic, as some European leaders have already begun to, the number of dead has clouded a sense of optimism, even as Omicron cases recede. And it has laid bare weaknesses in the country’s response, scientists said. (Source: nytimes.com)

3. President Vladimir V. Putin said on Tuesday that the United States was trying to pull Russia into an armed conflict over Ukraine that his government did not want and signaled he was prepared to engage in more diplomacy, even as he insisted that NATO’s presence in Eastern Europe threatened world peace. Mr. Putin said he hoped that “dialogue will be continued” over Russia’s security demands, refraining from repeating his earlier threat to take unspecified “military-technical” measures if the West did not comply. (Sources: nytimes.com, washingtonpost.com)

4. The Biden administration has informed the Kremlin it is willing to discuss giving Russia a way to verify there aren’t offensive Tomahawk cruise missiles stationed at sensitive NATO missile-defense bases in Romania and Poland, according to people familiar with the matter. The U.S. proposal is aimed at allaying Moscow’s concerns the launchers could be used to target Russia. One person added any agreement would only happen after discussion with allies, especially Poland and Romania, and would need to be reciprocated with a number of Russian bases housing ground-launched weapons. (Source: bloomberg.com)