Our best wishes for you this year

We blinked, and 2022 passed! Where does the time go?
It seems like just yesterday we were turning the calendar to Jan. 1, 2022, and now we are in the fourth day of 2023. It is often said the older you get, the faster the time goes. That certainly seems to be the case.
What a wild year 2022 was.
Did you know that the world population crossed eight billion for the first time in 2022? That officially happened Nov. 15 according to the United Nations. According to thefederal.com, Vinice Mabansag, a girl born in Tondo, Manila, was considered as the symbolic eight billionth person — symbolic because it is hard to calculate the exact number of people in the world.
It took the world 11 years to add one billion people to the population, with growth gradually slowing down. According to the UN, it could take 15 years to reach nine billion, and it does not expect the figure to reach 10 billion until 2080.
Perhaps the biggest story of 2022 is the Russian invasion of Ukraine that undoubtedly is not going the way Russia hoped. The war in Ukraine has slogged on into almost its second year, and thanks to the war, the world has  struggled with supply disruptions, price shocks and food shortages. We can all hope there is a ceasefire or an end to the war altogether in the coming year.
There were other milestones that happened in 2022 that you are probably much more familiar with. Elon Musk took over Twitter, and that has been a rollercoaster so far to say the least. For some, the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the longest-serving British monarch, was big news. She died Sept. 8. Her death ended the longest reign in the history of the United Kingdom. She was 96 years old at the time of her death.
Whether or not you agree with it, Roe vs. Wade was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2022, which shifted the onus of whether or not to allow abortion to the states. Many states reacted by immediately enacting stricter abortions measures or enatcting abortion rights via ballot measures.
The Mar-A-Lago Raid took place in 2022, and the Jan. 6 probe concluded. There were catastrophic storms, and regrettably, more mass shootings.
There was plenty of things that could only be considered positive that happened in 2022, as well. Maya Angelou became the first black female to be featured on the U.S. quarter. Moderna announced the first doses of a potential breakthrough HIV vaccine. Many endangered species have bounced back. There were breakthroughs in the research fights against cancer and Alzheimer’s.
Here’s to more positive news in 2023. Thank you so much for reading the Chronicle, and we hope for nothing but the best for you in the coming year.