Good Tuesday morning.
Apparently, there was some significant celestial phenomenon last night – a pink supermoon. (I did reference it in yesterday’s Rise and Shine).
I, as many of you know, am early to bed and early to rise, so I missed it. But the interwebs tell me it was really something. I hope you had a chance to see it. Thankfully, I get another bite at the apple next month. Maybe I’ll be able to keep myself awake long enough to actually experience it.
If you’re looking for something unusual to celebrate, here’s an idea: It’s Matanzas Mule Day. On this day in 1898, during the beginning stages of the Spanish-American War, the U.S. Navy fired on Matanzas, a city on the North shore of Cuba.
One casualty of the bombardment – perhaps the only one, actually, depending on which account you read – was a mule, and the Spanish reportedly buried it with full military honors. About 200 people attended the mule’s funeral.
Some claim this story was completely fabricated to humiliate the Americans, and one reporter began using the phrase “mantanzas mule” as shorthand for conveying a doubtful fact. Either way, the mule is now enshrined in history, memorialized in song and verse.
Oh, and for the uninitiated, mules are the sterile offspring of horses and donkeys.
Also, today is a day to remember and recognize the man known as the the Colossus of Clout and the Sultan of Swat, AKA baseball legend Babe Ruth. This day started being observed in 1947 – a year after Ruth was diagnosed with throat cancer, which eventually took his life in 1948. Says the internet:
“At Baseball Commissioner Happy Chandler’s request, the New York Yankees hosted “Babe Ruth Day”, a national event to honor the baseball legend who was suffering the debilitating effects of nasopharyngeal cancer. He was greeted by 58,339 fans that day in the “House That Ruth Built” and the ceremony and speeches were fed into every Major and Minor League stadium.“
It’s also National Devil Dog Day, which celebrates the snack cake that features a layer of cream filling sandwiched between two layers of devil’s food cake. Apparently, “devil dogs” was a term used by German soldiers to describe the U.S. Marines during WWI as a result of their tenacity.
I personally was more of a Twinkie girl – back when I ate that sort of thing.
We’ll have mostly cloudy skies today with temperatures in the low 60s.
In the headlines…
Ahead of his first address to Congress today, President Joe Biden will give remarks on the state of the pandemic and is expected to announce that the CDC has updated its guidance for whether vaccinated people need to wear masks outdoors.
White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said that Americans should begin to see a turning point in the pandemic “within a few weeks” if the U.S. continues its pace of distributing vaccinations.
The former head of the FDA said the U.S. should “lean more aggressively forward” into lifting COVID-19 restrictions — adding that he believes the trend of declining cases is “locked in at this point” and he doesn’t anticipate another surge.
Biden has witnessed an unprecedented growth on Wall Street in his first 100 days in office as measured from the time of his election.
The U.S. stock market has seen better returns in Biden’s first 100 days as president than it has under any other president in the past 75 years, according to data from JPMorgan.
The Biden administration will share millions of doses of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine and preparing to help India fight a resurgence of the virus, as calls mount for the U.S. to do more to assist developing countries in confronting the pandemic.
Global health groups said the commitment was not nearly big enough. And it comes with a catch: The AstraZeneca doses were made at a Baltimore plant, owned by Emergent BioSolutions, where production has been halted amid fears of contamination.
The pandemic is intensifying around the world with more new cases in the last week than in the first five months of the pandemic, warned the director general of the World Health Organization.
The European Union is suing AstraZeneca PLC for failure to deliver on its Covid-19 vaccine contract, a sharp escalation in a long-simmering dispute over supplies of the shot and a sign of how desperate governments are to secure scarce doses.
As Covid-19 cases spike in India, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said he has been personally affected by viral spread in the country, with several family members dying.
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, a Republican, announced that any West Virginian aged 16 to 35 who gets vaccinated will receive a $100 savings bond, in an effort to get more young residents inoculated.
With polls showing that about half of Republicans are unenthusiastic about getting a Covid-19 vaccine, some of ex-President Donald Trump’s advisers want him to make a public service announcement encouraging his followers to roll up their sleeves.
An Alaska GOP state lawmaker who had called flight attendants “mask bullies” and clashed with airline employees on video over mask rules is now banned from Alaska Airlines for her “continued refusal to comply” with the mask policy, the airline said.
The Washington, D.C., government settled two lawsuits over mass arrests made during Trump’s inauguration in 2017.
The Department of Homeland Security will undergo an internal review to root out white supremacy and extremism in its ranks as part of a larger effort to combat extremist ideology in the federal government, officials said.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland announced a sweeping Justice Department investigation into the Louisville, Ky., police and the county government there, the second time in a week that the department has opened a civil investigation into a police force.
Despite appeals from the governor and other elected leaders, community activists and the family of a man killed by sheriff’s deputies, county authorities in North Carolina had not publicly released body camera footage of the encounter as of last night.
Fueled by partisan fury and a backlash against pandemic shutdowns, a Republican-led campaign to oust Gov. Gavin Newsom of California has officially qualified for the ballot, officials said, setting the stage for the second recall election in the state’s history
Over the past decade, the United States population grew at the second slowest rate since the government started counting in 1790, the Census Bureau reported – a remarkable slackening that was driven by a slowdown in immigration and a declining birthrate.
The country’s old center of political power — the industrial belt stretching from New York to Illinois — is once again losing seats in Congress while Sun Belt states such as Florida, North Carolina and Texas will gain them. California will lose a seat for the first time.
New York State is about to lose one seat in Congress, shrinking from 27 members of its House delegation to 26, according to the preliminary results of the 2020 U.S. Census.
In a press conference announcing the results, Kristin Koslap, the senior technical expert for apportionment at the Census Bureau, said that New York was 89 people shy of keeping the seat. (This may or may not be true).
The slim margin is sure to raise questions about the census being conducted amid the COVID pandemic. The ramifications of the loss will play out as New York’s redistricting process gets underway.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio blasted the Cuomo administration over the 2020 Census results that cost the state a seat in Congress — a loss that could have been avoided if just 89 more residents had been counted.
After months of holding virtual news conferences, Gov. Andrew Cuomo took reporters’ questions in Syracuse, and rejected accusations of harassment.
Cuomo answered questions in-person from reporters for the first time since early December, which was months before he would face bipartisan demands to resign over a multitude of controversies that have engulfed him this year.
Cuomo denied all allegations that he sexually harassed current and former female aides and said that investigations into his conduct wouldn’t find any instances of wrongdoing.
“The report can’t say anything different because I didn’t do anything wrong,” the governor said.
Cuomo said some of his accusers and critics just “want attention’’ and “are jealous.’’
The state Senate’s Committee on Investigations and Government Operations confirmed that it has begun reviewing documents on the construction of the Mario M. Cuomo Bridge.
Cuomo’s practice of using taxpayer-funded staffers, who he claims volunteered, to help write his multi-million dollar pandemic leadership book raises questions about whether there were any violations of labor laws.
New York state will allow offices to expand capacity to 75 percent and will move forward with plans to hold the state fair this summer, Cuomo announced during his Syracuse trip.
The Fair, which was cancelled last year due to the pandemic, will officially return for an 18-day celebration from August 20 through September 6.
The increase in office capacity to 75 percent from the current 50 percent will take effect May 15.
Casinos and gambling facilities will also be able to go to 50 percent capacity from 25 percent, while gyms and fitness centers outside New York City will be allowed to expand capacity to 50 percent from 33 percent.
A boost in tax revenue and federal stimulus money will allow New York City to restore more than $10 billion in spending that it cut last year because of the Covid-19 pandemic, de Blasio said.
De Blasio painted a rosy picture for the next fiscal year, predicting his added spending would help jump-start the city’s recovery.
Two months before the Democratic primary for mayor, arguably the most consequential New York City election in decades, voters have other things on their minds.
Mayoral candidate Andrew Yang said the state government should lift overly restrictive rules that are blocking the reopening of bars and eateries — hindering the city’s economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.
New York City endured its bloodiest week so far this year, as gun violence continues to soar ahead of what could be another violent summer.
A city Correction Department captain was charged with criminally negligent homicide over the death of an inmate who hanged himself in his Lower Manhattan cell as she assured an officer and other detainees he was just “faking,” authorities said.
Police in the New York suburb of Long Island are investigating a report of a noose found hanging in a storeroom at a local business, a Suffolk County police spokesperson confirmed.
A 61-year-old Asian man who was assaulted in East Harlem on Friday night while pushing a grocery cart full of bottles and cans remained in critical but stable condition, the police said, another victim in a rising wave of attacks against Asians in New York City.
A Staten Island man accused of threatening to murder Biden supporters pleaded guilty to illegal possession of a gun.
A convicted felon who once planned to create a “hit squad” to kill Black and Jewish people pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to possessing two homemade rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
A staffer for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez testified that he feared for her safety following death threats from a Queens man charged with inciting violence against lawmakers.
In a major foray into gun rights, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review a New York case testing how far states may go in regulating whether an individual may carry a gun outside the home.
In a resolution introduced by Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the state Senate officially declared Dec. 18 Earl “DMX” Simmons Day.
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie is not among those pushing to revamp Albany’s ethics watchdog, JCOPE, though a constitutional amendment has been proposed to do so.
At least two Native American nations in New York are taking active steps to get into the marijuana business in the wake of the state’s legalization of adult-use recreational weed this month.
Albany County officials released data that show that ZIP codes in rural areas and among Albany’s communities of color have some of the lowest rates of vaccination against COVID-19 in the county.
An Albany activist says Mayor Kathy Sheehan and Police Chief Eric Hawkins were dishonest before clearing demonstrators from outside South Station.
State fire investigators are leading the investigation of a fatal Sunday fire in South Troy in which a 7-year-old boy died.
GlobalFoundries CEO Tom Caulfield, accompanied by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, announced the company is moving its headquarters from Silicon Valley to its campus in Saratoga County, home to its Fab 8 computer chip factory.
Tesla posted a record quarterly profit despite supply disruptions, fueled by rising deliveries and increasingly broad-based demand for electric vehicles.
Elon Musk hasn’t appeared on “Saturday Night Live” yet, (that’s scheduled to occur on May 8) but he is already getting panned by some of its cast members.
ABC’s broadcast of the Academy Awards show Sunday night drew 9.85 million viewers, making it the least-watched Oscars ceremony on record.
