Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.

US government announces ‘largest ever’ investment in electric grid

Summary: A fresh $3.46 billion investment focused on upgrading the US’s aging electrical grid has been announced, and the money will be funneled to 58 projects across 44 states.

Context: This money comes from a larger pot of funds established by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and it will help clean up, reinforce, and build-out the country’s energy grid, which has been struggling with a surge in renewable energy production across the US, but also with basic maintenance issues; these funds, which when added to private investments will tally something like $8 billion, will help more than 35 gigawatts of renewable energy come online across the country, alongside around 400 microgrids, which will add some much-needed resiliency and reduce outages in blackout-prone areas.

—The Verge

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A fertilizer shortage is spreading desperate hunger in Africa and Asia

Summary: Economic issues stemming from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have left farmers across Africa and in parts of Asia without enough fertilizer, reducing crop-yields and adding to the food shortage already being experienced in these areas due to the reduction in wheat and other fundamental food exports from Ukraine and Russia.

Context: Other variables are also contributing to this food shortage, including climate-change-related heat waves, droughts, and floods, but the scarcity of fertilizer ingredients on the global market is the result of Russia’s invasion, as Russia is the primary source of these ingredients; ballooning shipping costs during the pandemic, followed by US dollar value increases (fertilizer components tend to be priced in USDs, globally), followed by export irregularities caused by the war in Ukraine, have had the cascading effect of more than doubling fertilizer prices and reducing the availability of these materials, which has messed with with agricultural supply chains around the world and perpetuated those existing food scarcity issues.

—The New York Times

COVID antiviral Paxlovid to see price increase following 400% vaccine hike

Summary: Following a four-fold price-increase on their COVID-19 vaccine, drug-maker Pfizer has announced that they’ll likely hike the price on their COVID antiviral treatment, Paxloxid, maybe up to around three- to five-times its current cost.

Context: A round of Paxlovid already costs $530, and financial analysts are saying the company could up that to as much as $2,500 per course; folks in the US who are prescribed Paxlovid for their COVID infections generally get payment assistance, their insurance, Medicaid, Medicare, or government assistance programs paying for most or all of it, but it’s expected that interest will drop with higher prices, and Paxlovid has already seen a diminishment in use—so this may mark a turning point at which the drug becomes simultaneously more expensive and less prescribed.

—Ars Technica

The EIA projects that the US will substantially expand its liquified natural gas exports for the next several years, serving the needs of countries like Germany, which have been struggling to replace gas imports from Russia, and other nations that are working to replace more-polluting and emitting coal and oil energy infrastructure with gas versions (which are less-emitting and polluting) of the same.

—US Energy Information Administration

300 million

Number of copies of Minecraft that have been sold since 2011.

That makes the 3D-pixelated game the second bestselling video game of all time, after only Tetris (which has been around a lot longer, and has been ported to pretty much every device with a screen) which claims sales of around 520 million copies.

—Gizmodo

Trust Click

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