Today is Friday, March 5th.

We have an update on the status of that massive COVID-19 relief bill that would give more direct payments to Americans.

There will now be days of debate over it, what both sides are saying.

Also, the chaos caused by a history making earthquake near New Zealand.

Plus, explaining NFTs in the music industry, yet another new streaming service is now available,

and giving people around the country an excuse to unplug today.

Welcome, welcome to The Newsworthy, all the days news in around 10 minutes.

Fast, fair, fun, and on the go.

I'm Air Commandy, thanks so much for being here.

You ready? Let's do this.

The US Senate is forging ahead with the latest massive COVID-19 relief package,

and it's on track to become law as soon as next week, even though Republicans are not happy about

this. Before the full debate even started, the Senate held what Politico is calling a test

vote to see if they should even bother with debate. To that, every Republican voted no.

But Democrats said yes, and that's all it took for the bill to move forward.

The process, though, is pretty tedious.

First up, one Republican Senator asked the clerk to read the entire package out loud,

all 628 pages of it. That went on for hours yesterday and continues today.

Once that's done, both parties have up to 10 hours each to explain why they're for

or against the aid package.

Already, the Senate has made some changes to the bill since it passed in the House.

It took out the national minimum wage increase, and it added billions for more education,

...