Good morning, it’s Friday.

Happy April Fools’ Day!

I went deep on this one, not something I had given much thought to in the past. Turns out that while April Fools’ Day has been celebrated in one way or another by a number of different cultures for centuries, its exact origins are unknown.

Generally speaking, it’s a day for hoaxes, pranks, and practical jokes.

Some experts think it dates back to 1582 when some people failed to get the message about the switch from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, and continued to celebrate the new year off-cycle.

These poor misinformed folks became the butt of numerous jokes – including having a paper fish secretly affixed to their backs. (Why this is funny, I really don’t understand. Just click here for more on that).

Apparently, though, there was also an ancient Roman festival called Hilaria (Latin for joyful) celebrated at the end of March that involved people dressing up in disguises and mocking fellow citizens.

If you Google “famous April Fools’ Day pranks” you get a LOT of hits. Here are a few of my favorites:

  • In 1957, a news broadcaster told his British audience that Ticino, a Swiss region near the Italian border, had “an exceptionally heavy spaghetti crop” that year. This tall tale – one of the most famous April Fools’ Day pranks of all time – featured “footage” of people picking spaghetti off of trees and bushes, then sitting down at a table to eat some of their home-grown harvest.
  • In 1989, Virgin Group founder, billionaire, and notorious lover of April Fools’ Day launched his annual prank a day early. On March 31, residents outside London reported spotting a UFO that turned out to be a hot air balloon piloted by Branson and a friend who was dressed up as an alien. Police who went to investigate got the shock of their lives.
  • In 1992, comedian Rich Little teamed up with NPR’s John Hockenberry to fool Talk of the Nation program into thinking that disgraced former President Richard Nixon would be running for office again.
  • In 1996, Taco Bell ran full-page ads in several newspapers claiming it was buying the Liberty Bell and renaming it to the “Taco Liberty Bell.” The company and the National Park Service received angry phone calls from people who actually believed this
  • This one isn’t specifically tied to April Fools’ Day, but it’s still wonderful). In 1959, students in São Paulo, Brazil, who were tired of the city’s overflowing sewers and inflated prices launched a campaign to elect a rhinoceros to the city council – and won.

I’m sure there are a lot more where these came from. But this intro is getting a little long, and I’m sure you have places to go and people to see.

After some decidedly balmy temperatures yesterday, today is going to be a bit colder, with the mercury only heading up into the high 40s. It will be cloudy and also windy (some of those gusts could clock in as high as 30 mph, so hang on to your proverbial hats).

In the headlines…

An isolated President Vladimir Putin, rattled by the Russian Army’s failures in the brutal invasion of Ukraine, may have fired some of his Kremlin cronies and placed others under house arrest, Biden said.

Putin’s approval ratings have reached levels unseen in years, according to an independent poll released yesterday, as many Russians rally around the flag in the face of mounting international pressure.

Russian forces are continuing to hold their positions and carry out shelling strikes around Kyiv, according to British intelligence, despite promises from Moscow this week to scale back its military activity near the Ukrainian capital.

Russian forces transferred control of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant back to Ukrainian authorities, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Ukrainian state nuclear company Energoatom and plant workers.

People in the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol are waiting to see if much-needed relief would arrive, as a humanitarian convoy tried to make its way to the besieged port after Russia’s defense ministry announced a cease-fire to allow civilians to evacuate.

President Joe Biden will tap up to 180 million barrels of government oil reserves to help tamp down near-record high fuel prices, an unprecedented government intervention into oil markets following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Biden also announced several steps his administration is taking to punish oil companies for not increasing production from unused leases on federal land.

“The scale of this release is unprecedented: the world has never had a release of oil reserves at this 1 million per day rate for this length of time,” the White House said in a release.

Biden will invoke the Defense Production Act to encourage domestic production of minerals required to make batteries for electric vehicles and long-term energy storage. It will also help the U.S. minimize dependence on foreign supply chains.

That could include nickel, lithium, cobalt, graphite, and manganese, according to the White House fact sheet.

Beyond rising oil prices, the fallout from the invasion of Ukraine has also driven up the cost of battery inputs, like nickel. Russia is a major supplier of many of these materials.

Prominent Democrats are again urging the Biden administration to extend the pandemic-era student loan payment pause beyond May 1 and cancel debt for millions of borrowers, according to a letter sent yesterday morning.

Three moderate Senate Democrats joined Republicans this week in voting against advancing Biden’s nominee to head the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division.

The House approved a bill to cap the cost of insulin at $35 per month for those with private insurance or Medicare starting in 2023. 

White House communications director Kate Bedingfield insisted that Biden didn’t lie at a 2020 presidential debate when he claimed that his son Hunter Biden didn’t make money in China or engage in unethical overseas business deals.

Biden announced that he was appointing Suns star Chris Paul to his Board of Advisors on historically black college and universities.

A head-spinning quarter came to a disappointing end, with major stock indexes suffering their worst performance in two years and other markets recording some of the most extreme moves on record.

Initial unemployment claims rose modestly after reaching a 50-year low as employers continue to show reluctance in reducing their workforces in the current competitive labor market.

Jobless claims rose by 14,000 to 202,000 for the week ending March 26, the Labor Department reported. The previous week’s tally of 188,000 claims was the fewest since 1969. First-time applications for jobless aid generally track the pace of layoffs.

The Biden administration, responding to an increasing demand for temporary workers, announced that it would make an additional 35,000 seasonal worker visas available for US businesses to hire foreign workers ahead of the coming summer months.

South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham announced he would vote against Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s historic bid to become the first Black woman on the Supreme Court.

“My decision is based on Judge Jackson’s record of judicial activism,” Graham said. “I now know why Judge Jackson is the favorite of the radical left and I will vote no.”

Top Senate negotiators have said they are close to striking a deal to approve $10 billion in additional COVID relief funding with just a handful of days remaining before Congress heads off for a two-week recess.

China’s worst Covid wave since the initial shock of the pandemic has cut into annual revenue projections for roughly half of American businesses in the country, a survey showed.

A top Shanghai official acknowledged shortcomings in the local government’s handling of a surge of coronavirus cases, a rare admission of mistakes in China’s economic and financial powerhouse.

Covid hospitalizations are at their lowest levels since the U.S. began keeping records at the start of the pandemic, according to an NBC News analysis of data from the Department of Health and Human Services.

New research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on adolescents’ mental health during the coronavirus pandemic suggests that for many teenagers who were ordered to stay at home, home was not always a safe place.

People who suffered from even mild cases of COVID-19 face an increased risk of being diagnosed with diabetes within a year of recovering from the illness, a new study reports.

William J. Burns, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, tested positive for the coronavirus yesterday, a day after meeting with Biden.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy has tested positive for COVID-19, his office said.

Nearly 70 million COVID-19 over-the-counter tests have been distributed by New York State so far as part of ongoing efforts to protect residents during the pandemic.

All regions saw a rise in deaths and a fall in births during the pandemic, but 276 more people moved into the North Country than moved out.

New York has extended the deployment of the National Guard in nursing homes across the state until the end of May.

State lawmakers and Gov. Kathy Hochul will not reach an on-time agreement for a spending plan for New York amid a lack of deals over key criminal justice issues. 

A litany of policy disputes engulfing the state’s budget negotiations prompted lawmakers to leave the Capitol yesterday — missing their constitutional deadline again — as they pledged to hammer out a final plan next week.

Contentious social issues, such as revising the state’s bail law, have delayed passage of what is expected to be largest budget in the state’s history.

State lawmakers and Hochul appear likely to roll the dice on casinos in the New York City area, but only if local officials get significant say over where they are located, according to key legislators.

If there’s no budget or temporary extender by 4 p.m. Monday, more than 60,000 institutional state workers – including corrections officers and nurses – could see their paychecks disrupted until a budget is in place, according to the state Comptroller’s Office.

“It’s as secretive a budget as I’ve ever seen…,” said NYPIRG’s Blair Horner. “There’s no even pretense for any kind of public discussion, there’s no gaggle outside of the governor’s office where reporters can ask tough questions.”

The chair of the state Senate’s Ethics Committee, Sen. Alessandra Biaggi, said that she’s “frustrated” with a proposed ethics overhaul plan being negotiated by members of her own party — and may end up voting against it.

Hochul’s $850 million handout for a new Buffalo Bills stadium has bewildered experts, who say a recent, headline-grabbing legal case involving the Los Angeles Rams sets a strong precedent that could enable New York to cut a better deal.

A majority of likely voters oppose having New York put up $850 million in taxpayer subsidies to finance construction of a new Buffalo Bills stadium, a new poll reveals.

State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins revealed that she was blindsided by the deal Hochul reached to commit a whopping $850 million in public money for a new Buffalo Bills stadium.

Bills owners Terry Pegula and his wife, Kim Pegula, are largely able to avoid paying New York taxes by living in sunny, relatively tax-free Florida.

In his first state budget go-round with state lawmakers, Mayor Eric Adams will likely be coming home empty-handed on two top priorities that had been in Hochul’s executive budget: Mayoral control and 421-a.

A 12-year-old boy sitting in a parked car in Brooklyn was fatally shot last night after his family stopped to eat, the police said.

A state judge effectively tossed out the newly redrawn redistricting maps that heavily favor Democrats in the state Senate, Assembly and Congress for this year’s midterm election cycle. 

Acting Steuben County state Supreme Court Justice Patrick McAllister ordered the Legislature to retool the maps before an April 11 deadline, marking a victory for Republicans who cried foul as soon as the maps were approved by the state Legislature.

Should lawmakers fail to do so, the court will “retain a neutral expert at state expense to prepare said maps,” a move that could potentially postpone elections in the Empire State.

The ruling by a Republican judge would send New York back to the drawing board if upheld and could delay its primaries. Democrats vowed to appeal it.

UFT President Mike Mulgrew abruptly canceled a meet-and-greet with current and former members after retirees threatened to turn the event into a protest over the Adams administration’s effort to shift them onto a controversial new Medicare plan.

Bronx drill rapper Dougie B was among a group of men taken into custody after a shot was fired across the street from Bronx Supreme Court, his attorney confirmed.

The Albany County District Attorney’s office withheld hundreds of thousands of dollars in criminal forfeiture funds from the state and misspent other money, according to an Albany County Comptroller’s audit.

Addressing students, faculty and staff at a final town hall meeting, retiring RPI President Shirley Ann Jackson reflected on her 23-year legacy at the Troy research university and opened up about some of those early challenges.

Prominent members of the Capital Region community shared their support for University at Albany men’s basketball coach Dwayne Killings at a rally yesterday and called on the university to be more transparent in its investigation.

In a split verdict following more than a week of deliberations, a federal jury convicted a former GE engineer from Niskayuna of conspiring to commit economic espionage, but acquitted him on four other counts and deadlocked on seven other charges.

Caitlyn Jenner is now a member of Fox News.

An $83 million settlement will be divided among the families of victims and those who survived the collapse of Florida’s Champlain Towers South, which claimed the lives of 98 people.