Good Thursday morning. Let’s just get the hard part over with.
More. Snow. Is. Coming.
Again, it looks to me like downstate is going to get the worst of it. They’re predicting up to 10 inches for New York City, as well as some sleet and freezing rain, while the forecast for the Albany area is calling for “snow showers” starting tonight and into tomorrow.
We shall see. I have a healthy skepticism at this point of all weather forecasts. Sorry, meteorologist friends.
Anyway, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, we can move onto other things – like today’s Google doodle, which celebrates the 87th birthday Audrey Lorde, a self-described “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet” who is best known for writings reflecting her hatred of racial and sexual prejudice.
I briefly contemplated skipping this one, but then thought better of it: It’s National Battery Day. And while that may seem trivial, just stop and think about how much in our lives in battery powered. Ahem. Right. It’s a damn important invention.
Of course, the battery industry is trying to capitalize on this day by highlighting the role their product can play in building back better in the post-pandemic world.
The history of the battery, though, is really pretty cool. In 1938 the director of the Baghdad Museum found what is now referred to as the “Baghdad Battery” in the basement of his cultural institution. Analysis dated it at around 250BC and of Mesopotamian origin.
American scientist and inventor Benjamin Franklin first used the term “battery” in 1749 while conducting experiments with electricity that employed a set of linked capacitors. But the first true battery was invented by the Italian physicist Alessandro Volta in 1800.
He stacked discs of copper (Cu) and zinc (Zn) separated by cloth soaked in salty water. Wires connected to either end of the stack produced a continuous stable current. Each cell (a set of a Cu and a Zn disc and the brine) produces 0.76 Volts (V).
Oh, and the battery that has been around the longest – the lead-acid battery, (not particularly good for the environment), is the oldest sort of rechargeable battery. It was invented in 1859 and is still used to start most modern internal combustion engine cars.
I know I already mentioned the weather, but we’re looking at clouds and temperatures in the high 20s until flurries and/or snow showers start tonight.
In the headlines…
The FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn have launched an investigation that is examining, at least in part, the actions of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s coronavirus task force in its handling of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities during the pandemic.
Rich Azzopardi, a senior adviser to Cuomo, said: “As we publicly said, DOJ has been looking into this for months. We have been cooperating with them, and we will continue to.”
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and several of his GOP colleagues demanded the Senate Judiciary Committee launch an investigation into the Cuomo administration, saying the “American people deserve to know” whether the governor “violated federal civil and criminal laws” by allegedly withholding data about COVID-19 deaths.
Democrats in the state Senate are ready to move forward with a measure to curb Cuomo’s sweeping pandemic powers.
“I think everyone understands where we were back in March and where we are now,” state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said. “We certainly see the need for a quick response, but also want to move toward a system of increased oversight and review. The public deserves to have checks and balances.”
The Senate’s measures, which could be voted on as soon as next week, underscore the deepening division between Cuomo and state lawmakers since the governor admitted to intentionally withholding critical data on virus-related deaths from the Legislature.
Cuomo lashed out at Queens Assemblyman Ron Kim, both publicly and in a private phone call, as a war intensified over the state’s handling of nursing home deaths during the pandemic.
Kim said the governor threatened to “destroy” him if he didn’t help contain the damage over the Cuomo administration’s cover-up of nursing home resident COVID-19 deaths.
Azzopardi responded by flat-out calling Kim a “liar,” saying he had been on the call in question.
“I didn’t say anything about Assemblyman Ron Kim. He attacked me,” Cuomo said. “He attacked me and said that I obstructed justice in a letter.”
The governor also accused The NY Post of pushing “the Republican point on nursing homes” regarding the state Health Department’s since-rescinded March 25 order that required the facilities to admit COVID-19 patients discharged from hospitals.
Cuomo’s aggressive posture was a marked difference from his more conciliatory tone in a news conference Monday in which he acknowledged that nursing home data was released to the public too slowly — although he stopped short of offering an apology.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio called for a blue-ribbon panel to investigate Cuomo’s handling of nursing homes amid the coronavirus crisis, saying in a new interview that “lives might’ve been saved.”
Family members of nursing home residents killed by COVID-19 called for an independent probe of Cuomo’s actions and policies.
CNN claimed that it has reinstated a “rule” that prevents Chris Cuomo from “interviewing or covering his brother” — after the host completely ignored the nursing home death cover-up scandal engulfing his sibling.
Republican North Country Rep. Elise Stefanik is reporting mulling a bid for New York governor in 2022 as Republican insiders encourage the upstate congresswoman to challenge scandal-plagued Cuomo.
Stefanik released a statement calling Cuomo “the Worst Governor in America” and “a desperate criminal Governor [who] now blames me for his own corruption coverup scandal.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis threatened to withhold or transfer COVID vaccines from counties that criticize the state’s distribution plan.
Roughly one-third of US military members have declined to get vaccinated for COVID-19, a Pentagon official said.
Experts say there are multiple endemic diseases in the United States that could foreshadow what the disease caused by the coronavirus may look like in the upcoming years.
A study published today found life expectancy in the United States dropped to its lowest level in 15 years, and even lower for Black Americans and Latinos, during the first half of the coronavirus pandemic.
Life expectancy is the most basic measure of the health of a population, and the stark decline over such a short period is highly unusual and a signal of deep distress.
While more than 152 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered globally, with roughly a third of those in the U.S.
A new report published in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine can protect people against concerning new coronavirus variants, including one first seen in South Africa called B.1.351.
Executives and directors at Pfizer, Moderna and other companies developing Covid-19 vaccines sold approximately $496 million of stock last year, reaping rewards of positive vaccine developments that drove up the value of the drugmakers’ shares.
There are now 82 confirmed cases of the highly contagious UK variant of COVID-19 in New York.
As lawmakers push for billions of dollars to fund the nation’s efforts to track coronavirus variants, the Biden administration announced a new effort to ramp up this work, pledging nearly $200 million to better identify the emerging threats.
A winter storm and lengthy cold snap have crippled power facilities in Texas and caused about 2.3 million outages as of yesterday evening, leaving residents in the cold and dark for several days.
Power grid operators in Texas say they can’t predict when the outages might end, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, the agency that oversees the grid.
At least two hospitals in Austin, Texas were left without water and heat Tuesday night due to the historic storm that knocked out the power, forcing patients and staff to transport human waste in trash bags and refrain from showering or even washing their hands.
Winter’s brutal assault continued last night as another snowstorm roared its way across the nation through the end of the week, hitting areas where millions were already without electricity in record-breaking cold.
The Texas blackouts raise important questions close to home, including whether such a mass failure of the state’s power grid could happen in New York. Experts say it’s unlikely, but there are concerns – mostly with the state’s transmission system.
President Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel had an hourlong phone conversation yesterday, four weeks after Biden took office and at a time of clear disagreement over the new administration’s effort to re-enter the nuclear deal with Iran.
Biden is in a political firestorm over how and when to get more schools open amid the coronavirus pandemic, with Republicans seizing on confusion surrounding his goal to reopen a majority of schools within his first 100 days.
Biden pushed back against leaders of his own party on student college debt, repeating that he’ll support up to $10,000 of forgiveness – not $50,000 as they seek – and that he would prefer Congress craft the legislation as opposed to issuing an executive order.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took on Biden after he flatly rejected her proposal to forgive $50,000 in student debt per person, noting that even Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer backs her idea.
Biden said that he was uncomfortable with how much he was waited on by staff in the White House. President Donald Trump had bragged about its opulence at a similar point in his presidency.
Trump’s scathing attack on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell exposed rifts that could dash the GOP’s hopes of retaking the Senate in 2022 if they are allowed to fester.
The U.S. economy’s recovery picked up as consumers used stimulus checks to boost retail spending in January to its largest increase in seven months, a significant jump that comes as manufacturers continued to increase output and employers resumed hiring.
Cuomo gave the green light to amusement parks and summer camps while saying that state officials are keeping an eye on worrisome COVID variants.
A mass vaccination site will open at Albany’s Washington Avenue Armory that will deliver 7,000 shots a week, the governor announced.
De Blasio administration officials said that they are finally creating a single website where New Yorkers can book appointments for COVID-19 vaccines at all city-run locations — though it is not there yet.
A New York City waitress says she was fired from a popular Brooklyn restaurant after choosing not to get the COVID-19 vaccine for fear it might hurt her chances of getting pregnant.
Over the weekend, the restaurant, the Red Hook Tavern, required that its employees get vaccinated and then terminated the waitress, Bonnie Jacobson, when she asked for time to study the vaccine’s possible effects on fertility.
De Blasio and a handful of colleagues ate lunch out in Chinatown three days after restrictions on in-person dining were lifted on city restaurants.
Scandal-plagued Democratic Bronx Councilman Mark Gjonaj is not seeking re-election.
“The current political climate is not favorable to a centrist ideology that my constituency, community and I embrace,” Gjonaj, the first Albanian-American elected to the City Council, said in a statement.
NYC mayoral candidate Andrew Yang has proposed building more casinos in the city after trashing the gambling meccas in his book “The War on Normal People,” published during his long-shot presidential bid.
New York City’s Department of Education said children will be admitted to elementary school gifted-and-talented programs this year by lottery based on letters of recommendations from preschool teachers, instead of standardized testing.
Five New York City public-school students have died by suicide so far this academic year, surpassing last year’s total, city officials said.
Churches in the Big Apple got creative on Ash Wednesday to avoid spreading the coronavirus — in some cases offering to-go packets of priest-blessed ash for at-home ceremonies, church leaders said.
The state’s repeal of a statute last year that had long prevented public scrutiny of police disciplinary records has revealed that many agencies handle misconduct with “counseling memos” that are kept on file for a short period of time before being expunged from officers’ personnel files.
A 70-year-old Long Island man arrested for the hit-and-run crash that killed Nicki Minaj’s dad hid his car under a tarp after asking the dying victim if he was OK, officials said.
A Warren County man alleges he was sexually abused by two Albany public school teachers in the 1970s, according to a Child Victims Act claim filed this week in state Supreme Court.
Two Capital Region men who allegedly smoked marijuana inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and separately boasted on social media about “taking” the building that afternoon are now taking on more criminal charges.
For the first time in more than two decades, the 6th Ward Albany Common Council seat is open and it may be the most crowded race this election cycle in the city.
The Adirondack Council announced several staffing changes, including that Megan Phillips, a senior policy advisor for energy and the environment to Cuomo, will become the organization’s vice president for conservation.
The Tokyo Olympic organizing committee named a cabinet minister and female Olympic bronze medalist as its new chief after the previous leader resigned over sexist remarks.
Five years after attempting to make a run at the major leagues following a short career in the NFL, former quarterback Tim Tebow says he is retiring from baseball.
Conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh, the flame-throwing talk show host who revolutionized right-wing radio, died at the age of 70 after a long and public battle with lung cancer.
