FRIDAY. Need I say more?
We’re really getting our culture on this week. Yesterday, dance. Today, music.
Jazz, to be specific. It’s International Jazz Day, officially designated in November 2011 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in order to highlight this specific musical genre and its diplomatic role of uniting people in all corners of the globe. (It’s actually the culmination of International Jazz Month).
Jazz, officially speaking, is a kind of music in which improvisation is typically an important part. In most jazz performances, players play solos which they make up on the spot, which requires considerable skill. Jazz developed in the U.S. in the very early part of the 20th century. New Orleans, near the mouth of the Mississippi River, played a key role in this development.
In other words, according to Merriam-Webster, jazz is “American music developed especially from ragtime and blues and characterized by propulsive syncopated rhythms, polyphonic ensemble playing, varying degrees of improvisation, and often deliberate distortions of pitch and timbre.”
The word “jazz” can also be used to refer to a group of similar, yet unrelated things, (“all that jazz”), or “empty talk,”
Britannica has more here, adding: Any attempt to arrive at a precise, all-encompassing definition of jazz is probably futile.”
And if you’re interested in an animated version of jazz, I hear Pixar’s “Soul” is highly recommended. I haven’t gotten around to watching it yet.
It’s also Oatmeal Cookie Day. It appears that the first recipe for oatmeal cookies in the U.S. was published in 1896 by Fannie Merrit Farmer, who was at the time the principal of the Boston Cooking School. Her original recipe, which appeared in the Boston Cooking School Cookbook, used milk and cream, not generally used in modern oatmeal cookies.
The first oatmeal cookies reportedly did not include raisins. I personally like a loaded version of an oatmeal cookie: Raisins, walnuts, chocolate chips – bring on ALL the add-ins, thank you very much.
It’s raining again as I write this. But that’s supposed to stop in a bit, only to be replaced by wind – and lots of it. There’s a wind advisory in effect from 10 a.m. to noon in Bennington and western Windham county in southern Vermont, northwestern Connecticut, eastern New York except northern Herkimer county and western Massachusetts. Gusts of up to 50 MPH are possible.
Temperatures will be in the high 50s.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden met with former President Jimmy Carter and former first lady Rosalynn Carter at the Carters’ Plains, Georgia, home yesterday.
Biden traveled to the Peach State — which played a key role in his election — to once again ask for support as he begins pitching a package of enormous government spending plans to Congress, where deep partisan divisions threaten to jeopardize his agenda.
“We owe special thanks to the people of Georgia,” the president said. “Because of your two senators, the rest of America was able to get the help they got so far. The American Rescue Plan would not have passed.”
Biden said he was not told in advance about the FBI’s execution of search warrants at the New York City home and office of Rudy Giuliani, one of former President Donald Trump’s personal lawyers.
Another ex-Trump lawyer, Michael Cohen, ripped Giuliani as a greedy “idiot” who deserves to get raked over the coals by federal prosecutors for doing Trump’s dirty work and trying to profit off it.
Giuliani claimed that federal investigators only raided his Manhattan apartment and office this week because they’re “jealous” of his erstwhile career as a prosecutor and cooked up a “garbage” case against him to smear his name.
Prosecutors want to scrutinize Giuliani’s communications with Ukrainian officials about the ouster of the ambassador, Marie L. Yovanovitch.
Mike Pence, in his first public speech since leaving office in January, was highly critical last night of Biden’s new administration, as the former Republican vice president positioned himself for a potential 2024 White House bid.
The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits dropped by 13,000 last week to 553,000, the lowest level since the pandemic hit last March and another sign the economy is recovering from the coronavirus recession.
The Labor Department reported that jobless claims were down from 566,000 a week earlier. They have fallen sharply over the past year but remain well above the 230,000 weekly figure typical before the pandemic struck the economy in March 2020.
New claims this month are well below the millions of claims filed weekly a year ago, but still more than double the roughly 200,000 weekly applications submitted in the months before the pandemic began.
The state of New York has stopped a record 1.1 million fraudulent unemployment claims since the pandemic began, keeping more than $12.3 billion out of the hands of scammers.
Official gauges across China’s economy fell short of expectations in April, hit in part by semiconductor shortages, suggesting that the economy’s strong pandemic bounceback is starting to lose some momentum more than a year into the recovery.
Shares of Lyft, Uber and DoorDash dropped sharply yesterday after Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh told Reuters in an interview that gig workers should be classified as company employees.
Amazon reported record quarterly profit as demand remained robust for its deliveries, cloud-computing and advertising businesses, capping a blockbuster earnings season for the world’s largest technology companies.
AstraZeneca executives have struggled to pull together the full data necessary to apply for U.S. approval of its Covid-19 shot, according to people familiar with the matter, further delaying its efforts to secure the Food and Drug Administration’s go-ahead.
Joe Rogan, Spotify’s top podcast host, responded to the controversy surrounding his remarks that healthy young people should not get the Covid vaccine, insisting that he’s not an anti-vaxxer.
The comments came a day after Dr. Anthony Fauci, White House chief medical advisor, called Rogan’s advice incorrect and said unvaccinated people “are propagating the outbreak” as they can infect others who may be at severe risk of illness from the virus.
New social science research suggests that a set of deeply held beliefs is at the heart of many people’s vaccine resistance, complicating efforts to bring the coronavirus pandemic under control.
BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin said he is “confident” the company’s Covid-19 vaccine with U.S. partner Pfizer is effective against a coronavirus variant first identified in India.
Americans are being advised to avoid travel to India amid a relentless surge of new COVID-19 cases that has devastated the country’s healthcare system.
More than three dozen people were trampled to death at a festival in Israel; the country’s largest gathering since reopening amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
As vaccinations mount in some of the world’s wealthiest countries and people cautiously envision life after the pandemic, the crisis in Latin America — and in South America in particular — is taking an alarming turn for the worse.
About 1 in 12 Americans haven’t gotten their second scheduled dose of COVID-19 vaccine on time, and while that worries epidemiologists, the follow-through is far better than other adult two-dose vaccines.
After the C.D.C. issued new guidelines, people are figuring out how to proceed. Some want to keep their face coverings on.
The SUNY system announced it will be adopting the new CDC masking guidelines, which means people who are fully vaccinated can gather outdoors without wearing masks, except in certain crowded settings and venues.
Executives of Emergent BioSolutions, the Covid-19 vaccine manufacturer that was forced to discard up to 15 million doses because of possible contamination, reported a shake-up in leadership and offered the most fulsome defense yet of its performance.
Larry Schwartz, a confidante of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, departed his position overseeing vaccine distribution after the Legislature repealed provisions of an executive order that exempted him and other volunteer advisers from a two-year ban on lobbying the agency in which they served.
After reports earlier this year that Schwartz, as Cuomo’s “vaccine czar,” had called county executives and inquired about their “loyalty” to Cuomo, state Sen. John Liu began pushing for a bill repealing the governor’s ethics order.
“My plan was always to step down in my volunteer capacity over the next few weeks as we achieved certain milestones,” Schwartz said in a statement.
Schwartz’s exit follows other top-level departures as Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, faces calls for his resignation and a series of investigations into sexual harassment accusations and his handling of nursing homes during the pandemic.
New York City businesses will fully reopen starting July 1, marking an end to many Covid-19 lockdown measures that have restricted their operations for more than a year, Mayor Bill de Blasio said.
Restoring the city to its earlier state, before it was stifled by the virus and scarred by profound losses, will pose a significant challenge.
New York needs 24-hour subway service to return if it’s going to come back from COVID as a city that never sleeps, the mayor said.
Cuomo mocked de Blasio’s plan to have New York City “fully open” from coronavirus restrictions on July 1 — prompting a City Hall spokesman to respond, “Serial sexual assaulter says what?”
Cuomo reiterated that decisions on state pandemic restrictions were his call, saying: “I’d like to get the hopeful reopening date before that. I don’t want to wait that long. I think if we do what we have to do we can reopen earlier.”
“I am reluctant to make projections because I think they’re irresponsible,” the governor continued. “July one. You have May, you have June. You know what happens in May? What happens in June?”
New York currently has the worst shortage of home care workers in the nation. A 2019 survey of home care agencies in the state found roughly 17 percent of care positions were left unfilled that year because of staff shortages.
Cuomo argued it’s “not fair” that the multiple women accusing him of sexual harassment have shared their stories publicly.
One day after a report alleged that state officials repeatedly suppressed information about the fatalities, Cuomo claimed that “the concern for the state was that we provide accurate numbers.”
The CEO of a New York fashion company says the Cuomo administration fleeced her out of $10.4 million — refusing to pay for an order of PPE she delivered during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a lawsuit filed yesterday.
As supporters pulled their endorsements from his mayoral run, city Comptroller Scott Stringer pushed back for the second straight day against allegations that he sexually abused and harassed a woman who worked on his 2001 campaign for public advocate.
All three of the leading female mayoral candidates — including Maya Wiley, perhaps Stringer’s most powerful rival for progressive voters — have now called on him to drop out of the race.
Michelle Caruso-Cabrera unveiled the first TV ads in the campaign for city comptroller — stressing her role as a “political outsider” and the only Hispanic running in the Democratic primary to be the city’s chief budget watchdog.
Mayoral hopeful Eric Adams won the support of the MTA’s largest union, Transport Workers Local 100.
Mayoral contender Andrew Yang said he would hire his rival, Kathryn Garcia, if he’s elected to run the city.
Mayoral candidate Ray McGuire proposes the city offer a $100 voucher that could be spent at local businesses and restaurants to encourage 1 million more New Yorkers to get the jab.
A campaign consultant hired by Kanye West in his failed bid for the presidency deliberately sabotaged Sara Tirschwell’s campaign to become the Big Apple’s first female mayor, Tirschwell alleges in a $5 million Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit.
Candidates for Manhattan DA have an unusual problem: How can they talk about the office’s highest-profile investigation, the probe into former President Trump and his businesses, when any comment could jeopardize a potential future case?
Lime, the micro-mobility company known for bike and e-scooter programs, will launch a new electric-moped share system in New York City today.
Queens Sen. Jessica Ramos has made a name for herself by leading food causes, speaking up for street vendors, farm workers and the many restaurants in her Queens district.
A bill passed by the state Senate and Assembly would establish regulations to ensure all new passenger vehicles in New York to be electric by 2035.
New York City students who took the test for admission to the city’s selective public high schools will get decisions this week; preliminary results show declines in the number who took the test and the percentage of slots offered to Black and Hispanic students.
Only 9 percent of offers made by elite schools like Stuyvesant High School and Bronx High School of Science went to Black and Latino students this year, down from 11 percent last year.
Schools Chancellor Meisha Ross-Porter called for an end to the specialized high school entrance exam while fuming about new admissions data that showed Asians dominating the controversial test once again.
A family feud inside Peter Luger steakhouse last night sparked a shooting that wounded two outdoor diners at the famed Brooklyn eatery, sources said.
A 29-year-old man was fatally injured last night when a car collided with his scooter and then crashed into an outdoor dining structure on a busy block of Astoria, Queens, the police said.
The Albany County Legislature, recognizing the historical significance of Juneteenth and the chance for people to learn more about the past, said it is advancing legislation to officially designate June 19 as an official holiday for county employees.
The 20-year-old paratrooper who died last week in a training accident at Fort Bragg, N.C. has come home. Abigail Jenks’ body was flown back to the Capital Region yesterday afternoon.
Federal and state officials said they reached a settlement regarding alleged water quality violations at the LaFarge Holcim cement plant in which leachate was reportedly flowing into the Hudson River.
Appellate justices in Albany indefinitely suspended a Bethlehem attorney from practicing law, saying he failed to cooperate with a watchdog committee’s investigation into a client’s complaint.
The town of Catskill was granted a temporary restraining order to stop a planned military-themed event at the former Friar Tuck Inn that was to begin today and run through the weekend at the long-shuttered resort.
Feed Albany, a hunger-relief effort born days after the pandemic shutdown 13 months ago that has since distributed more than 500,000 free meals, is launching its first fundraising campaign.
The Desmond Hotel in Albany has reopened after undergoing a complete remodel.
Following a Congressional report that found concerns with these products, Attorney General Letitia James has launched a probe into several manufacturers of baby food regarding the presence of inorganic arsenic found in infant rice cereal products.
Five people were busted for their involvement in the near-fatal February shooting of Lady Gaga’s dogwalker and the theft of two of her French bulldogs, the Los Angeles Police Department said.
Anne Douglas, the generous philanthropist and widow of Hollywood legend Kirk Douglas, has died at the age of 102.
