What Happened in April 2022?

Tensions Run High in the Middle East

This year Ramadan, Passover, and Easter all fall on the same weekend. 100 people were injured when Israeli security forces entered a mosque in response to Hammas members staging a protest.

California declared historic water emergency measures amid drought

Lake Mead is at only 35% of capacity. Outdoor watering will be restricted to one day a week for about 6 million people. According to CNN, “Grass was the single largest irrigated “crop” in America, surpassing corn and wheat, a frequently cited study from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found. It noted that by the early 2000s, turf grass — mostly in front lawns — spanned about 63,000 square miles, an area larger than the state of Georgia. Keeping all that front lawn grass alive requires up to 75% of just one household’s water consumption, according to that study, which is a luxury that California is unable to afford as the climate change-driven drought pushes reservoirs to historic lows.

Title 42 Expires Drawing Migrants to Texas Border a Governor Sends Busloads to D.C.

Title 42, which turned away immigrants due to Covid concerns, is expiring next month. A huge wave of immigrants is expected, even beyond the current flood of one million in the last six months. To draw attention to the crisis, the Texas governor sent busloads of migrants from the Texas border to Washington DC. Republicans want to extend Title 42 as a tool to turn away migrants, but Democrats support lifting it.

Elon Musk purchased Twitter for $43 billion

He plans to take the company private and promote free speech by removing restrictions. Republicans, conspiracists, and fake news inventors praised the move, while the NAACP warned against allowing hate speech. However, it’s not known if Donald Trump will be reinstated on the platform.

What happened with the Russian invasion of Ukraine In April 2022?

Russia pulled its troops back from the northern capital Kyiv and repositioned them for attack in the east, joining Russian-backed separatists already fighting there. Russia is now focused on the east and south of Ukraine, building a land bridge to the Black Sea through Crimeria which it occupied by force in 2014.

How does buying Russian gas finance the war in Ukraine?

There’s never been a clearer link between energy usage and war. Electricity generated from Russian natural gas and fuel refined from Russian crude goes to the State-owned energy company Gazprom, and then bombs and bullets are bought with the profits.

And yet the EU imports roughly 40% of all its natural gas from Russia. Germany has pledged to wean itself off Russian crude oil by the summer, and natural gas by the end of this year. Meanwhile, European countries are looking for alternative energy sources.

What happened with the US economy in April 2022?

Inflation was up last month by 8 1/2%, which is the largest increase since 1981. Gasoline, housing, and food had the biggest increases.

Covid-19 News April 2022

• The worldwide death toll from COVID-19 is over six million, with the USA approaching one million dead. The CDC said around 60 percent of Americans — more than half of adults and three-quarters of children — have now been infected with the coronavirus. America has nearly twice the deaths as Brazil and India and almost ten times more deaths than most European countries.
• Moderna applied for emergency authorization for their new vaccine for kids six years old and younger. Pfizer will do the same soon.
• The Omicron variant of COVID-19 Has spread worldwide, but it’s still mutating. Just as cases of the Omicron variant subsided in the US, cases from the newest variant, BA.2, are responsible for most new infections.
• The COVID-19 situation is still precarious even though effective treatments are available. Cases skyrocketed in the winter despite widely available vaccines. Some 70 million Americans haven’t gotten even one shot of the vaccine, and around half of people eligible for a booster haven’t bothered to get one. The virus continues to spread and cause preventable deaths, especially among people who are Black or Latinx, people who are poor, or uninsured, and people who live in rural places.
• Dozens of Chinese cities, including Shanghai, have been locked down for weeks with a new outbreak of Covid-19. People are running out of food, and Chinese authorities have evicted residents from their apartments to make room for new COVID-19 isolation facilities.
• China’s zero-tolerance policy means few people have caught the virus and acquired some kind of natural defense, while the Chinese vaccines were not effective enough.
• While most states or cities, and even the airlines, were dropping indoor mask requirements, Philadelphia is the first major city to reinstate their mask mandate due to rising infections of the newest variant. The CDC extended mandatory masks on public transportation for another month due to concerns about the new variant, but a federal judge struck down the rule, saying it exceeded the agency’s authority.