April 19, 2022

UKRAINE | Today is day 55 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Here are your updates:

• Ukrainian officials say Russia’s long-anticipated, full-scale military offensive in the eastern Donbas region is now underway, with Russian ground forces reported to be assaulting the region along a 300 mile front. [more]
• No humanitarian corridors to evacuate civilians trapped in Ukrainian cities under Russian attack have been agreed upon for the third day in a row, according to Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk. [more]

AFGHANISTAN | Reports say at least six people were killed and 11 injured when multiple  explosions took place this morning outside a high school in Kabul, Afghanistan. Casualty reports are varied and being updated. No claims of responsibility for the attack have yet been made. [more]

ISRAEL | Israeli warplanes carried out a series of strikes on a reported weapons manufacturing site in southern Gaza Strip early this morning. The action took place after Palestinian militants fired a rocket into southern Israel for the first time in months yesterday. [more]

COVID-19 | A federal judge in Florida yesterday voided the U.S. national mask mandate for travelers on airplanes and other public transportation. In her ruling, U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle said the CDC did not properly justify its decision to keep the mandate in force and that it did not follow proper procedures in implementing the mandate rules. Transportation Security Administration officials say they have suspended the enforcement of mask mandate rules after the ruling, pending future appeals. [more]

SOUTH CAROLINA | Police have arrested a second suspect in connection with a shootout that took place at a shopping mall in Columbia, South Carolina, on Saturday. A third suspect is still being sought. [more]

INFRASTRUCTURE | New guidance announced by the Biden administration yesterday requires that all construction materials for infrastructure projects funded by the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package passed last November be made in the United States. The rules do, however, provide for waivers of the made-in-the-USA requirement, for example if there are not enough domestic producers of materials. [more]

ONLINE DATA | The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday reaffirmed its ruling that scraping publicly accessible data on the internet is not a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.  The decision is seen as a major win for archivists, academics, researchers and journalists. [more]

GLOBAL ECONOMY | Economists at the World Bank, citing ongoing pandemic effects and the war in Ukraine, have cut their forecast for 2022 global economic growth to 3.2%, down from a previous estimate of 4.1%.  [more]

WILDFIRES | Officials in Arizona have issued mandatory evacuation orders for residents near Mount Union due to a wildfire that has burned about 500 acres in the area. [more]

CLIMATE CHANGE | The prime ministers of New Zealand and Singapore announced today that their nations will cooperate on the adoption of green technologies to help fight climate change. [more]

BOSTON MARATHON | Peres Jepchirchir, of Kenya, won yesterday’s 2022 Boston Marathon women’s race with a time of 2:21:01. Evans Chebet, also of Kenya, won the men’s race, finishing with a time of  2:06:51. [full results] [more]

LONG LIVE THE SATELLITES | The United States on Monday said it will not conduct destructive anti-satellite missile tests that generate large amounts of orbiting debris and endanger the safety of astronauts and other satellites, becoming the first country to make such a commitment. [more]

TODAY IN HISTORY | On this date in 1775, the Battles of Lexington and Concord took place between British troops and American colonists, marking the beginning of the American Revolution. [more history]