Good Thursday morning.
On this day in 1933, United Artists released Walt Disney’s “Three Little Pigs” – an animated short film that went on to become one of the best-known cartoons of all time. It even won an Academy Award in 1943. (Actually, it’s real name appears to be “Silly Symphony”).
The short, which premiered at Radio City Music Hall, cost $22,000 to make and grossed $250,000. Not a bad return on an investment. Audiences loved it so much that theaters were still showing it months after its release.
The allure of the short was that it was the first example of animated characters looking and acting differently from one another. It was also edited several times over the years to change the role of the wolf, who started out disguising himself as a Jewish peddler – something that became more controversial after WWI.
The original song composed by Frank Churchill for the cartoon, “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?”, was a best-selling single, mirroring the public’s resolve against the “big bad wolf” of The Great Depression. it actually became something of an anthem of the time.
Today is National Grape Popsicle Day. (Yeah, they’re really thought of everything). Even the popsicle has an origin story. Personally, I always felt a little gypped by popsicles because they aren’t ice cream, though I have been offered them by Good Samaritans who hand them out at the side of the road during really hot races (triathlons, mostly), and then they are a godsend.
Today will be cooler, in the 70s, with a mix of sun and clouds. But then tomorrow and Saturday, we’re headed WAY DOWN into the 50s. Um, hello? Mother Nature? Make up your mind, please. My delicate sensibilities can’t take your mood swings.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden said that he has directed the U.S. intelligence community to redouble their efforts in investigating the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic and report back to him in 90 days.
The president said he received a report earlier this month with the “most up-to-date analysis of the origins of Covid-19”, but asked intelligence agencies to “redouble” their efforts to identify a “definitive conclusion” on how the virus was first transmitted.
This is a direct rebuke to China. When experts convened by the World Health Organisation (WHO) travelled to Wuhan, the city where covid-19 was first identified, in January and February this year their hosts refused to share crucial data.
Top trade negotiators from China and the United States held their first telephone call since Biden entered the White House, and stressed the importance of improving their bilateral trade ties.
Facebook said it would no longer ban posts suggesting COVID-19 is man-made amid mounting calls from Biden and other officials for further investigation into the pandemic’s origins.
“In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts, we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made from our apps,” a Facebook spokesperson said.
Biden plans to announce that he has selected R. Nicholas Burns, a veteran Foreign Service officer and a former ambassador to NATO, as his ambassador to China, and Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles as his ambassador to India.
The Biden administration defended a proposed ConocoPhillips oil development in Alaska, backing the drilling project which was approved under the administration of former President Donald Trump.
A transit worker opened fire at a rail yard in San Jose, Calif., early yesterday, killing eight people, many of them fellow employees, according to the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office, which reported that the gunman was also dead.
The FBI is alleging a Las Cruces man sent text messages with plans to kill Biden, overthrow the government and execute people at a Canadian computer company.
The past several weeks have seen an outbreak of anti-Semitic threats and violence across the United States, stoking fear among Jews in small towns and major cities.
One year after the movement to “defund” law enforcement began to upend municipal budgets, many American cities are restoring money to their police departments or proposing to spend more.
Immunity to the coronavirus lasts at least a year, possibly a lifetime, improving over time especially after vaccination, according to two new studies. The findings may help put to rest lingering fears that protection against the virus will be short-lived.
Vaccines from China’s Sinopharm successfully contained Covid-19, according to a study published in a prestigious U.S. medical journal, the first time detailed findings from a late-stage trial of a Chinese shot have appeared in the scientific literature.
Taiwan’s president has accused China of interfering in its vaccine acquisition programme, as the island continues to battle hundreds of daily new cases of Covid-19 with low supplies of vaccines.
The multibillion-dollar Covax program was supposed to be a model for vaccinating humanity, but has hit problem after problem during the coronavirus pandemic.
Travel demand from Latin American countries to the US has increased in 2021, fueled by growing interest in “vaccine tourism” according to some travel and health experts.
Keen to avoid losing another summer of holiday revenue to the pandemic, the European Union, some Asian governments and the airline industry are scrambling to develop so-called Covid-19 vaccine passports to help kickstart international travel.
The Celebrity Edge cruise ship has received approval for one paid sailing out of Fort Lauderdale in late June, the first to embark from the U.S. since the coronavirus pandemic began.
The Food and Drug Administration authorized a monoclonal antibody drug developed by GlaxoSmithKline and Vir as the third treatment of its kind cleared to help keep high-risk Covid patients out of the hospital.
A disinformation effort to reduce public confidence in Covid-19 vaccines tried to enroll social media commentators in France and Germany.
Ohio has announced the winners of its first lottery draw for Covid-19 vaccine recipients.
New York City passed 8 million doses of coronavirus vaccine that went into arms since a massive — and continuing — inoculation effort began.
Covid-19 hospitalizations in New York fell below 1,300 Tuesday and are at their lowest point since Nov. 3.
Starting today, any New York resident between the ages of 12 and 17 who gets a first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will be entered into a raffle to win a full-ride scholarship to a New York public university.
The Assemblyman leading the impeachment probe into Gov. Andrew Cuomo pushed back on criticisms about how much money has been allotted to the investigation.
The inquiry is making progress and lawyers have spoken with 75 individuals and reviewed 290 messages received through a tip hotline.
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie tried to help silence one of Cuomo’s most outspoken critics after The NY Post revealed the state’s cover-up of nursing home deaths from COVID-19, a smoking-gun text message shows.
The revelation that Chris Cuomo had taken on the role of political adviser to his governor brother brings CNN more uncomfortably into the kind of partisanship adopted by Fox News, whose prime-time hosts regularly counseled Trump during his presidency.
School districts are seeking clarity on Cuomo’s statement this week that all New York schools can reopen for full in-person learning for the 2021-2022 school year beginning in September provided coronavirus rates remain low.
New York’s largest public-employee pension fund saw a record return over the past year, state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli announced.
New York City’s biggest problems are “crime, crime, crime” — and the Big Apple won’t recover from the COVID-19 pandemic until the streets and subways are safe again, Cuomo said.
The two GOP mayoral candidates – Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels, and Fernando Mateo, a restaurateur – yelled at each other repeatedly during a free-wheeling virtual debate.
They both called for full support of the city’s police department, with Sliwa demanding “refund the police” and Mateo taking the position that there should be thousands more police officers.
Democrat Maya Wiley repeated her demand for her mayoral rival, Comptroller Scott Stringer, to drop out of the race.
Stringer unveiled plans to turn the tide on rising crime and decried alarming statistics showing the NYPD is solving fewer than half of its homicide cases compared to almost 20 years ago.
Dianne Morales has positioned herself as the progressive champion in a crowded field of mayoral candidates. Now that reputation is being threatened by a staff shakeup over accusations of mistreatment, inadequate pay and lack of unionization and health care.
Morales campaign manager Whitney Hu and senior staffers Ramses Duke and Amanda Van Kesell are no longer working for the campaign, a campaign spokeswoman said.
For the past several years, Morales has received a tax exemption reserved for property owners with an adjusted gross income of $250,000 or less annually, but tax records suggest she earned over that threshold for at least three of those years.
Mayoral candidate Eric Adams called on the city and state to crack down on unsafe, noisy dirt bikes — claiming their increased use on New York streets is emblematic of recent “disorder” and “lawlessness.”
Adams would get rid of “abusive” cops within three months of an incident if he’s elected to lead City Hall, the ex-police captain promised.
Andrew Yang made some digs at mayoral rival Kathryn Garcia, who’s been rising in the polls following big newspaper endorsements. (He previously said he would rank her as his second choice in the June 22 primary).
Worker groups are split over a proposal in New York state that would let ride-hail drivers and delivery workers form unions and get access to additional benefits while sidestepping the question of whether they should be classified as employees.
New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority awarded contracts totaling almost $400 million to three firms to run different aspects of toll system operations at its bridges and tunnels.
The subway turned into a nightmare for tens of thousands of rush-hour commuters yesterday morning in the biggest mass transit snafu since the coronavirus pandemic hit New York City.
An analysis of New York renters in affordable housing found that the share of households owing more than $10,000 in arrears more than doubled, a year after the pandemic.
Amy Cooper, a white woman who last year became an international symbol of the routine racism that Black people face in their daily lives, is suing her former employer for firing her, arguing that she is a victim of racial discrimination.
The Vessel, the labyrinth of staircases at Hudson Yards that closed four months ago after several people killed themselves there, will reopen tomorrow with measures in place designed to reduce the risk of suicides.
New York City’s booming outdoor-dining program is about to get its own version of the Oscars. The Alfresco Awards, a program honoring excellence in outdoor setups, began accepting nominations yesterday.
The Smithsonian Institution, which reopened eight of its Washington-area institutions this month, announced a schedule to bring back the rest of its museums closed by the pandemic — including two in New York — by the end of August.
Trump’s spur-of-the-moment 2019 trip to New York for a mixed martial arts fight cost taxpayers more than $250,000, as the Secret Service scrambled to provide security for the president on a particularly busy weekend in the city, according to federal records.
The long-delayed Tony Awards, honoring the last set of shows to open on Broadway before theaters went dark, finally have a plan: The ceremony will take place on Sept. 26, timed to bolster a pandemic-hobbled industry as shows begin to reopen.
Cambridge Junior-Senior High School stopped distribution of its 2020-2021 yearbooks after a graduating senior listed Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” as his favorite book.
Should school resource officers be required to wear body cameras during their interactions with students? Police agencies in the Capital Region say “yes.”
Five highway workers in Saratoga County were struck by passing cars in one week last month, adding urgency to union efforts to get speed cameras installed in work zones.
Winds powerful enough to blow so much dust and pollen into the air that it lowered visibility at Albany International Airport also caused thousands of power outages around the Capital Region and Mohawk Valley.
The city of Albany has canceled its Memorial Day parade for a second year in a row due to Covid.
City of Albany pools will reopen June 26.
The Biden administration is looking to create a special dispute panel to deal with what they and New York dairy farmers contend is Canada’s unfair import quotas, which have long been a sore point in trade relations.
The head of the FBI in the Capital Region retired yesterday, marking the fourth departure since early 2017 of a permanent special agent in charge of the bureau’s Albany field office.
Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter announced his resignation one day after The Oklahoman said it had sent him questions about an extramarital affair.
Graham B. Spanier, the former president of Pennsylvania State University, must serve two months in jail followed by two months of house arrest for his role in a child abuse scandal that rocked the university a decade ago, a judge reaffirmed.
Eric Carle, the artist and author who created that creature in his book “The Very Hungry Caterpillar,” a tale that has charmed generations of children and parents alike, died on Sunday at his summer studio in Northampton, Mass. He was 91.
