Good Thursday morning, CivMixers.
On this day in 1965, Russian cosmonaut Alexei Leonov became the first person in history to walk in space. His tethered spacewalk lasted 12 minutes, during which he ventured about 10 meters from his spacecraft, Voskhod 2.
This amazing feat, which very nearly ended in disaster, occurred about in the middle of the Space Race – a 20-year period during which the U.S. and Russian vied for domination outside the Earth’s atmosphere. It was a deadly game that also was a significant arena in the Cold War between the two super powers, which also led to the creation of NASA.
The Russians had the upper hand early on in the race, launching the first satellite (Sputnik in 1957, which touched off the competition), animal, man and woman into spaceBy landing on the moon.
But the U.S. effectively “won” the space race by landing – for the first time – astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon on July 20, 1969.
The Soviets, meanwhile, made four failed attempts to launch a lunar landing craft between 1969 and 1972, including a launch-pad explosion in July 1969. With the conclusion of the space race, U.S. government interest in lunar missions waned after the early 1970s.
And the, of course, there was Space Force, which was the brain child of former President Donald Trump. President Joe Biden has said he fully supports the force, and will seek to neither eliminate it nor roll back its funding.
Leonov died on Oct. 11, 2019 after a long illness in Moscow. He was 85 and the last living member of the five cosmonauts in the Voskhod program.
Fittingly, it’s also National Supreme Sacrifice Day, which honors those who have made tremendous sacrifices for the sake and the good of others as well as those who engage in small sacrifices day in and day out.
We’ve got one or two more days of not-fabulous weather to suffer through (40s and raining today, 30s and sunny tomorrow), before the weekend brings us lots of sun and temperatures in the 50s and soars up to 60 degrees on Monday and Tuesday.
The official first day of spring is Saturday! (The Spring Equinox – the astronomical first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere – will occur shortly after 5:30 a.m.) Wheeeeee!
In the headlines…
Despite the state attorney general’s ongoing investigation into sexual harassment allegations against Gov. Andrew Cuomo, senior Cuomo aides are conducting a “parallel review” of a female aide’s account of being groped by him at the Executive Mansion late last year.
“We have our own inquiries ongoing,” a senior aide said. “We have an obligation to investigate any claim of sexual harassment. And we, after reporting (the female aide’s allegations) to the (attorney general), were directed to continue our own inquiry…So there are multiple inquiries.
The state Assembly’s Democratic leadership said they have retained the law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell to lead the Judiciary Committee’s impeachment investigation of sexual harassment allegations that have been made against Cuomo.
Davis Polk’s team will include lawyers Angela Burgess, Martine Beamon and Greg Andres — a former Brooklyn federal prosecutor who most recently worked as an assistant special counsel on former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
The attorney for Charlotte Bennett, one of Cuomo’s accusers, pointed to the firm’s alleged connection to a Cuomo ally, Dennis Glazer, the husband of Chief Judge Janet DiFiore, and said their involvement would “taint the entire proceedings.”
Lindsey Boylan, whose allegations sparked Cuomo’s sexual harassment scandal, called the Assembly impeachment investigation a “sham” and said she won’t participate, though, according to her attorney, she is “fully cooperating” with the AG’s probe.
Cuomo’s office has hired outside lawyers – Paul Fishman, a former U.S. Attorney in New Jersey, and Mitra Hormozi, who worked for the governor when he was AG – to represent the Executive Chamber in the sexual harassment investigation.
Cuomo was publicly vaccinated against COVID-19 yesterday following a lovefest at a predominantly black church in Harlem — where an NAACP leader likened him to her own son. (He got the Johnson & Johnson single dose shot).
“I’m going to take the Johnson and Johnson vaccine because I want to make the point ‘take whatever vaccine you can take,’ they all work, they are all safe, don’t try to pick one over the other,” Cuomo said.
The event was closed to the press due to COVID restrictions, according to Cuomo’s office, and featured prominent supporters lavishly praising the governor, including NAACP New York President Hazel Dukes and former Rep. Charlie Rangel.
Cuomo, days after questioning his accusers’ motives and blaming ‘cancel culture’ for his current scandal-scarred situation, says he is no longer going to comment on sexual harassment claims made against him.
Black voters came out in large numbers for Cuomo in his last two Democratic primaries and remain among his most important and reliable blocs of support as he faces multiple scandals and calls for his resignation.
A banner on a plane flying near the state Capitol in Albany said Cuomo’s “Got to Go!” The banner was bankrolled by three women’s rights advocacy groups — Women’s March, UltraViolet, and Girls for Gender Equity.
A gunman’s rampage that killed eight people, including six women of Asian descent, in the Atlanta area this week has set off a new wave of fear and outrage among Asian-Americans, coming in a year of anti-Asian violence across the country.
The shooter, a white man identified as 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long, told the police he had a “sexual addiction” and said the spas were “an outlet for him, something that he shouldn’t be doing.”
The Atlanta police officer who said the suspect in the horrific Atlanta spa shootings that left eight people dead Tuesday was having a “really bad day” enthusiastically shared a Facebook post for T-shirts that read, “COVID-19: Imported virus from Chy-na.”
A woman accused of telling an Asian American couple in Manhattan to “go back to China” has been identified as the daughter of late New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
New York City mayoral hopeful Andrew Yang said that anti-Asian racism in the Big Apple is growing “far darker” — as he spoke out on the Atlanta massacre.
Top Biden administration officials will meet with their Chinese counterparts for the first time today as the United States shifts to a more competitive posture with Beijing.
The Internal Revenue Service delayed the main April 15 tax-filing and payment deadlines for individuals until May 17, giving taxpayers and preparers a bit of breathing room in an unusually complicated tax season.
The one-month delay is not as much extra time as last year, when the deadline was pushed to July 15. But it should make it easier for taxpayers to get a handle on their finances and tax changes that took effect with the signing of the American Rescue Plan.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki clarified that Biden’s proposed tax hike would apply to people who earn $200,000 per year if they are married to someone who makes the amount.
State backlash against a restriction in the $1.9 trillion stimulus package that prohibits local governments from using aid money to cut taxes emerged as the Biden administration’s first major legal battle, as Ohio sued to block the provision and other states considered similar action.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas refused to call the increasingly volatile situation on the U.S. southern border a “crisis” while testifying before Congress, blasting Republicans who sought to make him use the label as oblivious to the migration chaos caused by the Trump administration.
Violent extremists motivated by a range of political grievances and racial biases pose an “elevated threat” to the U.S., officials said in an unclassified intelligence report released more than two months after a mob of insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol.
The Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution that passed Congress nearly 50 years ago took a step towards finally becoming reality yesterday as the House passed a resolution to extend the deadline for its ratification.
A team of scientists from the WHO hoped a mission to Wuhan would provide some clarity about the coronavirus’s origins. New details about the team’s constraints reveal how little power it had to conduct a thorough probe.
As Americans celebrate a slowing spread of COVID, including in many former hot spots in the South and the Midwest, trends in the Northeast have experts and public officials on edge. In New York and New Jersey, new cases per capita are at least double the national average.
Coronavirus reinfections are relatively rare, but it’s more common for people 65 and older to get infected more than once, according to a study published in the Lancet medical journal.
Prior infection with the coronavirus reduced the chances of a second bout by about 80 percent in people under 65, but only by about half in those older than 65. But those results were tempered by many caveats.
A number of people are reporting that the post-Covid symptoms they’ve experienced for months have begun improving, sometimes significantly, after they got the vaccine.
The U.S. could begin vaccinating older kids against coronavirus this fall, according to White House Chief Medical Officer Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Workers who deal with the public in government, building services and non-profits became eligible to receive COVID vaccines yesterday in New York as the number of doses given out in the city surpassed the 3-million mark.
More than 40,000 Covid-19 vaccine appointments are open at the New York State fairgrounds just outside Sryacuse through the end of May.
Syracuse University is suspending in-person dining on campus and requiring twice-a-week Covid-19 testing of some students to curb a growing outbreak of the virus in dormitories.
Facebook introduced new penalties for interest-based forums called Groups that are flagged for violating its community standards, as it aims to curb a product that played a high-profile role in the protests that led up to the Capitol riot.
The world’s thirst for gasoline isn’t likely to return to pre-pandemic levels, the International Energy Agency forecast, calling a peak for the fuel that has powered personal transportation for more than a century.
The 11 p.m. curfew on casinos, movie theaters, bowling halls, gyms and fitness centers will be lifted on March 22. Curfews for restaurants, bars and catered events will stay, but he state is reviewing them and will make an announcement about them in April.
That same day, the remaining cluster zones in the state – precautionary designations for parts of Washington Heights, the Bronx, Queens and Newburgh – will expire along with the related restrictions.
In New York City, indoor group fitness classes have remain barred under an executive order issued by de Blasio last August, and the mayor just this week declined to lift the ban.
The U.S. government plans to spend $10 billion in Covid-19 screening for schools, its latest step to increase testing nationwide and encourage schools to reopen for in-person learning.
New York will receive $335 million in new federal funds to increase coronavirus testing in public K-12 schools, the CDC announced, as the Biden administration floods schools with money in an effort to restart classroom learning across the country.
The American Federation of Teachers is staunchly opposed to changing the six-foot social distancing guidance to three feet, as the CDC has suggested, and plans to try to persuade the agency not to do so.
The federal government does not plan to grant any waivers for standardized testing this school year.
New York transit officials heralded the latest award of $6.5 billion in federal aid and data showing ridership on the mass-transit system is starting to recover from pandemic lows.
A Japanese train car builder is running late in delivering hundreds of new cars meant to smooth New York region subway and commuter rail trips.
MTA officials have for the last year used the pandemic as an excuse to curb public access to the agency and information about its $17 billion operating budget, transit advocates said.
The number of major felonies in the subway system dropped in February for the second straight month, according to NYPD stats — but MTA leaders say subway crime continues to be a problem.
Super PACs for two candidates raised millions of dollars to help their chances in the New York City mayor’s race. One, for Shaun Donovan, was bankrolled by his father. The other, for Ray McGuire, is funded by business magnates.
The women running for mayor have sharply criticized the governor as sexual harassment allegations pile up against him, and say they offer a different style of leadership.
Construction fatalities accounted for more than 25% of all worker deaths in New York City after increasing for the third year in a row, according to a new study.
The state will begin construction on the $13 million Albany Skyway park later this month.
The Village of Chatham’s former clerk-treasurer was arrested as part of an investigation by state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, State Police and the Columbia County District Attorney, authorities said.
Just over 200 elementary students are slated to return to the classroom in Schenectady today for full day in person instruction in so called learning pods.
Montgomery County Clerk Brittany Kolbe said the County Clerk’s Office and DMV, which have been appointment-only since last summer, will reopen to the public on Monday, April 5.
The Saratoga County Board of Supervisors voted this week to accept the 10 recommendations from its committee on police reform.
Shares of Plug Power were being battered on Wall Street yesterday – a day after the Latham fuel cell maker said it would have to restate its financial statements dating back to 2018.
An attorney for convicted Delmar ax murderer Christopher Porco told appellate justices the Lifetime network’s 2013 made-for-television movie about his client’s case was “at least 80 percent false” and claimed the film portrayed Porco’s mother as a liar.
A Dutchess County man will pay a $5,000 fine to settle criminal charges that he violated environmental laws when he kept seven sandbar sharks in a pool and planned to sell them.
An Erie County sheriff failed to properly report and investigate eight claims of sexual misconduct between corrections officers and inmates at two upstate jails, according to a lawsuit from state Attorney General Letitia James.
HBO is seeking extras for a new limited series about the Nixon Watergate scandal that is set to film in the Capital Region late this summer or early fall.
Metropolitan Opera orchestra musicians accepted a deal that will provide them with paychecks for the first time in nearly a year in exchange for returning to the bargaining table, where the company seeks pay cuts it says are needed to survive the pandemic.
]ames Levine, the guiding maestro of the Metropolitan Opera for more than 40 years and one of the world’s most influential and admired conductors until allegations of sexual abuse and harassment ended his career, has died at the age of 77.
Dick Hoyt, who became an inspiring figure after pushing his quadriplegic son while he ran the Boston Marathon for decades, died at the age of 80.
Conservative commentator Dan Bongino is taking over the late Rush Limbaugh’s radio slot, Cumulus Media’s Westwood One announced.
Biden said that Major, one of his German Shepherds, would return to Washington after a biting incident.
