Good morning, it’s Friday.
At the risk of being a downer and ruining the fact that you’re looking forward to the weekend, let’s get the bad news out of the way first, shall we?
There’s snow in the forecast tomorrow. There. I said it. And yes, writing that felt just about as bad as I expected it to.
Specifically, there is rain and snow expected in the morning, which will change to all rain in the afternoon. “Some mixed winter precipitation is possible,” whatever the hell that means. The high will only be in the low 40s.
And then on Sunday, it will bounce back up into the low 50s. Because this is spring in upstate New York. Oh! But Snowman is open, and has been for a few weeks now. Go figure.
And now for something completely different…
Today is World Tuberculosis Day, which commemorates the day in 1882 when Dr. Robert Koch announced his discovery of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacteria that causes this serious illness that mainly impacts the lungs.
The vast majority of TB is both curable AND preventable. But, it nevertheless is still one of the world’s deadliest infectious diseases, and kills about 4,300 people daily.
About one-third of the people on this planet have latent TB – including up to 13 million in the US as of 2017, according to the CDC. That means they’ve been infected by the bacteria that causes the illness but are not (yet) sick with disease and cannot transmit it.
Those who ARE sick with an active TB infection can infect up to 10-15 others through close contact over the course of a year. Without proper treatment up to two thirds of those who contract TB will die.
You can get vaccinated against TB, but that isn’t the common practice here in the US, since per capita case numbers remain fairly low – about 8,300 reported cases in 2022, though that was up from 7,874 in 2021, which made experts concerned that the Covid crisis had caused missed or delayed diagnoses.
Timely diagnoses is the key to effective treatment of TB, though drug-resistant strains on are the rise.
The CDC is running a campaign called “Think. Test. Treat.” to encourage health care professionals to be aware of the possibility that latent TB is lurking in their patients and to conduct the necessary tests in at-risk populations to suss it out.
Upstate New York has a historical connection to TB, which had a high incidence rate among Europeans who immigrated to the US in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries – a time when there was still no effective treatment for the illness, causing up to three out of every five people who contracted it to die. (A drug-based cure for TB wasn’t discovered until 1946).
In the late1800s, a theory developed that exposure to mountain air and sun would be helpful in controlling TB, which lead a man named Livingston Trudeau founded the first American sanatorium in the US right here n our region – in Saranac Lake, to be exact.
So-called “cure cottages” – many of which are still around today – were established with multiple balconies, sunrooms and porches on which patients could lie around and convalesce.
It turned out, though, that Adirondacks lacked both sufficient sunshine and altitude to be effective for TB treatment and the sanatorium movement slowly transitioned to the Rockies. In fact, more people came to Denver to seek “the cure” than for the gold rush.
The legacy of Dr. Trudeau lives on in the Trudeau Institute, a nonprofit research center with a reputation for R&D in immunity to infectious disease.
We’ve already dispensed with the bad news about tomorrow’s weather, but today will be OK, with temperatures in the high 40s and mostly cloudy skies.
In the headlines…
A new administration rule for retirement plans will be implemented as planned after the House failed to override President Joe Biden’s first veto.
Republicans failed to mount the necessary two-thirds votes needed in the House to override the president’s veto of the “ESG” investment bill. The override failed on a 219-200 vote mostly along party lines as most Democrats opposed.
The standoff was a first test of the strength of the new Republican majority in the House as it confronts the Democratic president in the White House.
The resolution, which would rescind a DOL rule, passed both chambers of Congress with Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana voting with the Senate GOP. Biden argued the measure would put retirement savings at risk.
The U.S. and Canada have reached a deal that would allow both countries to turn away asylum seekers who cross the border illegally as the effects of irregular migration span the hemisphere, according to a U.S. official.
The deal, reached just before Biden arrived in Canada for an official visit, allows both countries to reduce a surge in migration.
Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will make the announcement today after the two leaders hold a bilateral meeting in Ottawa.
Biden’s order that federal employees get vaccinated against COVID-19 was blocked by a federal appeals court.
The 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans rejected arguments that Biden, as the nation’s chief executive, has the same authority as the CEO of a private corporation to require that employees be vaccinated.
Vice President Kamala Harris may not have won over America in her first two years in office, but she is staying put at Biden’s side.
Biden’s approval rating dipped in a new poll released yesterday, approaching an all-time low for that survey as Americans give the Democrat poor marks on how he has handled the economy.
Only 38% of respondents said they approve of the job Biden is doing, versus 61% who said they disapprove, according to the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll.
U.S.-China relations were dealt another blow as lawmakers at a House hearing pummeled TikTok’s chief executive over the popular app’s ties to China, and as Beijing said it would fight any U.S. attempt to force the company’s sale by its Chinese owners.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew told U.S. lawmakers that China-based employees at its parent company ByteDance may still have access to some U.S. data from the app but added that won’t be the case once its risk mitigation plan, called Project Texas, is complete.
Some of the Singapore-born, Harvard-educated Chew’s answers seemed likely to accelerate a U.S. ban of the immensely popular app, even as the Biden administration prefers to force a sale by TikTok parent ByteDance.
The Biden administration recently told TikTok that it wanted the app’s Chinese owners to sell the app or face a possible ban in the United States. But that plan hit a roadblock yesterday, when Beijing said it would oppose a sale.
Gov. Spencer J. Cox of Utah signed a sweeping social media bill that could dramatically limit youth access to apps like TikTok and Instagram, potentially upending how many minors in the state use the internet.
After a tip, The New York Times located a portrait of Donald Trump given to him by El Salvador’s president and that Democrats were eager to account for. It was propped up in an obscure spot in a Trump hotel.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office rejected as “unlawful” the demands by three House GOP chairs who’d sought sensitive details about his investigation of Trump.
“The (House GOP) letter’s requests are an unlawful incursion into New York’s sovereignty,” said the DA’s general counsel, Leslie Dubeck, noting that such information was “confidential under state law.”
The Manhattan grand jury hearing evidence about Trump’s role in paying hush money to a porn star won’t take action this week, people familiar with the matter said.
The panel that has been investigating the case involving the former president typically meets on a different matter on Thursdays and does not convene on Fridays.
A Manhattan judge ruled that jurors hearing a trial next month involving a rape allegation against Trump will be kept anonymous because of concern they could become victims of “harassment or worse” by the former president’s supporters.
The Democratic-led state Senate has approved a measure that would halt the clock for the statute of limitations for criminal and civil prosecutions in New York for people who become president of the United States.
A growing bipartisan effort in the Legislature is mounting for the next state budget to include millions of more dollars in funding to rescue volunteer fire departments in addition to what Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed in her executive budget last month.
Hochul this week invoked rising crime to reaffirm her push to revise the bail statutes that were overhauled four years ago and have since remained at the center of an ongoing debate — including with fellow Democrats — about the fallout of those changes.
Hochul pointed to a study published by John Jay College for Criminal Justice that found “for violent felonies, we are seeing an uptick in recidivism – people reoffending while they’re out and even bigger increases for recidivism for defendants with serious crimes.”
State data obtained by the Times Union show usage of drug courts has dropped nearly in half since sweeping changes were made in 2019 to the state’s bail and pre-trial discovery laws.
Hochul wants New York to become the third state, after Massachusetts and California, to prohibit the sale of menthol cigarettes, the latest front in the long battle by governments and advocacy groups to curb smoking and the disease and deaths it causes.
Attorneys who represent low-income clients and children are facing mounting caseloads and a workforce that is leaving in droves, according to public defenders who are urging the Legislature and Hochul to raise the rates of hourly pay for assigned counsel.
New York state is offering its first incentive to the fast-paced, creative industry of digital game development.
A new state bill would raise the speed limit on some of the state’s major highways to 70 miles per hour, a five m.p.h increase that would bring New York in line with many other states.
Mayor Eric Adams has quietly inked an executive order last week codifying major changes to the City Hall hierarchy — the latest step in a broader leadership shakeup that began as the administration entered its second year.
Adams said he has picked a handsomely paid “rat czar” out of thousands of applicants — but wouldn’t say who “she” is. (It’s clearly not Curtis Sliwa).
“The first thing I asked her is, ‘How do you feel about rats?’” Adams said. “And I was waiting for some type of, you know, ‘Well, I think they should be around’ — No. She made it very clear: ‘I hate rats.’”
Adams introduced a Rat Academy to help teach residents safe and effective ways to get rid of pests.
Adams hasn’t been shy about his desire to forge a relationship with the Netherlands, pledging in his first year in office to travel there and learn about their response to climate change.
Several obstacles stand in the way of closing the Rikers Island jails by 2027 as mandated by law, the city’s correction commissioner told the City Council.
The real estate tycoon behind the on-again, off-again One45 housing project in Harlem is opening a “social services hub” next to the controversial truck depot he has been operating at the site since the development fell through.
About 100 New York City hotels and other facilities, from iconic skyscrapers to humble airport motels, have been converted into temporary housing for some of the 50,000 migrants who have arrived on buses from the southern border since last spring.
Andy Byford, the former NYC Transit boss known as ‘Train Daddy,’ will return to the U.S. to work for Amtrak, railroad officials confirmed.
Byford will be Amtrak’s senior vice president for high-speed rail development. The fast train tech, which is commonplace in Asia and Europe, has historically eluded the U.S.
Street vendors are jacking up the price of classic New York City hot dogs as simple bodega staples skyrocket throughout the boroughs amid inflation, even as illicit “loosie” cigarettes remain relatively affordable.
A watchdog agency for New York City’s public schools has persistently recommended that education officials ban employees from contacting students on social media or cellphones.
A massive fire erupted at the old Doane Stuart school campus near Albany’s Southern Boulevard last night, lighting up the night sky over much of Albany, prompting safety concerns and eliciting sadness for a landmark heavily damaged or possibly lost.
Albany’s first retail cannabis store may open along upper Central Avenue.
The Capital Region’s first Costco Wholesale store inched closer to opening when the Guilderland Planning Board this week reviewed the retailer’s site plan for the first time in more than three years.
Add a Louisiana military base’s new name to the honors Albany World War I hero Henry Johnson achieved in life and continues to earn decades after his death.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and other House members say the company operating the Knolls Atomic Laboratory in Niskayuna wants to move jobs at the nuclear propulsion lab to Pennsylvania to avoid paying union wages and benefits.
The number of antisemitic incidents in the United States last year was the highest since the Anti-Defamation League began keeping track in 1979, the Jewish advocacy group announced.
In a new report, the A.D.L. counted 3,697 incidents throughout the US in 2022, a 36 percent rise from 2021. A majority were characterized as harassment, including online, but the tally also included 111 assaults and more than 1,200 occasions of vandalism.
Cherry blossoms at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., reached peak bloom ahead of schedule this year after an unusually warm winter.
The cherry blossoms’ peak began yesterday, nearly two weeks earlier than the historical average of April 4, according to the National Park Service, which has data that go back to the 1920s.
