Calls are growing for the release of imprisoned Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah, who launched a hunger strike on April 2 to protest the harsh conditions he is held under at Cairo’s Tora prison. Abd El-Fattah, who became a leading voice of the Arab Spring revolution, has been in and out of prison for nearly a decade for his human rights activism. His family recently obtained U.K.

Ukraine’s president says Russia has started a major offensive to seize the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine while launching missiles at targets across the country. We go outside of Kyiv to get an update from Peter Zalmayev, director of the Eurasia Democracy Initiative. Facing a stronger resistance from Ukrainian defenses than anticipated, Russian President Vladimir Putin is practicing “scorched-earth tactics” and “venting his anger on Ukraine,” says Zalmayev.

As the United States reels from an epidemic of mass shootings in schools, trains and other public places, we speak with Mark Follman, national affairs editor at Mother Jones, where he covers gun violence. Follman says mass shootings are typically planned over a period of time and follow a “robust trail of behavioral warning signs” that offer opportunities in community-based violence prevention to stop the crime before it happens.

In a win for immigrant rights, the Biden administration has granted temporary protected status, or TPS, to Cameroonians living in the United States. The move allows around 40,000 Cameroonians to become eligible for the relief, which would protect them from deportation back to a politically unstable state and grant them permission to work in the U.S. for at least 18 months ​​amid escalating violence in Cameroon between government forces and armed rebels.

Republican-led states are enacting a wave of new abortion restrictions, including Tennessee, Florida, Kentucky and Oklahoma just last week. Reproductive rights are under attack as the Supreme Court appears poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, says Caroline Kitchener, who covers reproductive rights for The Washington Post. We also speak with Kitchener about Lizelle Herrera, the Texas woman arrested for disclosing an attempted abortion with her doctors.

At least 19 were injured around occupied Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque on Sunday after a violent crackdown by Israeli police cleared out worshipers from the compound. It was the second raid since Friday, when Israeli police used rubber bullets, stun grenades and tear gas on unarmed Palestinians, resulting in the arrest of more than 300 and at least 158 injuries. This latest violence in Jerusalem comes as the holy days of Ramadan and Passover overlap.